The Big Depression: Reflections on Obama's Spill Speech
It was good enough. Obama's spill speech was not the kind of speech that could be picked apart. But that's because the speech was already less than the sum of its parts. Of the most interest to me was a funny feeling that the speech created, in light of the expectations right and left arrayed around it. Nobody watching the speech felt the thrill of power -- the tingle you get when you see someone assume supreme command right before your eyes. I don't like the cult of the presidency, so I was glad about that.
But during a crisis, a nuts and bolts speech is not very prime time, and a nuts and bolts president isn't either. There has to be a larger view -- a context. Because a crisis like this is what the philosophers call an epistemological crisis, a crisis of knowledge. What's happening to us? Not in a this-tarball-here, this-wetland-there way. In a to-be-or-not-to-be way, if I can put it that dramatically. How is it we're now to be? Whichever person happened to be president now would have to answer that question.
So Obama zoomed out to reveal a great vista: a clean energy future, starting yesterday. Yet I felt a funny gap, or empty space, between this abstract vision and the mundane moving parts of policy, bureaucracy, and personnel. Even a president who declines to be our messiah, who recognizes the wisdom of restraint, faces moments where Americans want and need decisive action. But all he can act upon, without aggrandizing himself and his office unduly, is the blind, lumbering administrative state sprawled out beneath him. In fact, this is all Americans really want to see: proof that this beast can be mastered, proof that the President can put an electric shock into the thing and make it jump, make it justify itself and its existence, the cost of its food and upkeep.
Did Obama do this? I don't know. I know he referred me repeatedly to expert scientists and engineers. Expert scientists and engineers appeared to be his only way of humanly connecting the grand abstraction of the future with the grim specificity of the present. But if presidents make bad superheroes, scientists and engineers make bad romance, in the Hollywood sense of the word. America won't fall in love with a lab coat. The experts behind NASA were backdrop. The astronauts were heroes. Not everyday heroes. Not heroes in the way that everybody is a hero to someone. Superlatives. Singular doers. Not masters; heroes.
The trouble Obama faces now is that this becomes a crisis with no real heroes -- people America not only can but should fall in love with. That is depressing. And the spectacle of a presidency sold on the basis of America's self-love struggling in that oily morass would make for the biggest depression of all.
*
Reaction roundup:
Jennifer Rubin > Obama's Boring Speech
Huffington Post > Obama's Speech Panned
Jonah Goldberg > Presidential Goo
Ezra Klein > Where Have We Heard This Before?
Marc Ambinder > Will Obama's Actions Match His Words?
Nick Gillespie > Obama's Vision Deficit
Jonathan Chait > He's Not Going To Get Much
- Comment (6)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (1)
Comments :
Re: The Big Depression: Reflections on Obama's Spill Speech
I don't know, James. When you've lost MSNBC, you're in big trouble:
Keith Olbermann: "It was a great speech if you were on another planet for the last 57 days."
Chris Matthews: "I don't sense executive command."
The beginning of the end?
Re: The Big Depression: Reflections on Obama's Spill Speech
Rob Long: I don't know, James. When you've lost MSNBC, you're in big trouble:
Keith Olbermann: "It was a great speech if you were on another planet for the last 57 days."
Chris Matthews: "I don't sense executive command."
The beginning of the end? · Jun 16 at 5:33am
Could be, though it's hard for me to relish the thought of another presidency on fumes. It strikes me that if this president had behaved differently for the past 57 days, this speech wouldn't be so frustrating to Olbermann, Matthews, et. al. Then again, if the president had behaved differently, this speech would be different...or maybe nonexistent! The rousing callback I forgot to append to my reflections above is that the speech was good enough...but Obama isn't.
May '10
Re: The Big Depression: Reflections on Obama's Spill Speech
This crew seems to believe that the tools of the presidency are mere buttons to be pushed, levers to be pulled, knobs to be, um, fiddled with. "This calls for an Oval Office address!" they say. Problem solved. Huzzah! The grand speaking tour in favor of Obamacare followed the same dispiriting pattern. Not a lot of thought seems to be put into the content or direction of the speech. The mere giving of an Oval Office address is thought sufficient.
"Presidentin's hard," said SNL's Dubya. Obama's vague rehash of campaign speeches about global warming (remember that issue? sort of nostalgic, with a retro vibe), hand-waving about how we don't know what it is or what it will look like, doesn't inspire confidence, and is perhaps not the best use of the presidential toolbox.
When "in over his head" becomes such a cliche even I'm looking for more original material, something's badly wrong.
May '10
Re: The Big Depression: Reflections on Obama's Spill Speech
I continue to feel like the criticism of Obama on the spill is misplaced. It really amounts to a big oily Rorschach where everyone's underlying frustrations about his presidency play themselves out. But substitute your favorite hero -- what could they really do or say differently? I guess a Dennis Kucinich could whine more about Global Warming and a Mitch Daniels could tell us that it's not always government's job to make us whole every time something bad happens, but in either case the oil video would still play and sad oily birds would dominate local news and shrimpers would be SOL. I guess James' point is that a more inspiring president would make the situation less depressing. True that.
Jun '10
Re: The Big Depression: Reflections on Obama's Spill Speech
Obama is clearly staggering against the ropes. Where is the conservative leadership that will deliver the knockout punch? A. Fossil fuels do not cause global warming. B. We have an abundance of oil in the tar sands. It becomes viable when gas at the pump hits $4 a gallon. Obama flat out lied when he said we control only 2% of the world's known oil reserves. Will someone finally put on the gloves and knock our featherweight president out of the ring! Must we endure more WWF?
Re: The Big Depression: Reflections on Obama's Spill Speech
Go read Rod Dreher's reax: