Believe
Thursday, April 14th, 2011
In every good presidential speech there is a theme, a meme, or a basic idea. Usually it is typified by a catchy phrase: From Gerald Ford’s lame “Whip inflation Now,” to JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you…,” to even Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream.”
In every one of his speeches President Obama has tried to emulate this. But I very much fear that his rhetorical efforts are starting to ring hollow. After rallying the electoral troops with his one word slogan “Hope” and the inspirational, “Change is coming to America,” Obama’s recent efforts such as the tepid “Win The Future,” make President Obama sound like a caricature of candidate Obama.
Now we have his latest speech. Given ostensibly to address the budget deficit, the national debt, and what to do about it it has been hailed by many as a “watershed moment in his presidency. If his choice of tagline was any indication, however, we are all in a lot of trouble.
Believe.
That’s it. That’s the whole speech. That’s what his whole economic plan comes down to.
Believe.
In the speech at George Washington University the President used the word twenty-seven times. I believe, you believe, we believe, most Americans believe. It’s almost as if he was lecturing on grammar and not economics.
The main thing wrong with Mr. Obama’s choice of catch phrase is it requires the American people to believe, not in their country, not in an ideal of freedom and justice, but rather in their President’s desire, strength, and toughness to defend those ideals from the greed of big business and multi-millionaires. Unfortunately, given his record since entering office I no longer believe he has the stuff necessary to stand up for the little guy and fight for the “kind of country that we believe in.”
It was bad enough that Mr. Obama use of the word “believe” to try and rally people to his cause. “But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in.” However, his application of the word to the very people he intends to ask for sacrifice is downright pitiful: “I believe reform should protect the middle class, promote economic growth, and build on the fiscal commission’s model of reducing tax expenditures so that there’s enough savings to both lower rates and lower the deficit…. I believe that most wealthy Americans would agree with me. They want to give back to their country, a country that’s done so much for them.”
My God, on the one hand he’s telling us that rich folk have made out like bandits due to tax breaks (which he admits he voted for) and on the other hand he’s trying to convince us that aw shucks, in their heart of hearts, corporate CEOs really “…want to give back to their country, a country that’s done so much for them.” Not to put too fine a point on it but if President Obama truly believes that the super wealthy want to give back to their country, I have some ocean front property in Death Valley to show him. ”
If Obama had any cajones at all, he wouldn’t be wheedling and cajoling and trying to convince us that the “American dream” is still alive and well, if only we believe. He wouldn’t be exhorting us all to believe that republicans and their wealthy overlords are really decent people at heart who want what’s best for the country.
Baloney!
The Koch Brothers could care less about America, democracy, or caring for the poor and indigent. Rupert Murdoch certainly does not believe in the vision of America that Obama tries to lay out in his speech. At times in his speech, Obama seems almost as if he’s trying to convince himself to believe that “… somewhere lost in this quagmire of petty bickering on every news station, the ‘American Dream’ is still alive…”
If Mr. Obama truly believed in the vision that he was trying to sell the American people, he could do much for his believability by choosing to surround himself with a different crew of advisors. As Glenn Greenwald so pithily put it: “…does anyone think that Bill Daley, Tim Geithner and his army of Rubin acolytes and former Goldman Sachs executives are sitting around in rooms desperately trying to prevent budget cuts and entitlement “reforms”?”
I make no excuses for the fact that I don’t believe the American Dream is alive and well. Sadly,judging from his economic team and his record of caving anytime the Republicans’ millionaire masters order up more tax breaks for themselves, I don’t really think Obama believes it himself.
The country is being screwed by the rich. Until such time as President Obama acknowledges this fact and institutes policies designed to prevent it, I’m afraid I have little hope that that anything he does will make average Americans’ lives better…
That’s what I believe… and I’m sticking to it.
