Today, I read a speech, did not see it because of classes and prior obligations. The speech of course was the Obama Inauguration speech and as much I wanted to pull for him on this speech I must say it was kinda of a let down.
It was not a Kennedy-est type speech in 1961:
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty . . . and so my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
Nor was it a Reagan era speech:
“In this blessed land, there is always a better tomorrow . . . Let history say of us, These were golden years — when the American Revolution was reborn, when freedom gained new life, when America reached for her best. With heart and hand, let us stand as one today determined that our future shall be worthy of our past.”
President Obama's speecb was a forgettable speech no real punchlines, nothing memorable about and I really wanted the speech to have a theme to it.
It was like going to a Oscar and Hammerstein musical and not being able to whistle a song after it was over. It had no clear objectives and lack so much to it, I cannot remember one good sentence from it.
I sat thee reading this and wonding if the President in preparing this speech did not recognized that across the Mall, Martin Luther King gave a speech worthily of the crowds awaiting it when King said:
“Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: - 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
Did President Obama lose sight of what Martin Luther King had said and the significance of what was happening that day? He was assuming the same office Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt had occupied.
It lack the elegance of King and it was not even close to being memorable other than the Man that had the opportunity to take this great office. I think he lost himself in the moment and in turn the speech stall and lost it's focus. It was a disappointment.
People remember speeches because of the moment in history that occurs in that speech the moment is important and Obama could have done better. He did not lay out any thing this nation can grab hold of and remember.
I remember reading that memorable speech of Abraham Lincoln when he said:
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations”
When Lincoln said these words he said them, not quite a month before he would be killed by John Wilkes Booth on April 11th, what we remember is that speech and it became a guiding like for years to come. It was memorable and it was a moment in history.
I realized that the President try his best to describe the present situation, However despite all President Obama needed to think more about the moment, he seem star stuck for a moment and if I was going to rate this speech from one to ten it would be a lonely 2.
Even Bill Cinton's speech had it's memorable quotes:
“The greatest progress we have made, and the greatest progress we have yet to make, is in the human heart. In the end, all the world's wealth and a thousand armies are no match for the strength and decency of the human spirit.”
No one remembers the speech that Zachery Taylor gave at his Inauguration and with all the hoop-la and the crowds of millions this speech did a big-thump.
Let us remember what George Washington in 1789 said:
“No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”
I would asked President Obama to let his speech writers, write the speech and the President speak it, President Obama has been a mediocre legislator. I do not want him to fall back, and be a mediocre President. The last thing we need is a a pathetic President, with so much promise and so little capabilities! Now some would say I am to hard on him. But honestly, would you not want him to express the hopes of this nation, be determine and Optistic? Feeling sorry for yourself whether being a nation or for that matter any person is destructive. Enough said!
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