Their Finest Hour - I've

Their Finest Hour - I've said it before. America has it all over so many countries in so many areas. We should be proud of what we, as a people, have wrought.

But there is one area where America trails our friends in Britain; political oratory.

The British Pariliament is a tumultuous, clamorous place. If a speaker can't move the (often hostile) crowd with the force of his or her oratory, they marginalize themselves. It behooves an MP to become good at oratory.

Some Americans get it, of course; Reagan, Clinton, Kennedy, all had their moments. Some more than others.

But the British political tradition stresses great oratory - and pols like Tony Blair deliver.

It seemed, as I listened to it, to be more than just a great speech. It felt like the tide began, every so slightly, to turn against the naysayers, the anti-US cultists that have bogged down our national agenda for the last two months.

Sullivan said it well:

This is what the carpers and nay-sayers still don't understand. The West is at war with a real and uniquely dangerous enemy. When the consequences of negligence become catastrophic, the equation of intervention changes. The burden of proof must be on those who counsel inaction rather than on those who urge an offensive, proactive battle. Does it matter one iota, for example, if we find merely an apparatus and extensive program for building WMDs in Iraq rather than actual weapons? Or rather: given the uncertain nature of even the best intelligence, should we castigate our leaders for over-reacting to a threat or minimizing it? Since 9/11, my answer is pretty categorical. Blair and Bush passed the test. They still do.

But hearing it from Blair was so much more reassuring than hearing it from, say, Bill Frist.

Posted by Mitch at July 18, 2003 07:29 PM