President Obama's Inaugural Address - Part I

My running buddy (and intellectual buddy) DT (Deep Thinker) is an incredibly generous person. Just one example of this is how each December he spends time thinking up resolutions for the rest of the members of the running group. All designed to make for a better world, especially for DT himself. This generosity carries over to some of his favorite quotes from Shakespeare. While Macbeth is his special area of expertise, DT is particularly fond of a line from Hamlet - "Since brevity is the sole of wit, I shall be brief." DT really treasures brevity- especially in others.



All of this came to mind as I was thinking about President Obama's inaugural address to which I have two reactions - one a disappointment, the other positives. The disappointment is about the length of the speech and how it therefore, in my opinion, weakened it.


It's not that a speech of 20 minutes or so is inordinately long, it is more the question of length in inaugural addresses. Inaugural addresses are typically thought of as not being the time or place to get into a lot of detailed proposals. Rather they are an opportunity for a statement of vision, goals, values etc. or a discussion of one major subject. Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural is an example of the second kind of speech which reportedly lasted about 35 minutes. The focus of the speech was secession and Lincoln justifiably took the time for a detailed statement on the issues and why the nation should remain united. President Obama might have done something similar with the economic situation, but understandably he probably felt the need to address a broader spectrum of issues.


Lincoln's second inaugural which supposedly lasted only seven or eight minute, some 703 words.
Ronald White in his book, "Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural" provides some excellent analysis of this kind of speech. One of his main points is that the opposite of verbosity is not brevity, but precision. And here lies what I felt was the weaknesses in the new President's speech. If the one in depth issue approach is not chosen, then it is important to be brief. Failing to do so creates the risk of falling into platitudes and cliches and/or providing a laundry list of values, vision that lacks the power it might have otherwise had. Unfortunately I found that to be true of much of the early part of the speech.

On the other hand, things changed towards the end of the speech. My thoughts on that and the good things in the speech (of which there were plenty) in a second post because I have still not reached the "soul of wit" goal that DT has set for me.