What makes Obama’s speech special?

By abhishek at 23 January, 2009, 10:05 am

Some 2 million people gathered around at National mall in Washington to watch Barack Obama take oath as the 44th president of the United States. It would be interesting to know whether so many of them showed up because they didn’t have to report to work that morning. With unemployment rate hovering at 7.2 percent, the economy is facing a possible threat of deflation. The country’s dispirited mood needed a dose of hope (read: direction) and that came in the 15 minutes that Obama took stage…

Whether teleprompter or not, we know one thing about Barack Obama - that he is a darn good speaker. Over the past couple of years while Obama was on a campaigning spree, his speeches were a lesson in public speaking. There is a pattern in all his talks which is not too hard to read. Once on that dais, he soaks in the applause for those few moments and then his sharp tongue takes over. He is not known to use complicated or bombastic words. Even George Bush can get his head around them without referring to a dictionary. His sentences, short and crisp cut through the Gordian knot and connect with the youth (both, white and coloured). Most of that credit goes to Jon Favreau, the 27 year old speechwriter of the White House.

Obama interviewed an eager 23 year old Favreau for the post of speechwriter where the prodigy convinced Obama to give him a chance. It is rumored that Obama and Faverau hit it off instantly and since then the ‘wunderkind wordsmith’ (as TIME likes to call him) has stuck around. Drowning himself in caffeine and staying up until 5:00 am to keep the 8:00 am deadline, Favreau would script the words to be lipped by what Newsweek today calls the most powerful man in the world. With a biologist’s keenness for bacteria or a botanist’s interest in a plant cell, Favreau spent his early days at the office researching Obama’s way of life, his writing and speaking style. But having said that, on that stage, all that comes out of Obama’s mouth is not Favreau. A Harvard graduate, Obama is not used to being Sunil Dutt lip singing Kishore Kumar’s words to woo his audience in Padosan. Obama’s character is more like that of a composer performing in a live concert who improvises as he goes along.

Favreau and Obama chose to take a different route while sculpting the inaugural presidential speech. Obama wasn’t campaigning anymore and he didn’t have to spend any text on taking shots at Hillary or McCain. So his speech was “positioned” differently. It wasn’t the usual flambouyant stuff that everyone had gotten used to. Obama’s tone was somber yet determined. He didn’t waste time talking about how a black man made it to the top. Instead, very aptly he invested half of his 15 minutes in talking about the mess that he had inherited from his predecessor and the other half on how he plans to fix it. All along, he built a cushion around him by stressing that the ‘fix’ would be painful.

Favreau and Obama crafted the speech in a way that it didn’t sound too Hollywood like and hence was devoid of any high flying commitments. But they flouted the Orwellian rule of skillful writing: Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. The speech was ridden with tired metaphors like, ‘the lash of the whip’, ‘dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America’ and ‘ground has shifted beneath them’ etc. Obama also borrowed liberally from past presidents, the most prominent one being, ‘in pursuit of happiness’ coming from Thomas Jefferson. But that apart, for those 15 odd minutes, Obama held his own. His calculated pauses, his authority over his diction, his firm intentions and his no nonsense attitude makes him a hero of sorts. I would give anything to see one tenth of that change being brought on by an Indian leader here in India.

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Categories : Politics & Society