The Power To Move

Peggy Noonan had a lukewarm review of the President's inaugural speech.

I didn't hear the speech proper, other than a few excerpts on Hewitt's show last night. I read the transcript - but 3/4 of a speech is in its delivery, so that hardly counts. I have no idea, in short, what to say about Bush's speech as a whole.

But I have a lukewarm review of Peggy Noonan's article.

No, not as a person; she's one of my favorite conservative writers.

But the review? Not so much:

There were moments of eloquence: "America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies." "We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery." And, to the young people of our country, "You have seen that life is fragile, and evil is real, and courage triumphs." They have, since 9/11, seen exactly that.
And yet such promising moments were followed by this, the ending of the speech. "Renewed in our strength--tested, but not weary--we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom."

This is--how else to put it?--over the top. It is the kind of sentence that makes you wonder if this White House did not, in the preparation period, have a case of what I have called in the past "mission inebriation." A sense that there are few legitimate boundaries to the desires born in the goodness of their good hearts.

One wonders if they shouldn't ease up, calm down, breathe deep, get more securely grounded. The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.

Are "the most moving speeches" indeed "grounded"?

In his "Dunkirk" speech - one of the greatest speeches in the English or any other language - Churchill exhorted Britain to resist Hitler on the beaches, in the streets, on the landing-grounds, to never surrender. By most rational measures, the speech was insanity, to say nothing of "over the top". Did it lose anything for not being "grounded?"

Please.

Was Kennedy's "To the Moon" speech any less inspirational for its' fantastic, "over the top" nature?

As overplayed as it is these days, Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" focused on the improbable. Did it lose its ability to move because of the improbability?

Did Reagan's speech at the Brandenburg Gate - which demanded what seemed in 1988 to be impossible, the fall of the Berlin Wall - "mission-inebriated?"

Good speeches are grounded, and impart what is possible. Great speeches impart vision, and make the impossible thinkable.

Hitler never crossed those beaches. We made it to the moon. Black Americans vote and go to college and serve in the highest levels of government. The Wall is torn down.

So why the hell not shout out for liberty? If not yesterday, when? If not to inspire not one nation but two, then why?

I'm going to listen to the speech tonight. But I'm going to applaud it now.

Posted by Mitch at January 21, 2005 05:41 PM | TrackBack