A BREATH OF STALE AIR
or, barry goes to iowa and sounds like
kerry.
Everyone who thinks Barack Obama is a
breath of fresh air
in American politics -- I heard that phrase in
two different news reports yesterday, and it's been popping up for months with a
kind of eerie, scripted precision -- would do well to take note of this little item about how the junior senator
rock star from Illinois has spent the last two days apologizing, almost
John-Kerry-like, for a slip of the tongue
that was surely nothing of the
sort.
Speaking in Iowa on Sunday, Senator Obama told an audience of cheering supporters, We now have spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted. Perhaps fearing a backlash, some sort of Joe-Bidenesque uproar and inevitable tongue-lashing from conservative attack dogs, Obama began to backtrack almost immediately. Before he'd even left the state, he told the Des Moines Register, I was actually upset with myself when I said that, because I never use that term. If he'd been truly upset with himself -- or, perhaps more to the point, if he truly were a breath of political fresh air -- he would have defended that eminently sensible and defensible position, or he would have corrected himself immediately, right there on the stump, apologizing for the diction and being certain to make himself clear. As he did later, sort of, in his statements to the Register: What I meant to say was those sacrifices have not been honored by the same attention to strategy, diplomacy, and honesty on the part of the civilian leadership that would give them a clear mission.
Did I mention his apologies were John-Kerry-like? Which means, of course, that they're the political and rhetorical equivalent of a truckload of fertilizer.
Take a look at that first sentence: the syntax isn't as smooth or as elegant as Obama at his best, but the diction and the message are both clear. (And, perhaps more to the point: correct. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone outside the Bush Administration -- okay, even inside the Bush Administration -- who could make a compelling argument for what national interest those American deaths have served.) Now take a look at the next sentence. You never use that term? Well, you just used it, Barry. In a stump speech. On the first official stop of your campaign swing. While performing what is supposed to be your greatest campaign skill: delivering an inspired and inspiring bit of speechifying to a crowd full of adoring, if occasionally dull-eyed, listeners. You expect us to believe that someone who so carefully crafts his oratory, someone whose pace is so measured, whose cadence is so deliberate, whose enunciation is so studied and strident it sounds more like excruciation, would unleash such an obvious slip of the tongue on day one of the campaign?
Now look at -- which is to say, try to decipher -- that third quotation, in which Senator Obama attempts to parse and explain and clarify his position with a sentence that sounds like it sprang fully and unfortunately formed from the mouth of the junior senator from Massachusetts. Ask yourself if those political calculations and linguistic contortions really sound like something Obama or anyone else might have meant might have meant but then just said wasted instead. And then consider what candidate Obama said yesterday, when asked if military families deserved an apology for what he said: Well as I said, it is not at all what I intended to say, and I would absolutely apologize if any of them felt that in some ways it had diminished the enormous courage and sacrifice that they'd shown. You know, and if you look at all the other speeches that I've made, that is always the starting point in my view of this war.
Even if we overlook how much, and how uncomfortably, that second sentence sounds like some sort of war-time, campaign-trail equivalent of but I have a lot of black friends defensiveness, it's almost impossible to ignore the qualified qualification of the non-apology apology (would...if...any...felt...some...had) in the first sentence. That little diarrhea spurt of non-responsible responsibility-taking and quasi-consequence-acceptance -- especially when compared to the straight-up admissions (I was wrong) and apologies (It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake) and acceptances (Those who didn't make a mistake -- the men and women of our armed forces and their families -- have performed heroically and paid a dear price) John Edwards has been offering for fifteen months now -- sounds an awful lot like the same old breath of stale political air we've been gagging and hacking our way around for the past quarter century.
Senator Obama may look different, but the more he talks and stumps, the more slips of the tongue he makes (or doesn't make), and the more he retreats from principle simply to advance in the polls, the more he sounds exactly, and lamentably, like everyone else.
Speaking in Iowa on Sunday, Senator Obama told an audience of cheering supporters, We now have spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted. Perhaps fearing a backlash, some sort of Joe-Bidenesque uproar and inevitable tongue-lashing from conservative attack dogs, Obama began to backtrack almost immediately. Before he'd even left the state, he told the Des Moines Register, I was actually upset with myself when I said that, because I never use that term. If he'd been truly upset with himself -- or, perhaps more to the point, if he truly were a breath of political fresh air -- he would have defended that eminently sensible and defensible position, or he would have corrected himself immediately, right there on the stump, apologizing for the diction and being certain to make himself clear. As he did later, sort of, in his statements to the Register: What I meant to say was those sacrifices have not been honored by the same attention to strategy, diplomacy, and honesty on the part of the civilian leadership that would give them a clear mission.
Did I mention his apologies were John-Kerry-like? Which means, of course, that they're the political and rhetorical equivalent of a truckload of fertilizer.
Take a look at that first sentence: the syntax isn't as smooth or as elegant as Obama at his best, but the diction and the message are both clear. (And, perhaps more to the point: correct. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone outside the Bush Administration -- okay, even inside the Bush Administration -- who could make a compelling argument for what national interest those American deaths have served.) Now take a look at the next sentence. You never use that term? Well, you just used it, Barry. In a stump speech. On the first official stop of your campaign swing. While performing what is supposed to be your greatest campaign skill: delivering an inspired and inspiring bit of speechifying to a crowd full of adoring, if occasionally dull-eyed, listeners. You expect us to believe that someone who so carefully crafts his oratory, someone whose pace is so measured, whose cadence is so deliberate, whose enunciation is so studied and strident it sounds more like excruciation, would unleash such an obvious slip of the tongue on day one of the campaign?
Now look at -- which is to say, try to decipher -- that third quotation, in which Senator Obama attempts to parse and explain and clarify his position with a sentence that sounds like it sprang fully and unfortunately formed from the mouth of the junior senator from Massachusetts. Ask yourself if those political calculations and linguistic contortions really sound like something Obama or anyone else might have meant might have meant but then just said wasted instead. And then consider what candidate Obama said yesterday, when asked if military families deserved an apology for what he said: Well as I said, it is not at all what I intended to say, and I would absolutely apologize if any of them felt that in some ways it had diminished the enormous courage and sacrifice that they'd shown. You know, and if you look at all the other speeches that I've made, that is always the starting point in my view of this war.
Even if we overlook how much, and how uncomfortably, that second sentence sounds like some sort of war-time, campaign-trail equivalent of but I have a lot of black friends defensiveness, it's almost impossible to ignore the qualified qualification of the non-apology apology (would...if...any...felt...some...had) in the first sentence. That little diarrhea spurt of non-responsible responsibility-taking and quasi-consequence-acceptance -- especially when compared to the straight-up admissions (I was wrong) and apologies (It was a mistake to vote for this war in 2002. I take responsibility for that mistake) and acceptances (Those who didn't make a mistake -- the men and women of our armed forces and their families -- have performed heroically and paid a dear price) John Edwards has been offering for fifteen months now -- sounds an awful lot like the same old breath of stale political air we've been gagging and hacking our way around for the past quarter century.
Senator Obama may look different, but the more he talks and stumps, the more slips of the tongue he makes (or doesn't make), and the more he retreats from principle simply to advance in the polls, the more he sounds exactly, and lamentably, like everyone else.
Posted: Tue - February 13, 2007 at 03:01 PM
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Published On: Jan 16, 2009 04:50 PM
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