Presidential Rhetoric

   As we near the end of Obama’s presidency, I want to say a word about him that is not concerned with the policies and measures that he espoused and, within real world constraints, implemented.

I am in agreement with most of those, but that is only background to the remarks I want to make.

   Obama speaks to the public in the way a president should. He is always clear, always grammatical, quite eloquent, without rhetorical gimmicks, with a flourish now and then. Truly a good speaker.

   You might think that’s what it takes to be president; but that is not so. Of course we “accept” a president’s speech in whatever form it is rendered because it’s the president; we don’t really have a choice. But if you  to Obama’s forebears looking for eloquence, you gingerly reach Carter and Kennedy, then you go back until you get to FDR, long ago. He most certainly knew how to talk to the public; he could be eloquent and was the creator of memorable phrases. Bill Clinton is certainly in the same league as a communicator, but did not produce formal disquisitions as did FDR and Obama. It is worth mentioning a candidate for the presidency, Adelai Stevenson, who was a truly outstanding speaker, but who ran twice against Eisenhower, but had no chance against the not very articulate victorious general (who, a propos of nothing, signed my bachelor degree—or some surrogate did—when he was briefly president of Columbia University.)

 The others who occupied the White House since Franklin Roosevelt could be considered to have been competent speakers, though a couple of them just barely so. The moral of that story is that eloquence, in the sense of FDR and Obama, is not at all a requirement for the highest office of the land on the Western side of the Atlantic. While it is quite unreliable for me to asses the eloquence or lack of it of President Hollande of France or Chancellor Merkel of Germany, I’m fairly confident that  neither of them has made speeches of noteworthy eloquence.

   It is probably the case rhetorical quality plays a larger role in the effort to acquire a high office such as a presidency than to carry out the office gained. Herbert Hoover’s mundane speech was no match for Roosevelt’s witty way with words and Obama’s expressiveness no doubt contributed notably to his victory against Hillary Clinton in the hard-fought 2008 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

   In any discussion of rhetorical effectiveness one must not ignore a ruler who came into office in the same month as FDR—and that is Adolf Hitler. His speeches played a significant role in his being designated the last Chancellor of the Weimar Republic—the lat because he promptly turned into a dictatorship and served as its Führer until he committed suicide when the allies overran Berlin. His addresses, of which there were many, were heard by all who could get into earshot of a radio. These speeches were not eloquent in the normal sense of the word. Hitler had a voice that could only be called screechy, his pronunciation was that of a lower-class Austrian, not at all the German equivalent of the well-spoken language of a Roosevelt or Obama. He mostly spoke at the top of his voice; you might call it screaming. But it conveyed a tremendous passion and his messages were seductive. It is amazing that he retained the loyalty of a large fraction of the German population even when it was clear that the war was lost.

   Da capo al fine. Obama eloquence will be in the past after January 2017. Trump has given no sign of wanting to produce an extensive and coherent speech, while Hillary speaks well in short remarks and longer disquisitions, but she is not truly eloquent; she may persuade, but not really inspire. For the foreseeable future, at this juncture, Obama will be the rhetorical high point for the next decade or so.