Just as a brief addendum to Molly’s latest post, Charlotte Higgins had a nice piece in The Guardian yesterday entitled “The New Cicero” about Obama’s debt to classical rhetoric. Rhetoric is a kind of theater, of course, but her essay is also a useful reminder to writers of the power of form. What most stirs the emotions in Obama’s major speeches often turns out to be a carefully structured, highly formal, classical trope. Recognizing that doesn’t empty those speeches of sincerity, as Obama’s opponents suggested, but rather demonstrates how form can contain and direct raw emotion toward some higher purpose. And isn’t that what we need from our politicians?
We can make fun of W’s verbal bungling, or Sarah Palin’s comic attempts to find her way through the maze of her own ignorance by stringing together disconnected bits of campaign speeches, but a swagger, a wink, or a well-timed “You betcha!” are also highly formal bits of stagecraft, intended to evoke a folksy cowboy sincerity. “We may not be as educated as those eastern elites,” these gestures say, “but we’re straight shooters who can run the varmints out of Washington.” The locus classicus of contemporary conservative style — despite the best efforts of William F. Buckley and his followers on the intellectual right– is not Cicero, but cinema: John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, the tough-guy hero snarling “bring it on.” Such gestures are just as formal as classical rhetoric, but less demanding on the intellect. The allusions are visual, not verbal, and rather than directing our emotions toward some higher end, they summon us to the baser emotions of the multiplex, where there’s no problem that can’t be solved by a gunfight.
Obama’s classical rhetoric, as Higgins points out, has its own populist source, kept alive in the traditions of African-American preaching and the sermons of that other great student of classical rhetoric, Martin Luther King, Jr. Seen from this perspective, it’s clear that such rhetoric is intended not to sway our minds, but to lift our hearts. But its power — like all literary forms — lies in rhythm, repetition, and the sense of verbal momentum that they create. We shouldn’t be fooled by form in political speech, but we shouldn’t be dismayed by its presence either. (Claims of “sincerity” are usually more frightening, and more false.) Instead, we should take note of it, read it critically, and ask ourselves to what end it is used.