When They Go Low, We Go High

by Philip Collins

  BARACK OBAMA

  I Have Never Been More Hopeful about America

  Grant Park, Chicago

  7 November 2012

  No matter what he achieved in office, Barack Obama changed the world simply by who he was. The forty-fourth president of the United States was the first black leader of a nation no more than a generation after it had been segregated by race. The shock proved too much for some opponents who confected a conspiracy that Obama was not actually American, a nonsense ended by the production of his birth certificate. More than any American leader since John F. Kennedy, Obama embodied, and spoke about, the idea of hope. Even more than Kennedy he owed his elevation in politics to the pitch and power of his rhetoric. In an age when oratory was deemed to have collapsed into stock phrases, Obama rescued the trade.

  Barack Obama was born on 4 August 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to a Kenyan intellectual and a white teenager from Kansas. After briefly living in Indonesia, he was raised by his grandparents in Hawaii. He studied law at Columbia and Harvard and worked as a civil rights lawyer in Chicago. Obama’s political break came in 1996 with a seat in the Illinois state senate, followed by a US Senate seat in 2004. His book The Audacity of Hope, which prefigures many of the themes expressed in his speeches, became a best-seller. Political aficionados had spotted his rhetorical brilliance, but it was still somehow from nowhere that he ran, in 2008, a flawless campaign to beat Hillary Clinton to the Democratic presidential nomination. In a nod to the classical origins of the American Republic, Obama accepted the Democratic nomination in front of a reconstruction of a Roman forum.

  It is as yet early to assess Obama’s legacy as president, especially on foreign affairs, on which he was elected to pull America back from engagement. On this basis he was awarded a premature Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. As most presidents do, he found the world came to him even if he had not invited it in. Obama’s domestic record may stand the scrutiny of time. The American economy recovered on his watch from the financial crisis of 2008, but his claim to political memory is the Affordable Health Care Act. Every Democrat president has promised universal health care for America. Every one before Barack Obama failed to put anything into statute; Obama did. If even a cover version of his legislation survives its assault by his successor, Obama will be remembered as the Democrat who succeeded.

  Tonight, more than two hundred years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny, the task of perfecting our union moves forward. It moves forward because of you. It moves forward because you reaffirmed the spirit that has triumphed over war and depression, the spirit that has lifted this country from the depths of despair to the great heights of hope, the belief that while each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people. Tonight, in this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back, and we know in our hearts that for the United States of America the best is yet to come.

  The first task in the instant aftermath of every election victory is to bind the nation. Obama does this by placing himself within the history of the republic and attaching it to the entire present nation. Election campaigns are, by their nature, divisive. The criticism that politics divides people is always wrong. People are divided. It is the nature of human beings to disagree. Politics is the means by which that division is recognised, negotiated and settled.

  That is Obama’s opening and defining purpose in a speech that is a paean to politics itself. That central argument makes sense of the idea of perfecting the union. Obama, like Jefferson has before him, makes it clear that the process towards perfection will never end. It is, after all, only the pursuit of happiness that the constitution protects, not its accomplishment. The road is hard, the journey long, and success is never assured. The best resource that the public have in the eternal pursuit is to be as one, a single family brought together after the electoral verdict has been entered, as a single political community. The night of a general election realises and thwarts ambitions in an instant. The moment opens the crack. The task of the president is to let the light flood back in. That allows him to conclude that the best is yet to come.

  I know that political campaigns can sometimes seem small, even silly. And that provides plenty of fodder for the cynics that tell us that politics is nothing more than a contest of egos or the domain of special interests. But if you ever get the chance to talk to folks who turned out at our rallies and crowded along a rope line in a high school gym, or saw folks working late in a campaign office in some tiny county far away from home, you’ll discover something else. You’ll hear the determination in the voice of a young field organiser who’s working his way through college and wants to make sure every child has that same opportunity. You’ll hear the pride in the voice of a volunteer who’s going door to door because her brother was finally hired when the local auto plant added another shift. You’ll hear the deep patriotism in the voice of a military spouse who’s working the phones late at night to make sure that no one who fights for this country ever has to fight for a job or a roof over their head when they come home. That’s why we do this. That’s what politics can be. That’s why elections matter. It’s not small, it’s big. It’s important. Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated. We have our own opinions. Each of us has deeply held beliefs. And when we go through tough times, when we make big decisions as a country, it necessarily stirs passions, stirs up controversy. That won’t change after tonight, and it shouldn’t. These arguments we have are a mark of our liberty. We can never forget that as we speak, people in distant nations are risking their lives right now just for a chance to argue about the issues that matter, the chance to cast their ballots like we did today.

