Gerson Speech-Critiques Obama

By Dan Gerstein

Michael Gerson's latest Washington Post column this week critiquing President Obama's rhetorical performance in his first year in office is a must-read for speech groupies and political followers alike.  The former Bush speechwriter (and Gotham friend) gives a particularly thoughtful voice to an increasingly common complaint about the Speechifier-in-Chief — that Obama's speeches as president have not been nearly as inspiring or effective as his campaign oratory.  More important, although it was not Gerson's intent, his analysis also explains why the Obama speech mythology and the Olympian expectations it created were both unfair to him and unsustainable in office.

Gerson uses that myth as the peg for his argument, noting early on that New York Magazine had set up Obama as "our national oratorical superhero — a honey-tongued Frankenfusion of Lincoln, Gandhi, Cicero, Jesus, and all our most cherished national acronyms (MLK, JFK, RFK, FDR)." He goes on to write that Obama's rhetoric as president, by comparison, has been workman-like, unmemorable, and unmoving, pointing to two of Obama's highest profile addresses (his inaugural and his fall Afghanistan speech) as examples.  Even worse, Gerson says, Obama's cool-headed, intellectual style has too often come off as simultaneously too academic and arrogant, even veering "toward messianism."