A Time for Poetry

I'm more a prose guy than a poetry one. I prefer my poetry encapsulated in music, but I do appreciate great oratory. Even I can get bored with a lengthy lecture full of policy details, but no call to action.

E.J. Dionne writes an interesting piece today contrasting Hillary and Barack. He points out that Hillary knows her stuff and if elections were decided by passing a written exam she'd probably win (though I think Obama has the capacity to study up and do just as well). But what Obama has that she hasn't caught hold of is the ability to inspire. And its not just his oratory, it's his belief in the power of community organizing. He believes that change doesn't happen from top down, but from bottom up -- things he learned as a community organizer. Hillary talks about the importance of experience, but there are different kinds of experience and perhaps at this time and place it is Obama's kind of experience that counts.

Hillary talks about what she'll do. Obama talks about what we can do. That is a very different sensibility.

Here are a couple of snippets from Dionne's piece that are especially helpful for the moment.

Yet if Clinton's answers come off as well-intended lectures, Obama is offering soaring sermons and generational opportunity. In 1960, the articulate Adlai Stevenson compared his own oratory unfavorably with John F. Kennedy's. "Do you remember," Stevenson said, "that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, 'How well he spoke,' but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said, 'Let us march.' " At this hour, Obama is the Democrats' Demosthenes.

Note the importance of inspiration and we are a disillusioned people. While Reagan's policies were deeply problematic, he beat Carter because Carter's message was seen as dour -- it didn't inspire confidence.

The Clinton campaign is rooted in the idea that "Experience Counts" -- ironically enough, Richard Nixon's slogan against John Kennedy in 1960. But it is Obama who may have precisely the right experience for the mood of the moment. As a community organizer early in his professional life, Obama understood his task
as catalyzing citizens into building movements for change. Obama's speeches are
about citizen action, assembling coalitions, forcing change through popular
demand.

"I'm betting on you," Obama told a rapturous audience in Derry on Sunday afternoon. "I don't believe change comes from the top down. It comes from
the bottom up." Change will come "if you believe," Obama declares.

Dionne notes that "transformation is not about policy details but about altering the political and social calculus." Obama seems to understand this much better than Clinton.

And finally:

Here again, the echoes of the past are eerie. It was Hubert Humphrey, on the aging side of the generational divide in 1968, who declared: "Some people talk about change, others cause it." Hubert Humphrey was a great man. He did not become president.

It's likely that if Bobby Kennedy had lived, he would have been the change agent that won. He didn't have Humphrey's experience or that of Nixon's, but he inspired people to work together to bring change.