  In its way one of the most quietly moving passages Obama has ever uttered. This is not the most dramatic speech he ever gave, nor the one that most directly stirs the emotions. Obama’s speech about race in 2008 and his victory speech the same year in Grant Park may be greater. His decision to sing ‘Amazing Grace’ after the murder of the Reverend Pinckney in Charleston in 2015 is one of the most affecting moments of public speech there is. Obama often sounds like he is singing; on that occasion he actually was.

  But here, in this prosaic passage, Obama sets out a manifesto for politics and the hope it carries for progress. For someone viewed as a lyrical speaker, you might be surprised to find that, like Molière’s bourgeois gentleman, Obama has been speaking prose all his life. Mario Cuomo’s line that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose is quoted too often, not least because it’s wrong. Obama shows that politicians campaign in prose too, but that if the prose is good enough then the effect can be poetic.

  More than any other speaker, with the exception of Martin Luther King, with whom he shares a vocal style, Obama needs to be heard rather than read. The way he slides down the consonants, dwelling on a word so that the stress imparts unmined meaning. The way he pauses, in complete control; his silences better than most people’s words. The way his voice contains the music and the rhythm in a vocal pattern that is closer to singing than to speaking and which is the secular transfer of an idiom that can be heard in the black churches.

  The comparison with King is irresistible but it will stretch only so far. King’s language is biblical and showy: Attic in the ancient currency. Obama’s is Asiatic; simple and plain. Read a speech by Dr King out for yourself and you can electrify the air. It’s not as easy to do with a text by Obama. You can’t say it like he does. The case he is making – about the liberty of a nation under democratic government – contains a quiet beauty, but it takes Barack Obama to really make it sing.

  But despite all our differences, most of us share certain hopes for America’s future. We want our kids to grow up in a country where they have access to the best schools and the best teachers. A country that lives
up to its legacy as the global leader in technology and discovery and innovation, with all the good jobs and new businesses that follow. We want our children to live in an America that isn’t burdened by debt, that isn’t weakened by inequality, that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet. We want to pass on a country that’s safe and respected and admired around the world, a nation that is defended by the strongest military on earth and the best troops this world has ever known. But also a country that moves with confidence beyond this time of war, to shape a peace that is built on the promise of freedom and dignity for every human being. We believe in a generous America, in a compassionate America, in a tolerant America, open to the dreams of an immigrant’s daughter who studies in our schools and pledges to our flag. To the young boy on the south side of Chicago who sees a life beyond the nearest street corner. To the furniture worker’s child in North Carolina who wants to become a doctor or a scientist, an engineer or an entrepreneur, a diplomat or even a president – that’s the future we hope for. That’s the vision we share. That’s where we need to go – forward. That’s where we need to go. Now, we will disagree, sometimes fiercely, about how to get there. As it has for more than two centuries, progress will come in fits and starts. It’s not always a straight line. It’s not always a smooth path. By itself, the recognition that we have common hopes and dreams won’t end all the gridlock or solve all our problems or substitute for the painstaking work of building consensus and making the difficult compromises needed to move this country forward. But that common bond is where we must begin.

  Politics is difficult. Change is ground out slowly. It is often boring to do, let alone to watch. Slow, incremental improvement – the vital currency of democratic politics – is hard to turn to rhetorical gold. It takes great skill to turn ‘Let us proceed slowly and cautiously’ into a rallying cry, but this is what Obama does here. He is borrowing the form of the uplifting call-to-arms to play down expectations. Obama is a master of the glorious compromise, the beautiful consensus, the slow change that lifts the heart.

  Obama restates America’s meritocratic idea of itself – a compliment America pays itself quite wrongly, its rates of social mobility being lower than most comparable democracies – in a reminder that the path to the ideal of the republic is never easy. It is an important dream. The idea that individual enterprise will gain its due reward is America’s foundation myth. It’s never been as true as it should be but it would be even less true than it is if there were no myth expressed at all. Obama, though, cleverly lays it on thin. Rhetoric is too easily an art that exaggerates, and Obama has more gifts in the art than most. Here, he is deliberately reining himself in, to make an important point about the application of power.

  Our economy is recovering. A decade of war is ending. A long campaign is now over. And whether I earned your vote or not, I have listened to you, I have learned from you, and you’ve made me a better president. And with your stories and your struggles, I return to the White House more determined and more inspired than ever about the work there is to do and the future that lies ahead. Tonight you voted for action, not politics as usual. You elected us to focus on your jobs, not ours. And in the coming weeks and months, I am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of both parties to meet the challenges we can only solve together. Reducing our deficit. Reforming our tax code. Fixing our immigration system. Freeing ourselves from foreign oil. We’ve got more work to do. But that doesn’t mean your work is done. The role of citizen in our democracy does not end with your vote. America’s never been about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us together through the hard and frustrating, but necessary work of self-government. That’s the principle we were founded on. This country has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our university, our culture are all the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores. What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth. The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for comes with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what makes America great.

