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The Great Communicators
Recently I exchanged a few emails with Elvin T. Lim, a professor of government at Wesleyan University and author of the book The Anti Intellectual Presidency. Lim's particular expertise is in the area of political communication, and I found his comments about Barack Obama's oratory to be particularly interesting.
The key to Barack Obama's rhetorical success is not too different from Ronald Reagan's. Recall that many liberals thought Reagan's speeches too vacuous, but conservatives thought they were sublime. Well, the tables have turned. Many conservatives today think that Obama offers platitudes (a charge that you will recall Hillary Clinton made during the primary season), but liberals think his speeches are thoughtful and considered.
I don't think this perfect inversion is coincidental. In both cases, those who already agreed with a particular president read substance into his rhetorical symbology but those who disagreed with him saw only empty soundbites. Both supporters and detractors of Obama and Reagan are right. Obama and Reagan (and indeed Franklin Roosvelt and Abraham Lincoln and other "great" American orators) shared at least one thing in common - they knew how to use "spacious" rhetoric to generate assent by appealing to mythic ideas without getting bogged down by divisive details. They were both vacuous and intellectual. It is this hybridity that explains Obama's spellbinding magic.
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Blog Goliard| 11.4.08 @ 4:18PM
That comparison only has a chance of holding up if you completely ignore each man's public career prior to the campaign that got him nominated for President.
Many Americans were able to mentally fill in the gaps with Reagan because they had heard him explain his philosophy and lay out the details before. It was not a mystery who the man was, what his record was, or what he believed and why.
As for Obama...?
Matthew Bishop| 11.4.08 @ 4:32PM
Blog Goliard,
I'd say at this point it's no longer a mystery who Obama has been, what his record has been, or what he believes: hence our trepidation as conservatives.
I realize it's a touchy thing to compare Obama in any way to Reagan. But it's truly worth asking what the secret is behind the fakir's trick, and in the case of Obama, who may be the most charismatic politician in generations, I think Lim is on to something. He is, in a way, both vacuous and intellectual. I wonder if this is a learned tactic or just the result of frighteningly acute social/political instincts.
Elvin Lim| 11.5.08 @ 8:52AM
Blog Goliard,
Notice what you are saying about Ronald Reagan's speeches - that they needed "mental filling in." In conceding that Americans were able to fill in the content of Reagan's speech with their knowledge of his public philosophy through a lifetime of private and public service, you appear to be in agreement with me that the _rhetoric_ of Ronald Reagan was vacuous (or at least imprecise)
If this is where you stand, then the pertinent question is this: should citizens permit, tolerate, and indeed celebrate inprecise and platitudinous speech as long as we have reason to believe that the speaker knows what he is talking about?
If your answer is yes, then public deliberation in American democracy would amount to little more than rhetorical signalling. No significant substance is specifically transmitted in rhetoric, just symbols and cognitive heuristics, even from our Greatest Communicators. Are we really content with such low standards for what the purpose of public discourse should be?