Keillor on Obama: the power of a silver tongue
According to Garrison Keillor’s op-ed piece in the Chicago Tribune, he’s an Obama fan.
This is hardly surprising in a man who’s as liberal as Keillor is—in his piece, he calls “recent Republicanism” a “dismal darkness.”
Keillor’s fondness for alliteration is part of his penchant for writing. And his love of words—both spoken and written—is reflected in one of Keillor’s two stated reasons for supporting Obama: the fact that he’s an eloquent speaker (the other appears to be that he’s black).
Anyone who’s been listening lately has learned that Obama’s ability to be articulate plummets precipitously (see? I can alliterate with the best of them) when he’s away from his trusty teleprompter and texts. Keillor doesn’t seem to know or care, however. Nor does he seem much interested in content–except that Obama’s darkness not be of the dismal Republican type, and that he is against the war that Keillor correctly points out Bush had trouble selling to the American people in the oratorical sense.
Here’s Keillor on the importance of speechmaking for a President:
[I]f you like the English language you’ll find a lot to admire in [Obama]. People can dismiss the importance of speaking, but that is a big part of the job he’s running for.
I have to say that, people being what they are, Keillor’s onto something. A gifted orator is always a draw. This phenomenon is a plus for a candidate but can hide a poor agenda and seduce and inspire listeners, sometimes falsely.
I’ve made it clear that I’ve come to believe that Obama is the quintessential silver tongue dwelling within a politician who’s not just business as usual, but who just might be the most naively unprepared candidate for President in my lifetime. Keillor underlines the fact that many people just don’t notice or just don’t care, so sharp is their ache to hear good words delivered well.
Keillor points out another truth, which is that perhaps the greatest change Obama represents is his oratorical contrast with the past eight years of Bush. And in this sense, McCain is found sorely wanting as well; he’s no orator in set pieces.
We can bewail the fact that people are moved by rhetorical presentation and inspired by pretty but empty words. But twas ever thus. Education and critical thinking are part of the attempts to counter this appeal to emotion, but human nature is such that we remain vulnerable.
Sometimes we are fortunate and the oration is linked to a worthy cause—Martin Luther King and the WWII Churchill come to mind. Sometimes we are unlucky and get a dangerous and even evil demagogue.
I don’t think Obama is the latter—not intentionally, anyway. He’s not evil, but he is arrogant, misguided, naive, and untried, and those things can be dangerous in a President. If he does get elected I hope that I’m correct about his sincere desire to do good, that his supporters are correct about his intelligence, and that he shows a far greater ability to learn from experience than he’s evidenced up to this point.
There is an outside chance that Obama is more mettle than mealy mouth. Look at JFK and FDR, both of whom appeared to be very intelligent but shallow affluent playboys. One turned out to be good President, the other a very good President.
I don’t much like Obama and I think his Presidency would be disastrous for our country for a whole host of reasons. But it is possible that he could be what’s called for at moment. American Presidents and American leaders are very often not the most virtuous of men, and they saved our country time again with the basest of motives and reasons in mind.
What I’m trying to get at is that an Obama Presidency might not precipitate the ruination of our country.
Thomas — I’ll take your point that Obama could conceivably rise to the occasion of the presidency–the mysteries of the human spirit and all that .
However, JFK and FDR were more than shallow playboys. In addition to having much more experience than Obama, they both had dealt with crippling health problems and with political failure. JFK was even a war hero. These all come under the heading of character building.
Other than losing his father early and his somewhat indifferent mother, Obama has mostly sailed through life largely untested. This is not the usual story of great leaders when they appear.
It’s not the rhetoric that bothers me. It’s the crowd response. I can’t think of anything else but the early rallies for Hitler. Same folks fainting in the aisles. And the media spin is verging on propaganda. That worries me more than anything that has come out of his mouth. We should not have people this infatuated with a politician. It’s dangerous, especially since they seem to be ignoring his behavior in office and the words he is actually saying.
