Barack Obama’s Second Inaugural Speech

For those of us who see Barack Obama as an exceptional President, it’s grating to listen to claims that he’s a “liberal Reagan” or possibly another Roosevelt. FDR’s inaugural performances made no serious effort to prepare America for war or world leadership. And Reagan’s rhetoric assured that all the big problems were simple and had been over-intellectualized.

It will take time to feel sure that Obama’s speech was effective politically, and that it intelligently spoke to our times. Yesterday, however, may have given us a real flavor of the relaxed affability and hopefulness that reigned in Washington when Jack Kennedy spoke on January 20, 1961.

Obama’s Camelot doesn’t include a famous biographer and liberal historian, a Boston machine, a demanding father, or a team of technical advisors brainstorming just north of Cuba and in South Vietnam. Nevertheless, a beautiful family again occupies the White House; another impeccably dressed hipster is convinced that good things can be done in government.

Obama’s planners, the polls, and nearly a million citizens on the National Mall confirm that the clouds are thinning, that purposeful reform rather than constant fire-fighting may now be possible.

Michael Kinsley caught a touch of Kennedy over-reach:

“The president said, ‘This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience.’ It has? If so, it sure caught me napping. I think we are fairly untested, and it’s hard to share the president’s optimism. But he gets paid to be optimistic."

Lincoln spoke of America’s “better angels” in the midst the industrial world’s first gigantic blood bath. It’s wise for a President to complement the people when he can. And not just warn that he’ll be testing them again.

Kennedy insisted extravagantly that Americans would “pay any price” to assure the survival and success of liberty. Shortly, he introduced the biggest tax cut in US history. Obama only asked that they keep taking their medicine in good cheer. After all, he knows that more will be asked of them.

Newt Gingrich offered the most significant praise so far:

“I thought it was very, very good,” said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who ran unsuccessfully for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. “I didn’t think it was very liberal. There were one or two sentences obviously conservatives would object to, but 95 percent of the speech I thought was classically American, emphasizing hard work, emphasizing self-reliance, emphasizing doing things together. I thought it was a good speech. My newsletter tomorrow, I’m actually going to send out the whole text of the speech.”

Gingrich is even-handed: he doesn’t like other Republican leaders any less than he doesn’t like Democrats. What may have impressed him was how furiously Obama keeps provoking Republican extremists while, at the same time, offering shelter to that crucial minority of Republican moderates in Congress, dress-rehearsing for the 2014 Congressional and the 2016 Presidential elections.

Whether big deals on immigration, social benefits, guns, and tax loopholes are cut in Congress or not, Obama has delivered to Tea Partiers and Neo-Cons a whole series of policy statements that appeal to majorities in swing states and districts—positions they’ll insist, nevertheless, on decrying. 

America is “ending,” and not trying to win two wars. America will not act only according to its own conscience. Rather, it will “remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe.” 

How tedious.

Obama goes beyond talking about equality of opportunity and asserts that the “country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.” Wow. There’s an observation that prophets of revolution and now profiteers in America’s greatest business both accept.

A few months ago, Mitt Romney and other Republican pragmatists thought they could get away with calling that "socialism." Today, they’ll keep quiet and probably underline numerous passages in Obama’s speech that offer “partial” victories that they could share in as moderate conservatives.

Next American melodrama—2012 Presidential election

In changing times, when there is no plot or sure outcome, and compromise is exhausted, American politics have taken on the appearance of an awful melodrama—a presidential election that becomes a canvas for immense simple choices, exaggerated characters, and paranoid connections. Complexity and respect for the evidence are set aside.

A country that prides itself on its amateurish politics turns its leading politicians into demigods and devils in a Greek drama. The stakes for America become unbearably high.

Back in 2009, Republicans started preparing for exactly this kind of showdown and now look a little snug in their battle dress. They always want a candidate to really believe in but will probably settle for irresolute Mitt Romney.

Conversely, the Democrats are working up a truly dramatic proposition—vote Obama for the survival of America’s social union and activist federal leadership at home as well as abroad. However, a two-great-choices election led by no-drama Obama against weather-vain Romney will require strenuous pre-game work-ups. 

Getting liberals into the spirit of this kind of Manichaean politics, however, is moving along quite nicely. In New York Magazine, Frank Rich, possibly print’s most astute liberal observer, penned an extraordinary piece entitled “What Killed JFK. The hate that ended his presidency stalks us still.”   

“At least in 1963, polling showed that only 5 percent of the country—a fringe—subscribed to the radical anti-government views championed by the John Birch Society and other militants of the right. These days, that fringe, whether in the form of birthers or the tea party or the hosts of Fox & Friends, gives marching orders to a major political party.”

Rich acknowledges that Kennedy was not the victim of a criminal conspiracy and that a climate of violence didn’t literally pull the trigger. 

However:

“On the other hand, read Manchester or 11/22/63 (Stephen King’s latest novel) or any other account of that time, and the vitriol that was aimed at Kennedy in life seems as immediate as today. It’s as startling as that “You lie!” piercing the solemnity of a presidential address like a gunshot—or the actual gunshots fired at the White House last week by another wretched waif. In the end, that political backdrop is what our 44th and 35th presidents may have most in common. The tragedy of the Kennedy cult is that even as it fades, the hothouse brand of American malice that stalked its hero stalks our country still.”

Click on: http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/jfk-2011-11/index2.html

Historian and author James Piereson’s article “Revisiting the Kennedy Assassination: Frank Rich and the Paranoid Style” smartly chides Rich for relying on a novelist to prop up the idea that right-wing nuts and their theories inspired Kennedy’s assassin.

Click on: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/11/22/revisiting_the_kennedy_assassination_frank_rich_and_the_paranoid_style_112154.html

Associating the tragedy of Jack Kennedy and the vulnerability of Barack Obama, nevertheless, can’t be undone. An urbane liberal president stood up to hatred and extremism and was assassinated. Liberals, as passionately as conservatives, have their narrative of the 60s.  

Obama Democrats would look silly trying to sell optimism by re-inventing the innocence and arrogance of Kennedy’s Camelot. In truth, the tragedy of those divisive years is infinitely more affecting. Obama will more likely evoke passion in Democrats not by pretending to be Harry Truman but by being himself—a civil thinker, easily as articulate and as attractive as Jack Kennedy.