Barack Obama's Prose Style. As something heard rather than viewed, the speech provides no spaces for contemplation. We have barely taken in a small rhetorical flourish like “All this we can do. All this we will do†before it disappears in the rear-view mirror. But if we regard the text as an object rather than as a performance in time, it becomes possible (and rewarding) to do what the pundits are doing: linger over each alliteration, parse each emphasis, tease out each implication.
Fascinating piece.
Nice to have a word for what I thought I heard in that speech, too. My sense was that Obama rushed the delivery a bit -- maybe because there were two million shivering people standing in front of him? There were so many poetic and pithy phrases, and I think his description of them "disppearing in a rear-view mirror" was spot on. I wonder if a more leisurely delivery would have changed it.
I'm not yet ready to ”canonize” Obama as we have Lincoln. Lincoln guided the US through an enormous crisis and a sea change; Obama will be guiding us through various messes and missteps - much of which could and should have been avoidable - but will he do more? If Obama addresses some of the sea changes we need to go through in our time, then I will put him on the mantel along with Lincoln. Of course Bush thought he was addressing some of the sea changes of our time by engaging in a global war on terror and by his attempts to fix Social Security and Medicare. Sea changes can sometimes hit us like Hurricane Katrina.
Regarding Obama's speeches, perhaps the curse “May you live in interesting times” could be expressed “May you live in times of interesting rhetoric.” 🙂