Teri Pittman: agreed, it is a sort of infatuation. This means that for the Obamaphiles no facts can emerge that contradict their love for him. Every failing of the man is excused in the same way he excuses it: it’s a distraction, it’s a smear campaign, it’s not important. I find the phenomenon unusual even for politics, and quite alarming.
The only conceivable reason why I would agree that Obonga would be the right President for this time would be this: a much needed lesson to a cretinous public on the disasters that follow from selecting a man for all the wrong reasons. I think the only reason why we need a Jimmy Carter Lesson II is because our education system has sown the seeds of this. The Left needs to be discredited BIG TIME.
Longtime liberal dem here, NOT voting for Obama. He is a mob orator, and his adolescent enforcers fill me with foreboding (I can do alliteration, too). I’ll stay home unless my state looks close, in which case I’ll vote for McCain as an affirmation of country over party.
Hitler, so I’ve been told, was a great public speaker, too. ’nuff said.
FredHjr, in principle, I agree 100% with you. However, I’m more afraid of the damage that will be done, which won’t be easily fixed, should this charlatan be selected in November. I would love to see “the left” be taught a lesson, but that lesson will be more costly to those of us who don’t need to learn it. As a matter of fact, “the left” is such a pit of self-absorption, it wouldn’t “get” the lesson, anyway. I’m not willing to sacrifice my beloved nation on that.
Barb,
I’m 100% in agreement with your points. I do know in fact that the damage will be enormous. It will cost lives, since an unimpeded Iran will lead to a nuclear war. Israel does not have all the assets and ability to go all the way to Iran and deal with dozens of multiple targets all well underground. And we do not have the political will right now to help them. So, I am resigned to the fact that there will be nuclear war in the not too distant future, as soon as the Mullahs get it. Notice that their programs to upgrade their mid-range rockets and to get ICBM rockets are well ahead of the actual development of the bomb. Once they get the bomb itself, it’s just a matter of putting it on the rockets and relying on the guidance systems they get from Russia and North Korea.
Yes, the damage. The entire Jewish state and millions of people obliterated. Perhaps the Iranians set off a nuclear device on a freighter near an East Coast city, so we’ll have our casualties too. But, the price Iran will pay for this will be horrific. Between the Israeli state’s dying gasp, sending its couple of hundred rockets hurtling towards Iran, and our boomer subs launching many more hundreds of nukes, Iran will be no more. Southwest Asia will be a huge toxic waste site for thousands of years. Plus, the Arab world will be aghast at what happens in the Israeli neighborhood, as the Paleosimians will be no more. Syria, Jordan, and Egypt will all experience the effects of this too. Even if they could care less about the cost of seeing the Zionist Entity destroyed (for them, to shouts of “Allahu Akhbar!”) it will be horrifying.
The damage the Party of Jackasses and Obonga could do to our economy is mindbending.
I am quite aware of the possibilities. And this is only scratching the surface.
However, I believe some of those kids will learn a lesson from this. I voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976, right after I got out of the Army. In college I fell in with the Left, voting for Carter again in 1980. However, let me set the record straight about the ability of some kids to learn the lesson: most of my classmates voted for Reagan in 1980 – a complete turnaround.
Right now the country is really stuck on stupid, and seems really to have no interest in filling in the blanks about that long-legged mack daddy, Golden Mouth Shape Shifter from Chicago. Fill in the blanks with FACTS, his voting record, his ideological formation, his associations, and much more. Instead, they fill it in with their own fantasies. When this is happening, the nation is in deep trouble.
Isn’t everything a “dismal darkness” in Garrison’s world?
And if the Obamessiah should happen to loose, I don’t think Garrison will be able to bring himself to lampoon him on PHC, the way he did with Al Gore, and didn’t with John Kerry.
Revealing, that; he could gently satirize Al Gore, and of late he has been doing a softly vicious send-up of Hillary n’ Bill , and the hits on George Bush never stop coming – but he could never bring himself to do the same with Kerry.
I thought it was one of those classic bits of homespun wisdom one learns while growing up in places like Lake Wobegon that one looks for more than a way with words when assessing someone’s character and competence.
