Speech Shmeech: The New Obama

Obama proved from the podium of the General Assembly that he has lost his thunder. His only hope is if Rick Perry becomes the Republican candidate for the presidency.

One paragraph before the end, as the audience was already yawning, as journalists were realizing that there wouldn’t be any headlines here, as the president himself was probably welcoming a quick end to the nightmare, one paragraph before the end of the speech, Barack Obama invoked former U.S. President Harry Truman: “… when the cornerstone of this very building was put in place, President Truman came here to New York and said, ‘The United Nations is essentially an expression of the moral nature of man’s aspirations.’ The moral nature of a man’s aspirations. As we live in a world that is changing at a breathtaking pace, that’s a lesson that we must never forget.”

One needs to read it once or twice to realize that it actually doesn’t say anything meaningful. Truman’s vague sentence is further obscured by Obama. Truman had better winged words, much better. In a small compilation book of quotations, in the first line about “making speeches,” the following quote appears: “Never use two words when one is enough.” And here is what appears as the last quote, which is equally apt: “The greatest orators were those who understood what they wanted to say; said it in short, sharp sentences; and left before people started falling asleep.”

You can say many things about Obama, good things even, but when it comes to oratory, he’s a kind of riddle. He who was elected only three years ago due to his hypnotic rhetorical power, due to his ability to attract tens of thousands of excited listeners to a stadium, has lost his magic touch. Since being elected president, he hasn’t succeeded in making a single great or memorable speech, or any speech that could go down in history. Anyway, here is an argument that will surely antagonize a few of the righteous to protest loudly …

George Bush was a better speaker. Yes, that Bush, the inarticulate one, the one who didn’t know English, the Bush who only knew how to speak in short sentences, who knew what he wanted to say, who didn’t put anyone to sleep in his important speeches. Of course, Bush also had some disadvantages.

In Obama’s defense, it seems that today he understands what he didn’t understand when he was elected president, when he spoke about a Palestinian state within “two years,” or in his speech last year at the U.N., when he spoke about “next year.” If making peace “were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now,” Obama said on Wednesday. One last quote from Truman is justified: “I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.”

Reflections on Ambassador Andrew Young

It was impossible not to think this week about former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Andrew “Andy” Young, whose story is familiar to anyone who has ever delved into Israeli-American relations. Young was an appointment of President Jimmy Carter who got entangled in a controversial vote against Israel at the U.N., more specifically against the annexation of East Jerusalem by Israel.

Menachem Begin’s government was furious with the vote; the Carter administration was confused. This was an election year, 1980, and on the eve of difficult primaries in New York, where the Jewish vote was crucial, Vice President Walter Mondale pressured Carter to back out of the vote. Carter made his secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, explain that it had all been a mistake. In any case, Carter lost in New York, Vance resigned shortly after the incident and Andrew Young still had one more scandal left before he too was forced to resign: He secretly met with a representative of the PLO.

His forced resignation caused a serious crisis in relations between the American Jewish community and the black community. Young was the first black person to represent the United States at the U.N., and Jews were blamed for the fact that he was forced to leave his post.

The Jews maintained that they never demanded his resignation. The heads of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations stated: “Our argument is against the State Department.” But it didn’t help. A stormy emergency meeting was held by black leaders. One of its participants stated: “I have never heard such a strong expression of anti-Jewish sentiment as I heard in this meeting.” One black organization initiated a meeting with the same PLO United Nations observer that Young met, Zuhdi Tarazi. Many others began to make public remarks explicitly supporting Palestinians. In New York, a few severe bouts of violence were recorded.

This week, a black president and his competent black envoy, Susan Rice, led a battle of containment against the Palestinian initiative at the U.N. An election year is looming, and it seems that, like before, there are many Jewish voters waiting suspiciously for the government’s next move. Black-Jewish relations never normalized. The 60’s was a period of great success in the struggle for equal rights. Then came the deterioration, which peaked with the Andrew Young affair.

Obama, three years before running for president, promised to try to restore black-Jewish relations. “What I want to do is rebuild what I consider to be a historic relationship between the African American community and the Jewish community,” he later said. Another one of his promises that hasn’t come to fruition.

Rick Perry Votes for Danny Danon

On Tuesday, at a rally in New York’s Union Square, the leading Republican candidate adopted the position of Likud’s hawks. Not the position of Netanyahu, but of those who would seek to kill Netanyahu if and when talks resume between Israel and the Palestinians. In other words: Rick Perry votes for Danny Danon.

This is not a trivial matter. From a Gallup poll this week, it is clear that Perry leads over his main rival Mitt Romney by a significant margin. Thirty-one percent of Republican voters say that they will vote for him in the primaries, compared with 24 percent expressing support for Romney. The other candidates are trailing far behind. The reactionary Romney versus the revolutionary Perry. A year from now, one of them will run in the political campaign against Obama.

In state polls, Romney is running neck and neck with Obama, better than Perry. That is to say, Republican voters want Perry, American voters want Romney; and what is true for most voters, is especially true when it comes to Jewish voters. Over the past fortnight, screams of joy have been heard from Obama’s headquarters every time a new survey reconfirmed that Perry was then the leading candidate. If Perry wins, Jewish officials from Obama’s camp say that the president will again not have a “Jewish problem” in this election. Jews will not vote for a candidate that they call “extreme,” or for those whose position on the issues of religion and state are so far removed from their own.

Perry stood at a Jewish support rally this week, full of fighting spirit. Obama’s policies on the Israeli-Palestinian issue were labeled as being “surrender” and “dangerous.” Perry stated that the government gives “equal moral weight to the suffering of the Israelis and the Palestinians, including the perpetrators of terrorist attacks.” A representative of the Palestinian Authority in the U.S., Erekat, reprimanded him for it, calling it “racist.” However, it is hard to believe that an insult like this will change Perry’s position. The Jews that excitedly surrounded him were mostly wearing black jackets and a kippah. In other words, those who represent the small conservative minority among American Jews and not the great liberal majority who won’t vote for Perry, just like they didn’t vote for Sarah Palin in the last round.

Anyway, when Perry says what Danon wants to hear, Jewish voters are not at the top of his agenda. Their weight in the Republican [candidate] selection process is insignificant; the large and crucial group of voters is the Evangelists, who are supposed to hand victory to Perry on a plate.