Obama’s Magic Is Back

The president has again positioned himself as a man with presidential allure with his speech in Tucson.

My bookcase has recently been enriched with a fine edition, titled “Speeches That Changed the World.” It is the second, revised edition. The first edition from five years ago knew some painful omissions, such as the famous — initially kept a secret — anti-Stalin speech from Nikita Khrushchev at the 20th Communist Party congress in February 1956. That is now included. And of course, in the new edition, a speech of Barack Obama is included: his victory speech in Chicago on Nov. 4, 2008.

Impressive

If in a few years, a third edition of this book were to appear, would a place be reserved for the impressive speech Obama gave last Wednesday in Tucson during the memorial service for the victims of the shooting spree of Jared Loughner?

Claiming that Obama’s performance there changed the world would be too much honor for both the event and the president’s words. His speech, no matter how suggestive, contained no phrases that immediately nestle in your memory, like Winston Churchill’s “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat,” or John Kennedy’s “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

But I think it is not exaggerated to say that the speech in Tucson potentially is a turning point in Obama’s presidency, even if it will not take long before the United States return to politics as usual.

Hope

The clever thing about the speech was that he not only movingly honored each one of the victims, but that he knew to place the shocking event in a light that offers comfort and hope for Americans of different signature. His choice of words made him more than a respectable speaker: He was a participant in the mourning process.

Emphatically, he avoided talking in terms of guilt and atonement. “It’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.”

Even from the death of the most appealing victim, the nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green, he knew to distill positive encouragement: “I want to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it. I want America to be as good as she imagined it.”

Reagan

Watching Obama’s speech made me think of two similar performances by Ronald Reagan. The first was after the disaster of the space shuttle Challenger in January 1986, and the second was at a memorial service for the 37 victims of the frigate USS Stark that was hit in May 1987 by Iraqi Exocet rockets in the Persian Gulf. Reagan pre-eminently had the oratorical ability to, as it were, identify himself with the pain and the dismay of the nation and to give it meaning.

Wednesday in Tucson, Obama followed in Reagan’s footsteps (the same Reagan whom he always had a weakness for, according to his autobiography). After a rather grim year, in which he often seemed to be searching for the right stance and tone, the magic of the big orator was back. Again it was noticeable why Barack Obama, during the election campaign of 2008, appealed to the imagination of not only true Democrats, but also of independent and even Republican voters.

Not that you can win voters purely with oratorical talent — especially not as an incumbent president who has failures and controversial political actions attributed to his name.

Even if Obama gives 10 more beautiful speeches, he can kiss his re-election goodbye if the economy does not clearly improve and if the unemployment figure, currently at 9.4 percent, increases by at least two points.

Allure

But he did position himself anew as a man with presidential allure, as a leader who can eloquently, at a crucial moment, speak both his heart and his mind (and on his own, because the speech in Tucson was mainly written by himself).

That talent has value everywhere, but mainly in the American political culture (or in a wider sense, the Anglo-Saxon culture as well), in which the word has such an important place and eloquence is highly appreciated.

I browse again through “Speeches That Changed the World” and try to think of the most memorable words from a Dutch government leader. Unfortunately, I do not get any further than: “Please all quietly go to sleep” (Colijn), “It will never be as former times” (Den Uyl), and “That is not how we treat each other in this country” (Balkenende).