  The list of the items in the White House in-tray continues the theme of sober administration. It won’t be every anthology that immortalises the line ‘reforming the tax code’. I have a dream … of reforming the tax code. Still, this is what good politics does. It is also crucial for Obama, the high priest of vague hope, to make a claim to practical achievement. This is his recognition that expressions of hope not anchored in the world are frivolous.

  Then Obama reverses the burden of proof, much as Kennedy had done with ‘ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country’ in his 1961 Inaugural. Presidential speeches, at least until Donald Trump, make up a single story, the story of American democracy. Presidents are conscious of each other, and no other country’s leaders quote their predecessors more than the Americans do. They are not citing heroes or sainted icons, as a Labour Party figure would with Clement Attlee or Aneurin Bevan. They are invoking the prestige of the office. Obama’s riff about what can be done by us rather than for us is more or less a direct lift from Kennedy, who was himself echoing Lincoln.

  This is an elegant reminder of the limitations of politics and the narrow range of the state. Just as the law is upheld by voluntary compliance rather than by enforcement, so government makes demands of its citizens. Democracy is a culture and a pattern of behaviour. The early days of President Trump have shown us that this point applies to the president himself. The American constitution makes a fetish of its documents but it works in practice through the tacit understanding of the people who make it work. The president has to understand that if he pushes the executive order too far he is upsetting the balance. The formal mechanism of the court will strike back, but the very act of constitutional defiance is damaging. The checks and the balances are two separate things. The balance in the classical tradition is observed by the participants who are checked if they refuse to comply. Obama here defines the bond of America, the glory of the republic, as duty. The language is less ornate but, intellectually, this is classical. The ideas of the Roman republic are still intact.

  I am hopeful tonight because I’ve seen the spirit at work in America. I’ve seen it in the family business whose owners would rather cut their own pay than lay off their neighbours, and in the workers who would rather cut back their hours than see a friend lose a job. I’ve seen it in the soldiers who re-enlist after losing a limb and in those SEALs who charged up the stairs into darkness and danger because they knew there was a buddy behind them watching their back. I’ve seen it on the shores of New Jersey and New York, where leaders from every party and level of government have swept aside their differences to help a community rebuild from the wreckage of a terrible storm. And I saw just the other day, in Mentor, Ohio, where a father told the story of his eight-year-old daughter, whose long battle with leukaemia nearly cost their family everything had it not been for healthcare reform passing just a few months before the insurance company was about to stop paying for her care. I had an opportunity to not just talk to the father, but meet this incredible daughter of his. And when he spoke to the crowd listening to that father’s story, every parent in that room had tears in their eyes, because we knew that little girl could be our own. And I know that every American wants her future to be just as bright. That’s who we are. That’s the country I’m so proud to lead as your president.

  The skilled speaker needs watching. This speech has been given with the aim of healing, and the first part of this passage is generously ecumenical. Vital categories are ticked off in a list of commendations: small-town American entrepreneurs, soldiers in the field, t
he US Navy. Note, in passing, how not saying something says it so effectively. The audience would all be aware that Obama is referring to the killing by Navy SEALs of Osama bin Laden, public enemy number one. The president doesn’t need to spell it out. The success of the mission is evoked the better for being modestly done. Nothing establishes standing as a national leader like defeating an enemy – this is Cicero and Mark Antony revisited – and Obama uses it politically to make a point in his own favour.

  He slides from this triumph to praise for the cross-party response to a hurricane in New Jersey, and from there into a story about health care. The craft of a wide-ranging speech is to find a theme that strings together its disparate parts. There is always a risk of contrivance; there really is nothing to link Osama bin Laden, the wrecked New Jersey shore and the Obama government’s healthcare legislation. Obama therefore makes an emotional link, stringing the speech together with mood music.

  In the thick of the pathos he sneaks in a trick. Healthcare was and is a great divide in American politics. Should it be a state or an individual responsibility? Only a moment before this, Obama had been advocating individual duty. With skilful manipulation of the mood and ordering of the topics, he swaps sides, clinching the case with a harrowing and irresistible story about the tears shed for a young girl’s salvaged future. With the audience now involved emotionally, Obama then leaps to cite the young girl as the definition of America. A partisan policy has become, in a few deft sentences: ‘That’s who we are. That’s the country I’m so proud to lead as your president’. Rhetorical skill like that is brilliant but we need to be on the alert.