People in the journalism profession are not intellectuals. They are not thinkers, in the strict sense. It is not their habit of mind to debate ideas, either with others or within themselves. Journalists and writers are wordsmiths. Their minds do not work the way a philosopher’s does. How can people like Garrison Keillor go into the depth of ideas when his mind works DESCRIPTIVELY, not analytically. By the way, I am not impressed with Obonga’s analytical abilities.
But these are not times when most people want substance, so it seems. They want to see themselves in the mirror. Frightening, actually, to contemplate that reality, since narcissistic parents tend to narcissistically cathect their children.
I agree with you for the most part. I am afraid that Obama might be the first anti-American president in the White House. You can not sit in that church for 20-years if you did not condone at least some of what is being said in there. And especially after 9/11, that is a crime.
He is not only disingenuous, he is dangerous. I agree with some of the other comments that we can not afford his presidency even if left needed its lesson.
hitler WAS a great orator and was considered the best in germany at the time. (to respond to someones mention)
on another quick note… an obama campaign workers father is an al qeada man who they are attempting to deport.
Mohammed Salim Al-Churbaji Obama Fundraiser is the son of Mohammed Al-Churbaji, who worked for Azzam, Bin Laden
but it isnt going to mean anything..
its a mass movement.. like germany… its how you get a political system to change from what it is into something completely different. a mass delusion that trips the lever…
maneocon Says: I am afraid that Obama might be the first anti-American president in the White House.
no, that would be clinton. filbright his mentor was investigated for being a commnist and all kinds of odd obamaesque ties… he convinced clinton to learn in russia for a while.
from road to moscow
During the 1992 campaign, Bill Clinton’s student protests and Moscow trip generated much controversy, but few answers. While Clinton’s government files from that era seemingly remain unavailable even today, there is at least more information available than in 1992. The public record reveals that Clinton’s social network and views on Vietnam were influenced by a pattern of contact between Communist agents and sympathizers and Clinton’s academic and political associates. This pattern is documented here through an analysis of Clinton’s antiwar activity up through the time he left Oxford in 1970. Included are quotations from a June 9, 1969 profile of Clinton by the Frederick, Maryland Post which does not seem to have been previously cited elsewhere.
“no, that would be clinton.”
While I think that Clinton is one of the worst presidents we have ever had, I tend to disagree here.
I recall what you are talking about. I also recall him pointing out a woman who sheltered him during his trip to “Europe” during Vietnam, he cited her as one of his main mentors – she was one of the ex-party heads of the communist part in Russia and a current hard line communist in which ever European country he was in. So that was well known.
As to why I disagree, I don’t think Clinton was a Believer. I think he used that movement because their ideas are easy to manipulate in order to achieve power. I don’t think Clinton was really any thing anti *or* pro other than pro-Clinton. Whatever he supported or ran roughshod over was irrelevant as long as it got him into the halls of power and allowed him to create his “legacy”. Amusingly enough I also thing he more enjoyed power for powers sake and didn’t really seek to dominate (whereas I think Hillary seeks power to exercise it).
Obama is a Believer – in leftist thought, racial identity politics, and in Obama the Savior. I fear this in large part because *none* of that is about the US or it’s citizens as a whole. Bush is also a believer but his belief is in the country.
As we can see a believer does what they think is correct, no amount of polls or press really changes that type of person. If they are believers in the US then I don’t think anyone of them would let things go too far and, while I may very well intensely dislike where they are going, I wouldn’t fear it. However if your belief is in leftism and yourself then the state of the country is kinda irrelevant (and in some of those cases they are better off when we are failing).
Amusingly enough because Clinton’s big belief was his “legacy” it was also belief in the country – hence why he actually did so little. A great example of intense dislike of of his policies but not fear.
“I don’t think Obama is the latter (evil demagogue)–not intentionally, anyway.”
Not intentionally? At his age, with his family and cultural inheritance, experience, education, associations and position? He may be “arrogant”, but he’s still only “naive”?
