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January 21 President Obama's speech: the verdicts
(Image courtesy of Ron Edmonds/AP/PA Photos)
The world’s leading political commentators have begun returning their verdicts on President Barack Obama’s inaugural address. The speech issued a stern warning that challenging times lie ahead; called for responsibility on the part of every American and drew a definitive line under the Bush administration.
Naomi Wolf, feminist, author and former political consultant to the Clinton administration, applauds the lack of “fake optimism” and notes three things Obama did impressively. “Firstly, he sounded a note of our dire circumstances that was in line with a reality that many have been in denial about. That is technically brilliant, because he's inheriting a mess, and he's telling people, ‘We’re not going to dig ourselves out of this easily.’ But also, ‘Don't blame me for it all.’” Secondly, he reasserted the rule of law – with George W Bush sitting right behind him. And thirdly, “most amazingly,” the new president reached out to the Muslim world: “For Obama to say, ‘I’m not going to demonise you’ – that is extraordinarily stabilising,” she writes in the Guardian.
In around 20 minutes, thunders the New York Times’ opinion-editorial, Obama “swept away eight years of President George Bush’s false choices and failed policies and promised to recommit to America’s most cherished ideals.” Noting the speech lacked the soaring rhetoric of John F Kennedy’s, the paper nonetheless argues “it left no doubt how Mr Obama sees the nation’s problems and how he intends to fix them and, unlike Mr Bush, the necessary sacrifices he will ask of all Americans.”
Not everyone was quite so overwhelmed. Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for George Bush, told Fox News the speech was a literary let-down: “The surprising thing about this speech was that in this extraordinary moment, the speech was actually quite ordinary from a literary perspective. There were too many 'raging storms' and 'gathering clouds' and other things that any writer could consider cliché. And I don't understand given Obama's literary ear in so many past speeches how some of these things got through into an inaugural address."
Gerard Baker, US editor of the Times, bemoans the lack of memorable phrases. Obama’s language, he writes, was “decidedly 19th century” – a self-conscious attempt to echo the words of his hero, Abraham Lincoln.
But that, argues Jonathan Atler in Newsweek, is missing the point. Or, rather, two points. “First, this is Obama's style. Neither his famous Philadelphia speech on race nor his acceptance speech in Denver contained sound bites. He loathes them, and thinks the media's obsession with one-liners undermines sustained argument. Second, it can take time for a line to penetrate. FDR's ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself’ was on the inside pages of most accounts of his speech. The same for Dr. King's ‘I have a dream’ line. So something may emerge from this speech that is hard to predict before it sinks in further.”
Here's the text of Obama's speech in full. What's your verdict?
Watch some highlights:
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