LOFTY SPEECH FRAMES LIBERAL CORE MESSAGE / THE FINANCIAL TIMES COMMENT & ANALYSIS

January 21, 2013 7:21 pm

 

Lofty speech frames liberal core message

 

By Edward Luce in Washington

 

Second inaugural address more directly political than in 2009

 

 

It did not emulate the brevity of Abraham Lincoln, who squeezed his second inaugural address into 701 words (yes, considerably shorter than this piece). But at triple Lincoln’s length, Barack Obama was certainly briefer than his own more prolix self in 2009. He was also more directly political. Then Steven Spielberg famously said that it would be impossible to stage the scene for a film. With a crowd of up to 800,000 this time rather than 1.8m, Mr Spielberg might still struggle. But it was a very different occasion.


With the theme “Faith in America’s future”, Mr Obama was always going to give it a lofty frame – the first requirement of any inaugural speech. He was tee-ed up by an unabashedly exceptionalist Chuck Schumer, the New York senator and master of ceremonies, whose words reminded us that the US is in reality a constitutional monarchy as opposed to a crowned republic (such as Canada). The “innate majesty” of US inaugurations “never fails to make our hearts beat faster”, Mr Schumer said.

 

Mr Obama ticked that box. There were the obligatory links to the Founding Fathers, and exhortations to a more perfect union. There were strong lines about the “blood drawn by lash [on slaves] and sword”, and the fact that self-evident truths are “never self-executing”. And there were the more generic references to “solemn duties” to keep the “precious light of freedom” that is the “birthright” of every American. And of course there was the exceptionalism: “What makes us exceptional – what makes us American – is our allegiance to an idea.”


Yet the real meat of the speech – or at least its inner voice – was more immediate in its implications than the highfalutin’ address Mr Obama delivered four years ago. And at just 16 minutes, it was considerably punchier. In 2009, Mr Obama sought to rally a nation’s spirit to the immense economic crisis it faced. There was a sense that America’s great political battles were somehow behind it. The oratory was abstract and his imagery was bound up with epochal storms and battles with the wintry elements.


In 2009 he pronounced an end to the politics of “petty recrimination”.


In 2013 he called for it. For all its constitutional high talk, Mr Obama’s second inaugural address was more political. Inside the loftiness was an agenda that was strikingly liberal in its core message. This sentence is where the orotund formalities merged with the core message Mr Obama wanted to project – that partisan division cannot be allowed to prevent Mr Obama from implementing his more progressive goals. “The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob.”


Though Mr Obama never uttered the word “Republican”, the most pointed parts were aimed at partisan division. “We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate,” he said. The most specific parts hinted at an unapologetically Democratic agenda that set the country’s historic levels of income inequality directly in its sights.



Thirty-two years ago, Ronald Reagan said that the “era of big government is over”. At the very least Mr Obama’s address promised that medium-sized government would get a strong hearing in his second term. “We cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it,” he said. “We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class.”


Most inaugural addresses would leave it at that. But Mr Obama also dropped several hints about his approach to the coming fiscal tug of war with a partly Republican-controlled Congress in which he would protect Medicare and Social Security as well as the investment in the younger generations. If the speech had fiscal signalling, it offered an unapologetic defence of a strong government role to protect the weak.


“These things [government programmes] do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us,” he said. “They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.” Nor will fiscal conservatives have enjoyed the following line: “We reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.” Inaugural addresses rarely get more budgetary than this.


And second inaugural addresses are rarely this ambitious. In addition to the fiscal maximalism, Mr Obama made a strong vow to address climate change rather than kick that can down the road, as many expect him to do. “America cannot resist that transition: We must lead it,” he said. “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.”


And so on. For a day Washington was consumed with the elaborate staginess of a republican coronation. But it is as a political moment that Mr Obama’s address will almost certainly be recalled. The more wide-eyed among the throngs might have heard Mr Schumer’s boilerplate generalities that “those who bet against America are always on the wrong side of history”.


But Republican ears will have picked up a much harder message. The best version of Mr Obama’s speech that I stumbled upon was not in the overwrought television commentaries that always seem to miss the wood from the (red, white and blue) trees but on Twitter, from Ian Bremmer, the political scientist, who offered this abridgment of Mr Obama’s speech: “Together, we will pursue my objectives.”
.

 

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013