From the time Barack Obama introduced himself to us in his 2004 DNC speech, to his announcement of Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court, he has relied heavily on narrative as a rhetorical tool – that is, he tells stories to persuade, to convince, to urge us to buy whatever he happens to be selling. Sometimes the stories are obvious and riddled with clichés. Other times they are subtle and sophisticated. Nearly always, though, they are effective. I think it’s important to look at the preferred rhetorical device of one of the world’s most influential people.
In the 04 DNC speech Obama was unapologetically selling himself (with a side order of John Kerry, in case anyone wanted him). What we remember from that speech is not that Obama didn’t yet have an office in Washington DC (he was still a state senator), or how starkly (and, to some, refreshingly) the speech contrasted with that of the Rev. Al Sharpton, but that Obama’s mom was white and his father was black, that he was raised by his mother and grandparents in Kansas and Hawaii and Indonesia, and that his grandfather fought in World War II. The story was both commonplace and remarkable, the former because it featured a kid of mixed racial heritage raised by a single mom who moved a lot, the latter because – oh shit! – he’s giving the keynote at the DNC! And he’s really good!
This common-remarkable mix was perfectly suited to the occasion because it’s the kind of American dream narrative that gets people without requiring much thought from them. In short, it’s a cliché, albeit with enough twists (the race factor being the biggest) to garner attention. And the speech itself is full of sappy, romantic images calculated for maximum effect. This isn’t to say that the speech is flawed. Far from it. Obama knew his time was limited, and clichés, despite their many shortcomings, are the liquor of the rhetorical world – they’re quicker. Here’s a passage as soaked as my Aunt Peg’s 90-proof rum cake:
“Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before. While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor my grandfather signed up for duty; joined Patton’s army, marched across Europe. Back home, my grandmother raised a baby and went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house thought F.H.A., and later moved west all the way to Hawaii in search of opportunity.”
This excerpt is positively Gumpian for what it chooses to include and all that it leaves out. But when you’re thinking in rhetorical terms, the primary question is, “Did it work?” Yes, it worked, and for a lot of reasons. First, it gives people something they’re already primed to hear, in a proven, tasty format. There’s nothing sophisticated about this aspect of the speech and its narratives – but they are no less effective for it. Second, it anticipates and answers the most obvious criticisms of its author: he’s inexperienced. There’s plenty that’s sophisticated about this. Generally, inexperienced politicians seeking office have to focus on the future (as Obama certainly did in his presidential campaign, with forward-oriented buzzwords like Hope and Change), but with his biography, subtly plugged-in as it is to so many important events of the past (WWII, Civil Rights movement, racial integration) Obama focused attention on his past away from governance and onto the common/remarkable nature of his story.
Some might say this is unethical, that telling stories when you should be discussing your qualifications, or the qualifications of the man actually running (Kerry) is openly deceitful. To those folks I would say that Obama, as a state senator speaking at the DNC, had very few rules he needed to abide by. In national terms, he wasn’t encumbered by the responsibilities of office. He was a rising star doing something important for his party and, of course, for himself.
But as he rose in prominence so rose his responsibility to the voting public. As a presidential candidate, Obama owed us more than he did as a state senator and DNC keynote speaker. Did he give us more, or did he continue to rely on stories we already knew? Probably the best speech to look at in this context is what Obama’s senior advisor David Axelrod called, in an article in the November 17, 2008, issue of the New Yorker, “probably the most important moment of the whole campaign,” his “A More Perfect Union” speech, also called his speech on race, delivered in response to widely aired videos of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Without a doubt, the politics of the tight Democratic primary required Obama to distance himself from Wright, and to render Wright in three dimensions to contrast the 2-D version being shown in YouTube clips. For doing these things, Obama scores no ethical points. But for giving us our first nuanced, mature version of race in America from a Presidential contender, he did score. The political moment in which he found (or placed, if you prefer) himself did not require honesty about American race relations, certainly not thirty minutes of it, some of which was risky stuff, as when he equated black anger with white resentment, or retold the American creation myth so that it featured deeply flawed founding fathers who, despite all their ambitions, were slaveowners. I like a good story as much as the next person, and so my ears perk up when Obama plays the storyteller, as he often does. For me, this speech marked the ethical high-point of Obama-as-raconteur. I’m afraid he’s gone downhill since.
The most recent example is his shilling of Sonia Sotomayor. I’m sure she’s a fine judge, but what we really got from Obama was her heartwarming story, bread and butter American dream stuff a la the 04 DNC keynote. Of course it’s amazing that she’s accomplished all that she has, but our President emphasized it so much that it seemed to be her principal qualification. It was all he could talk about, and this was echoed as she was introduced at her confirmation hearings, when the two senators from New York gave what were essentially two versions of her wondrous life. If there were four senators we could’ve had the gospels.
It thrills me that our current president not only speaks well but thinks well, and that he understands that we more fully understand any issue or situation by being able to tell its story. But story as rhetoric is powerful stuff, and if we don’t watch what stories we buy we might find ourselves with very questionable merchandise.
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