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A tale of two speeches

A tale of two speeches

Last updated on: January 22, 2017 at 10:51 am by Jane the Actuary

A tale of two speeches 2017-01-22T10:51:42-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Point #1: Obama’s inaugural speech was written by a professional speechwriter, Jon Favreau. A very young professional speechwriter, to be sure, but one who became fully absorbed in the task of crafting inspirational speeches for Obama during his campaign. Donald Trump, by all reports, wrote his speech himself. And it shows: there is none of the careful crafting, the flowery use of language, the literary flourishes that we expect from these sort of grand speeches. The speech is instead, pedestrian, as anything that you could imagine that Trump would write, would be.

So did Trump have an obligation to craft a more lofty speech? Maybe. It feels like there’s an empty space in the “collection of lofty inaugural speeches.” Why didn’t he? Was it narcissism? Did he think he could produce something just as literary as is predecessors’ speechwriters? Or did he intentionally decide that, to signal the change that he would bring, he would break with this tradition?

(Update: since I started drafting this post, reports appeared that Steve Bannon and Steven Miller wrote the speech. Miller is credited as having written his prior speeches, but he’s chiefly identified as “senior advisor,” not as a professional speechwriter. So was it an intentional decision to avoid “literary” language by declining to hire a professional speechwriter? Did Trump and his team just not recognize the difference? Or did he not have an prospective speechwriting candidates available to him?)

But let’s look at the speeches themselves: Obama’s 2009 address vs. Trump’s speech (it hardly seems to qualify as an “address”).

Obama starts off very darkly, describing the situation a that of “gathering clouds and raging storms.” Namely,

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many — and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.

Sure, you might say, Obama had good reason to start in this manner — we were facing down the Great Recession But this is only one part of the problems he ticks off. The “far-reaching network of violence and hatred”? Iraq was doing comparatively well when Obama took office — this was pre-ISIS, after all. Too-costly healthcare was not a Great Recession-specific issue. School failures? “The ways we use energy”? “Sapping of confidence”? Sounds pretty dark.

He then says (and I’m typing this and wondering about the oddness of crediting a speech to an individual because he was the one to deliver it, even though he didn’t actually pen the words) that “we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord,” and says that in the same way as our risk-taking predecessors earned greatness, so we too will “begin again the work of remaking America.”

And what is the agenda?

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of our economy calls for action, bold and swift. And we will act, not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We’ll restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do.

It’s a list of (government spending) ambitions with a jab at the GOP (“restore science to its rightful place”) in the middle.

He promises:

The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Which, of course, 8 years and Solyndra later seems like a pleasant fantasy.

As to foreign policy, he tells us that

earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions,

and announces that he will go about the business of exerting power through setting a good example, as well as leaving Iraq and “forg[ing] a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan” — again, strange words to read 8 years after the fact.

As always, he needs to announce that “our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.” You know what I think of that — it is a liability, something that at best we can hope to overcome, but, all other things being equal, weakens our society compared to a monocultural society — and Obama seems to acknowledge that when he says that we hope that “the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve.”

He repeats (begins?) several themes: to Muslims he says that “we seek a new way forward,” to dictators he says that “you are on the wrong side of history”, to “the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.” (Odd that he thinks of poor countries as entirely agrarian, or having an agrarian future.)

He then calls up the image of the sacrificing American soldier “because they embody the spirit of service — a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves” — and says that this “spirit of service” and a “new era of responsibility” is needed for our future prosperity to unfold.

How does this compare to Trump’s words?

Trump’s speech starts of very “Hunger Games-ian” — the capitol has flourished while the people have suffered, and

we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People.

What does this mean? Is Trump planning on devolving federal power to the state or local level? No, not really. Is he planning on shedding federal power? That’s not a specific promise of his.

For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished — but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered — but the jobs left, and the factories closed.

True enough that D.C., and its lobbyists and government officials and all organizations who locate their mean that the metro area is the wealthiest in the nation.

And Trump repeats his campaign theme: “The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.” (The term “forgotten man” has a long history; was Trump intentionally drawing on it?)

You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before. At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens.

Is this a “historic movement”? Well, it depends on definitions; certainly there hasn’t been a prior case of Americans electing a man to the presidency with no elective office experience, so sure, I guess it’s “historic” in a broad sense. But what does it mean for “a nation [to] exist to serve its citizens”? Presumably what he means is that the government should be aimed at helping the citizenry rather than enriching those in power.

Then he moves to the section which earns him so much criticism: his list of failures we need to remedy:

But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. . . .

For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry; subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military; we’ve defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own; and spent trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.

We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon.

One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind.

The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.

