Max McGuinness on Obama's speech.
Well, it wasn't quite Henry V but President Obama's inaugural address struck three or four powerful notes:
"We are ready to lead once more" could have been a slogan on a par with "Ask not..." etc. but, perceiving that it would have been bad form towards Bush, he didn't overly emphasise it.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals" was another well-aimed dig from "44" to "43" sitting behind him.
It is notable that he immediately set to work yesterday on both counts, suspending the military tribunal in Guantanamo and weighing in on the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
The reference to how his father "less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant" was very poignant and a sort of release for Obama who had, with the exception of his rhetorical masterpiece "A More Perfect Union", done his best to avoid making that point on the campaign trail.
More surprising was the inclusion of the last word, marked out by a dramatic pause and verbal stress, in this sentence: "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers."
Though the speech was not devoid of the gooey piety afflicting public debate in America, I think it's fairly plausible that President Obama isn't much of a believer himself and, as related in Dreams From My Father, if he found God at all it was because he felt rather isolated on Chicago's South Side where the dubious conclave of Rev. Jeremiah Wright (no sign of him on Tuesday) provided a spiritual home. Of course, whatever about the milestone of a black man being elected president, Obama knows that no atheist would have a chance in hell of being elected dog catcher let alone commander-in-chief so I cannot blame him for being slightly less than candid on this front.
Cheering too was his emphatic commitment not to yield an inch to the forces of global nihilism:
"We will not apologise for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defence, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you." Almost Churchillian, I would say...take that cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
However, there were a few awkward figures which suggest that Obama's latté-swilling 27 year-old speechwriter could do worse than a spend an evening with Fowler's Modern English Usage. His over-reliance on hackneyed natural metaphors...erm submerged the opening section: "rising tides...still waters...gathering clouds...raging storms" etc. A veritable catechism of cliché. There's also a weird bit about rolling back "the spectre of a warming planet"; since a "spectre" is defined by the OED as "an apparition, phantom, or ghost", this suggests that dealing with global warming is going to be rather trickier than anyone had ever imagined. Describing the civil war as "bitter swill" is questionable enough by itself but surely it cannot be a "dark chapter" at the same time (or at least in the same sentence).
All in all then, not an outstanding piece of prose but, then again, even Abraham Lincoln was overrated. He re-iterated in his first inaugural address that: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists."
And another thing...someone needs to tell the President that he shouldn't wear a white tie with a dinner jacket.
Speaking as someone who was raised in a UCC congregation, I think it's probably fair to accept Obama's statements about his faith at face value. Wright was often more of a charismatic than you'd think of as the head of an (essentially Lutheran) liberal protestant ecumenical American church. The way that Obama interacts with people more closely associated with other creeds is probably most instructive about how he regards the role of faith in American life.
Is he a "secret atheist" because he's not a frothing nutcase about religion? I don't know. A lot of the people involved with UCC certainly are not (though UCC does have its frothing nutcases of many stripes).
Posted by: David | January 23, 2009 at 01:55
Barack Obama might have added that American Foreign policy will not be dictated by any religious texts be it Christian, Mormon, Muslim or Jewish. And, further added that no special group would ever be more chosen by a divine god - if in fact there is a divine god.
Posted by: John c. Begley | January 23, 2009 at 23:28