Mr. President, use your gift of rhetoric to transform Americans' conversations.

[seafan]

The Bully Pulpit, especially, is one of your most effective tools. Your major address last year on race relations in our country unleashed a torrent of conversation among us.

There is much more we must discuss.




Overcoming the Poverty of Ambition

By David Michael Green
May 27, 2009

.....

I have written three columns about Barack Obama since he was inaugurated in January, including one just a week or two back. Every one of them has been critical-- .... I see his potential to be a great president, particularly given the crises which surround us at the moment, the hunger of the American people for honest leadership, and the near complete implosion of the Republican opposition. And yet, I also see him consistently failing to act boldly. Worse, he too frequently carries forward the horrific agenda of his predecessor, sometimes even exacerbating it.

And yet, every once in a while he does something that truly impresses me. I think the first time I noticed this was his Philadelphia speech on race, which struck me as the most mature, adult conversation a president (or candidate) has had with his country in my lifetime. In truth, I guess a lot of what he’s done that I’m impressed with has taken the form of speeches, rather than action. In fairness, it’s pretty early for that latter agenda to bear fruit. If he’s serious about national healthcare, leaving Iraq, or shutting down Guantánamo, those are things that cannot be done on short order, and I’m not bothered by the fact that they are only in motion rather than completed, four months into this presidency (assuming, that is, that they do get completed).

One could certainly make a good argument that I’m a naïve fool, easily placated by empty rhetoric, while the president’s real agenda is simply more of the same, only this time presented with a happy liberal face fronting predatory policies, rather than a snarling Dick Cheney. I certainly can see the merit to that assertion, and I don’t even entirely disagree with it. On the other hand, however – and this is really significant – it ignores the huge potential power of the bully pulpit.

I was reminded of this once again the other week, as Obama gave the commencement speech to graduating students at Arizona State University. This is the paragraph that jumped out at me:

“You're taught to chase after the usual brass rings, being on this 'who's who' list or that top 100 list, how much money you make and how big your corner office is; whether you have a fancy enough title or a nice enough car. Let me suggest that such an approach won't get you where you want to go. It displays a poverty of ambition, that in fact, the elevation of appearance over substance, celebrity over character, short-term gain over lasting achievement is precisely what your generation needs to help end.”

.....

We should not underestimate the power of the bully pulpit to shape discourse and therefore, ultimately, both culture and policy outcomes. This can happen in a direct fashion, but the second, third and fourth level effects are the more interesting and potentially most powerful. By second level effect I mean the power to place an item on the agenda of the nation, as opposed to the (first level) impact of articulating a particular position on an existing policy question. By third level I mean the ability to frame the way the issue is considered. And by fourth level I mean the power to configure the very bounds of legitimate discourse.

.....

Obama cannot do everything, and without question he has an enormous agenda that has been thrust upon him. With the exceptions of Lincoln and FDR, I doubt any president has been more challenged walking in the door than this one. Moreover, it would do no good for anybody should he succeed on issues like gay marriage, but fail on the economic rescue or war crises. Say hello to President Jeb Bush if that happens.

It’s also absolutely the case that presidents have political capital no less limited than is real capital. What you spend on winning health care you cannot also spend on Iraq.

But, all that said, what if this president were to use the powers of his bully pulpit to reorient public thinking on major issues as dramatically as he began to with respect to life values in his ASU commencement address?

What if Obama profoundly changed the way we think about international relations, international law, international institutions, and America’s place in the world? So much of what we get wrong in this domain is premised on the original sin of thinking we are somehow morally superior to the rest of the planet, and therefore entitled to special treatment. So much of what needs to be done in order to reorient our horrid international politics could be unleashed by a new paradigm with respect to America’s place in the world, and the ensuring rights and privileges we assume should follow from there. A president could take us very far down these paths with thoughtful rhetoric alone.

If he was able to do this, he could also begin to talk sensibly about military spending, as well, particularly given the profound truth – merely waiting to be uttered again by a high level American official, fully fifty years after Eisenhower originally did it – that “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed”.

.....

Another major theme concerns the equitable distribution of wealth inside the country. The right has been incredibly successful at fomenting the Ayn Randian construction which worships selfishness in such great glory that it is enshrined in public policy. the result has been an incredible transfer of money over the last three decades, the decimation of the middle class, and a polarization of wealth that has put us now on par with any well-functioning banana republic one might care to choose.

.....

Campaign finance and electoral process is another domain that could produce enormous bang for every buck of political capital spent. By framing the issue as one of invigorating American democracy, Obama could generate enormous pressure leading to reforms it would be ludicrous to resist, generating wholesale enfranchisement of huge swathes of Americans today effectively blocked from voting. This could change forever the politics of this country.

Similarly, so much of where we go wrong in America is rooted in our system of campaign finance. As that screaming radical of the looney left, John McCain, once said, “America gets the best Congress money can buy”. Lots of Americans get enraged about taxes and pork barrel spending, but in doing so they (conveniently) miss the big picture. The problem is way deeper and way more fundamental. If a president were ever to lead on this, we could perhaps break the stranglehold that special interests have, not just on spending, but on policy. Almost every issue domain in American politics would turn out radically different if special interest’s interests were divorced from policy-making.

There are countless examples of what Obama could do with his bully pulpit but, above all, he must use it to completely reorient thinking (or what has passed for it) in this country on the global warming issue. This one never ceases to amaze me. Even the deck-chairs-on-the-Titanic metaphor fails to do justice to the sheer stupidity of American policy on this issue. As climatologists are now discovering that even their gloomy projections of massively destructive warming were insufficiently dire, my jaw sometimes drops so hard it dents the pavement in the realization that this society continues to allow short-term profits for extremely narrow special interests to continue their campaign of disinformation on the issue.

.....

Barack Obama remains something of an unknown quantity to the world, even after two years of campaigning and a hundred days of governing. Both progressives and regressives alike have reasons for satisfaction and disappointment with the guy. Some in the former category still hold out hope that Obama is a practitioner of three-dimensional chess, that he’s smarter and more patient than the rest of us, and that he will implement progressive policy solutions soon enough, but cleverly, strategically, and deliberately. This may not necessarily (or, alas, may) be an entirely fantastical exercise in wishful thinking. Sounding reasonable and centrist while Cheney and Limbaugh push the GOP further toward the edge of the cliff with their insane histrionics, for example, is not necessarily a bad way to eventually move even dumbed-down America in the direction of a thoughtful politics.

Whether Obama ultimately turns out to be the clever progressive in centrist’s clothing, or the plain old centrist (and sometimes out-and-out conservative) in centrist’s clothing is yet to be determined.

What is clear, however, is that among any president’s greatest powers is the force of words, and that few presidents have ever had the rhetorical magic this one possesses.

If he uses this power thoughtfully and courageously, he might in so doing produce more positive impact on the direction of this country than would any bill rammed through Congress, or any redeployment of troops.

Getting Americans to think differently about themselves and their politics is the key that unlocks every door.

Obama carries those keys in his pocket.

[stray cat]

1. Individual Americans will have to work at that - you and I