Is Trump right or wrong? Various news sites (e.g., the USA Today) purported to “fact check” the address with statements like “poverty rates aren’t really so bad” or “actually, schools need more money” or “crime rates were lower in 2015 than at their peak” which are all missing the point that these are ongoing issues. Poverty hasn’t been “fixed” and in any other context Democrats would be decrying poverty rates. Factories have closed and former factory workers are struggling. We have massively ramped up education spending, decade after decade, and spend more than virtually any other country, but without seeing the desired results. Father Pfleger could tell you that crime is a serious problem in his part of Chicago. We have historically provided a “nuclear umbrella” for many countries, at great cost, and we have spent far greater than 2% of GDP on our military, while most NATO nations refuse to meet this alliance-wide target. We have indeed refused to enforce our immigration laws, with year after year of words like “they’re just doing jobs Americans won’t do.” Globalization has brought wealth to, perhaps not the country of China as a whole, but many individual Chinese, in some cases to a staggering degree, through their massive growth in manufacturing, and outsourcing of white-collar jobs to places like India has happened on just as stunning a scale (I can remember back to a promise by my company’s former CEO, that no jobs would be lost, which was soon forgotten, as our U.S. offices have shrunk in size considerably) while American wages have stagnated. It may be true that our unemployment rate is down at the moment, it may be true that Trump is sloppy in his statements, but there are real, on-going, long-term problems that Trump claims he will fix.

But what’s the remedy? Does Trump have the answers? He claims the solution is “America First.”

America First will drive every trade decision, every foreign policy decision, every immigration decision. America First will mean that we will stop “other countries [from] making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs.”

And what about our divisions?

At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.

When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice. The Bible tells us, “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity.”

We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity.

When America is united, America is totally unstoppable. . .

A new national pride will stir our souls, lift our sights, and heal our divisions.

And then?

Do not let anyone tell you it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America.

We will not fail. Our country will thrive and prosper again.

We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the Earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow.

Obama promised that the government, paired with hard-working, others-serving Americans, would fix everything. He didn’t have any single one grand principle, but called for spending on alternative energy, “being nice” in foreign policy, and a combination of new spending (schools, roads) but also called for a “new era of responsibility” — which seemed to be a term that he wanted to coin and carry forward, and was also the title of a speech a month later, not about Americans generally, but about responsible government spending. It was a grab bag of actions, some of which played out in the stimulus bill, the new education spending, the solar subsidies, and some of which never really went any further — health care’s cost has not been reduced by technology, nor have universities been transformed (except for the online universities which developed independently).

Trump promises a specific chain of events: the government will start looking out for the American people, this will fill Americans with pride in being American, which will overcome divisions of race, region, religion, and bring about an optimism which will, in turn bring about/extend prosperity.

But it’s absurd. You cannot make “America First” the entire organizing principle of your administration. There are too many decisions which are purely matters of internal policy (healthcare, education, criminal justice, social policy in general, taxes, etc.), and decisions related to foreign policy and globalization have to be made with an awareness that actions that seem to be protective of our citizens can have unwanted consequences. Isolationism, whether the 1930s version of letting Europe handle Hitler, or the recent version of withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, letting Iran and Russia gain power in the Middle East, and letting everything fall to pieces, might seem like a way to “put America First” by cutting our military spending and the losses of the lives of our soldiers, but there will be profound consequences for years to come.

And I’m not going to support or reject the long-held conventional wisdom that tariffs will only damage the country that imposes them, but just say that you can’t make “America First” a blanket policy. Yes, the “perfect storm” of globalization, automation, and immigration have had massive impacts on our economy, to the benefit of the wealthy and educated but with harms for others. Yes, the poor benefit from being able to buy cheap products imported from China, and it’s difficult to somehow try to construct the alternate scenario in which we made these in the U.S. Yes, it is in our long-term national interest that other nations are prosperous, because poor countries are unstable countries, though, to be sure, the threat from China is growing as its prosperity increases and its ambitions on the world stage increase. At the same time, every country, even in a free trade environment, has various protectionist measures, and I’m sure that neither you nor I know exactly what protectionist measures already exist here or elsewhere, but it’s my understanding that these are plentiful. (Here’s an undated document put out by the Democrats on Japan’s trade barriers.) Even my old Jane Tax Plan has a tariff-like component — that is, I would eliminate the corporate income tax as we know it today, and instead tax corporate money when it flows out of the company (dividends, compensation, etc.) or when it leaves the country (foreign companies sending revenues back, or American companies using their cash to build overseas). But these are complex, with a lot of moving pieces, and only a small part of the overall puzzle.

And while it’s true that a group that’s united in a common cause tends to see its internal divisions diminish (and I just tried to hunt around in the ol’ blog for a piece I wrote about that, with respect to the military, and its ability to succeed in integration because of its common purpose), I don’t see how Trump will succeed in motivating Americans to “open [their] heart[s] to patriotism.” It’s a nice thought, but how does he imagine we’d get there?

So I leave you with that: how, specifically, would you create more unity among Americans? How would you create this world in which Americans sacrifice for each other, not just for their own “tribe” and in which there is “no room for prejudice”?

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AInauguration-01-20-2009.jpg; By whitehouse.gov [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. This is the Obama inauguration because the Trump inauguration wasn’t available on Wikimedia Commons.

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