Major League Pennant Races of 1916" and trying to wind up the Pioneer Project, it has taken longer than anticipated to get to this second post on President Obama's inaugural address. While disappointed with how I felt the length lessened the potential impact overall I felt it was a good and important speech. As with my disappointments, my positive comments are based upon what I will call the Lincoln standard - Lincoln's speeches and commentary on those speeches.
In my last post I mentioned Ronald White's book "Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural." In that book White writes about the importance of a speaker understanding the mood of his/her audience and speaking to that mood. This is apparently based upon Aristotle's theories of rhetoric (I would have written Plato, but fortunately DT corrected me). In any event I think the President spoke to the things that are the minds of the American people such as terrorism and the economic crisis in a way that showed he understands the mood of the American people without offering specifics (which would have been inappropriate), but in an even handed way. One example of this was his early comments on the economic crisis which he attributed to the greed of some, but also a collective unwillingness to take difficult decisions. In speaking in this way the President acknowledges the concern placed blame where it belongs, but avoids the trap of making the issue and, therefore, the solution too simple, thus allowing himself plenty of room for developing specific approaches.
While this was well done, as previously mentioned, the really important part of the speech for me was its closing. The similarity to Lincoln's approach with the Gettysburg address is to me too great for this to be a coincidence. In Gary Wills classic book "Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America," the author writes that Lincoln changed the way Americans thought about themselves, arguing that the founding values of the country were found in the Declaration (all men are created equal) not in the Constitution which does not mention equality. In another book about the address ("The Gettysburg Gospel"), the author stresses that the speech was a war speech directed at the north - the message being simply that the war in spite of all its horrors had to go on.
Combining these two ideas, brings us to the position that the war had to go on because of what it was really about - equality without distinction or qualification. Lincoln thus linked that crisis with revolutionary values. President Obama, I think, used a similar approach connecting the current crisis to the revolutionary spirit. Of that spirit Bruce Catton once wrote that "at the core of the American effort was an unconquerable toughness." No where is that toughness that spirit better evidenced in December of 1776 when as the British historian, George Trevelyan observed never in history has such a small group of men used such a small period of time for such an impact on the history of the world. The point being if that generation of Americans could do it so can we.
There seems to have been some post inaugural discussion about exactly what the President was referring to with this quote. I didn't recognize it at the time, but as DT reminded me it is from Thomas Paine's "The Crisis" - remembered for the famous line - "These are the times that try men's souls." That of course means even a closer connection to New Jersey history. No one knows exactly where Paine wrote that essay, but it was clearly in New Jersey during the "retreat to victory," there is some speculation that he wrote it in Newark by a campfire.
Finally a cautionary word about inaugural addresses. Supposedly John Kennedy when preparing his own inaugural read all of the speeches of his predecessors. He was reportedly shocked to find that some of the most highly respected presidents had given some of the worst inaugurals and, perhaps even more surprisingly, some of the least regarded had given some of the best. Ultimately of course, the old idea that what we do is more important than what we say applies to inaugurals as well. DT is fond of quoting a saying attributed to St. Francis - "Preach the Gospel always, when necessary use words."
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