“Not intentionally”, itself sounds more than a bit naive to me… or something psychologically deeper; Not cowardice, at all, but symptomatic of an aversion to deeply authentic conflict. I’m a formerly idealistic child of the 60’s myself, so I understand, but in the months to come it’s going to be very difficult to be tactful fo family, friends and associates who think Obama is ok, and that this is just “politics” as usual. Like a Vietnam war veteran was recently quoted (concerning particularly the issue of Iraq), “not this war, not this time.”
Well, do Keillor’s listeners believe that he’s in the real world, or in some Little Town that Time Forgot? Do they believe that Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood is real?
The most famous and undeservedly extoled democracy was that of Athens, and it simply could not properly function without Pericles. It was horribly instable, so easily slipping into mob rule and/or oligarchy and sometimes into outright tyranny, that Plato had all good reasons to despise and disdain it. No political system can be called sound if it hinges on a single exceptional personality (silver tongue) for its survival. As a sharp contrast, Roman republic/empire lasted for thousand years, capable to survive really insane rulers and prolong its heritage of RES PUBLIC for another fifteen centures in English common law, up to our days.
“Anyone who’s been listening lately has learned that Obama’s ability to be articulate plummets precipitously (see? I can alliterate with the best of them) when he’s away from his trusty teleprompter and texts.”
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Give that woman a cigar.
So, a *writer* tends to evaluate people based on how good they are at using language?
This is an example of a frequent behavior pattern wherein people are so enamoured of the skills that they themselves possess that they are unable to appreciate people who have different sets of skills.
See respecting other talents: the dangers of functional chauvanism.
We see stock footage of Hitler ranting and foaming and screaming.
It’s said those bits were at the end of his speeches. He is said to have started off like your best friend stopping by with some good advice that, you know, really made sense.
>naively unprepared candidate
I have to say that award goes to our current President by a huge margin. Sure, Obama needs more preparation but as I’ve said many times — he’s extremely intelligent (he will be perhaps the most intelligent president we’ve had in quite a while — even smarter than Bill Clinton) and he learns quickly. He lacks Bill Clinton’s tremendous command of detail, however, which could be a liability. However, he’s run his campaign brilliantly so far, and his policy positions are in the right direction in my view.
I can’t imagine a less prepared President, however, than Bush has been — even if you agreed with his strategy (which I know you do, Neo), his ability to execute his strategy is clearly horrifically bad. He didn’t even know there were Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq until just before the war. Talk about naively unprepared! He doesn’t read newspapers, etc., etc. It’s become a national joke. I do think Bush isn’t as dumb as he seems — but he is clearly lazy, and as for learning from his mistakes — he doesn’t like to even admit his mistakes much less learn from them.
Hitler was a chameleon who changed his demeanor to fit the audience. When he was speaking before a crowd of German industrialists, he left the uniform in the closet, wore a suit instead, and spoke in measured tones, winning acclaim for his rationality. When he spoke to Army officers, he brought up duty and honor and sacrifice for the Fatherland, themes sure to find willing listeners. When he was addressing an SA rally made up of Horst Wessel clones, he let it all hang out and ranted like nobody else. Hitler could do that because he had an extremely shrewd instinct for telling an audience what it wanted to hear and how it wanted to hear it. He also extensively rehearsed, in those pre-teleprompter days, his speeches and their delivery. What appeared to be spontaneous was usually cleverly calculated for maximum effect. There were plenty of Germans who never fell under Hitler’s spell, but plenty more did, and nothing could dissuade them until it all came crashing down in 1945. Some, not even then.
What frightens me the most about Obama is not the man himself, who seems to be a pretty conventional leftist in the policy arena, and either naive or cynical in how he works his supporters, to include much of the press. That’s bad, but we’re strong enough to survive it, even in wartime, and even if it does us long-term harm, which it probably will. His supporters, though, seem entirely too willing to ignore any and all of his faults. No potential leader of a representative government should be given such uncritical deference. The President is our employee, paid by our tax dollars, to be evaluated constantly prior to his hiring and during his 4-year probationary period. Should he meet our satisfaction, we may rehire him to another term, or fire him at the end his trial period. That’s how our candidates for high office should be viewed. Those who are looking for a messiah in government are searching in the wrong place.
