Barack Obama Is So Awesome that His Awesomeness Impedes His Eloquence

[Valin]

Ricochet:

Pejman Yousefzadeh

1/20/12

 

Or … something:

 

… Obama isn’t a phrasemaker. I have the sense that he disdains the glibness of sound bites, for very good reason but also out of an incorrigible and self-undermining need to rise above politics. (What else but a sound bite was “with malice toward none, with charity for all”?) If Obama is the best writer-President since Lincoln, it’s not because of an extraordinary gift for language—it’s because of his breadth of experience and depth of thought.

 

The fact that Obama has given so few truly great Presidential speeches didn’t turn out to be politically fatal, but it’s not irrelevant. It’s made him more vulnerable, put him more on the defensive than he should have been. He’s never given himself a phrase or sentence to wield in the crunch, conveying an idea that’s simple and yet profound enough to embed itself in the public’s mind, and that truly defines his political vision. Obama is too complex, too nuanced, too elusive, and too careful, for words that stick.

 

Got that? If the president doesn’t leave us with any memorable phrases in his inaugural address, it is only because he is “too complex, too nuanced, too elusive, and too careful” to do that kind of thing. But he may still be “the best writer-President since Lincoln” because of his “breadth of experience and depth of thought,” so if we get no memorable phrases, it may only be because we don’t match the president in the “breadth of experience and depth of thought” business, in addition to not being “complex, nuanced, elusive, and careful” in our listening.

 

(Snip)