The Decline of the Presidency
I was working at Lime Wire (it's two words when referring to the company, and one word when referring to the product, in case you wondered about that) in NYC when Barack Hussein Obama was campaigning for (spoiler alert) what would become his first term as President of the United States. His predecessor was anything but eloquent in his speech, and people being reactionary in nature, it came as little surprise when I overheard one of my co-workers explain that he was voting for Barack because of his excellent speeches. I still cringe thinking about that complete lack of wisdom.
How we speak is a reflection (to one degree or another) of how we think, which is a reflection of who we are. Obama may have been saying things well, but was he saying the right things well? That apparently didn't enter into this co-worker's thought process. Excellent speeches are certainly a joy to listen to. We are however not voting to install merely a national orator.
More recently, has there ever been a president with a more rabid fan base than President Donald Trump? His level of humility goes hand-in-hand with that rabidness. Donald's speeches are anything but a delight to listen to. Considering just the delivery, and not the content, they are reminiscent of when I was learning to read, and the text was just a string of words, a single run-on sentence with no meaning or form, like the early days of computer text-to-speech. The content of his speeches is generally worse than the delivery. In browsing some transcripts, it is difficult to find him not praising himself.
Six years have passed since I last stood in this grand hall and addressed a world that was prosperous and at peace in my first term. Since that day, the guns of war have shattered the peace I forged on two continents.
It included all of them. No president or prime minister. And for that matter, no other country has ever done anything close to that, and I did it in just seven months. It's never happened before. There's never been anything like that. Very honored to have done it.
The man is an island.
Some quick thoughts before we move on to greener things:
- The quality of our elected officials is a reflection of the quality of the people.
- We may at times think our elected officials are good.
- We (incorrectly) believe this because we lack perspective.
Two stirring examples came to mind when I started contemplating this blog post: George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt.
George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789
The "day" of Thanksgiving has bounced around, and for a long time was not uniform amongst the states. In 1789, George Washington delivered a proclamation in this regard. Skipping to the end of it, we read:
...and also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions– to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually--to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed--to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord--To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us--and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.
Not to keep harping on Trump (but he is the current president, so...), but what a turn it would be if he publicly suggested that he individually, or we as a nation, might need humility and forgiveness for wrong doing. Right.
Theodore Roosevelt's "Man in the Arena"
One hundred twenty-one years later, Roosevelt delivered his "Citizenship in a Republic" speech in Paris on April 23, 1910. It seems the most oft quoted portion of it has been coined "Man in the Arena" and as speeches go, they don't get much better than this:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
He goes on to say many a kind word about France. He was either lying through his teeth, or France was a very different place one hundred something years ago. Still, it sounded amazing in his speech.
Interestingly, earlier he quotes Abraham Lincoln on a matter of equality that is rather prescient:
I think the authors of the Declaration of Independence intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal-equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all - constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and, even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, everywhere.
Anyway, one last Roosevelt quote in parting:
There is no greater need to-day than the need to keep ever in mind the fact that the cleavage between right and wrong, between good citizenship and bad citizenship, runs at right angles to, and not parallel with, the lines of cleavage between class and class, between occupation and occupation. Ruin looks us in the face if we judge a man by his position instead of judging him by his conduct in that position.
If you can't see the contrast in the quality of speech, the quality of content and the quality of character between what was and what is – then you've probably been happy with our current or a recent president.