>Sure, Obama needs more preparation but as I’ve said many times – he’s extremely intelligent
You must be on the same drugs he is.
Does an “exteremely intelligent” person say he is going to raise capital gain taxes even though he knows that will lower the tax’s overall revenue and harm the ecnomy, and say that “it’s fair” to do that.
Obama is a fool. And so are the fools who follow him.
I have to say that award goes to our current President by a huge margin. Sure, Obama needs more preparation but as I’ve said many times – he’s extremely intelligent (he will be perhaps the most intelligent president we’ve had in quite a while – even smarter than Bill Clinton) and he learns quickly.
Mitsu — More “huge” overreaching from you to bash Bush. Ho-hum. Going beyond your usual arguments by assertion, how specifically do you justify your claims against Bush and in favor of Obama?
Bush has military experience, business experience, executive experience, and served six years as the governor of Texas. Obama has legal and community organizer experience, served eight years in the Illinois State Senate, got elected to the Senate and that’s it. I’d agree that Bush 43 has a light portfolio but still more substantial than Obama’s.
And how specifically do you assess Obama’s intelligence as being so exceptional–other than he agrees with you about many things and you like the way he talks? Sure, he’s got an Ivy League degree (so does Bush–two of them), but Obama has not accomplished much that he can be judged on and what he says is mostly liberal boilerplate and when he has gotten specific–for instance, citing JFK’s disastrous meeting with Khruschev, Obama comes off as historically illiterate for a presidential candidate.
When things start to become unspeakably bad during the Obama administration don’t look for Mr. Keillor to rise to his defense. More than likely he will be constructing some alliterative artillery to go after him and wax nostalgiacally for the Clinton years. When Keillor thought he had been disrespected by his now beloved city of St.Paul many years ago, he slammed the door on his way to New York and later Europe. I would love to be a bug on the wall of his psychotherapist. Creative works often flow from deeply disturbed individuals with whom we would be advised not to trade places.
I don’t listen to Prarie Home Companion as much as I used to but I still have a soft spot for Keillor. It’s a shame that he is so eaten up with BDS.
I’m not sure how “intelligent” Keillor is but he can sure work like a sumbitch. I thought I read that Keillor writes all his monologues. When you add that to writing to all his books, managing the show and the PHC brand for thirty years or so, I’m impressed by his output and quality.
Frankly I’m more impressed with Keillor’s accomplishments than Obama’s. Obama has done a remarkable job with this campaign (though I’d like to know more about Axelrod’s and others’ contributions) but the key to greatness is consistency over the long haul.
So much of Obama’s current impact comes from his ability to inspire rock star like fervor in his supporters and much of that dewy freshness has evaporated since all the Trinity church/Wright/Pfleger freakouts.
All I can say is that I hope President Obama doesn’t find reason to wage war. He’ll put that oratory to work and *BAM* instant crusade.
Chicago is enormously corrupt. Obama is the ‘bringer of change’. Want the measure of Obama? Ask any reporter in the Chicago area who’s been willing to expose corruption over the years how they feel about Obama. It ain’t pretty.
My son leaves soon to join hundreds of other Marines in trying to push Parrish Island deeper into the sea. Another son was w/ 3rd ID going into Baghdad. When folks asked if I was worried about my eldest, the tanker, I said no, because I knew he had the best training in the world. The rest was in God’s hands. It will be the same for the Marine when he heads for Afghanistan. Obama in the White House changes all of that. My sons, our military, our nation deserve better.
How about focusing on who has the experience, judgement and character to protect us and bring prosperity to Americans … not someone who in the eleventh hour, finally tries to establish foreign policy credentials, in a one week visit, as a transparent political ploy to get himself elected. Where was Obama, when he was supposed to chair the congressional committee on Afghanistan, and never had a single meeting. Why did Obama vote ‘present’ over 100 times in the senate? Even if he stages a political rally in the Roman Coliseum, he’s still just an inexperienced politician, who is not qualified to be President of the United States of America !!!