Talking the Walk
It’s just personal style, probably, that Barack Obama speaks so many words when so many fewer would deliver the facts, in context, without risking his audience heading for the figurative exits. Figurative in the sense that some people are too polite to walk away, or the batteries in their remote died.
My esteemed colleague Steve Pizzo was enthralled by the president’s performance before the Republican members of the House on Friday. I later dutifully spent more than an hour watching the Q&A. Steve gave him an A-. The best I could do was to let him get by on a pass-fail vote.
Charles Blow had the same problem referring to the State of the Union address. He said it "soared — right over a familiar cliff." Obama insists on speaking over the heads of the American people, and if he thinks they’re going to raise themselves to learn, he’s ignoring one of the cardinal observations made by De Tocqueville almost two centuries ago. In his "Democracy in America" the young French nobleman observed that rather than try to better themselves, Americans tended to try to pull their betters down.
It’s not that Obama’s vocabulary is out of reach – it’s actually quite basic – but he insists on painting murals when posters would reach more people more directly more quickly. This does not suggest that he should talk down to people. Quite the contrary. He should get down to their level. As Blow suggested, "Someone should tap him on the ankle and say, ‘Mr. President, we’re down here.’"
It’s the mass of Americans down there who are suffering. They want simple answers, or at least simplified explanations. High fallutin’ notions have their time and place but when people are drowning, they want a lifeline not a line of polemics.
And alas, then there’s the matter of backing up the talk with the walk. If health care reform is any indication, our skepticism is understated.
©2010 SetonnoteS
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