The Occasional Observer

So says Michael Gerson, Bush 43 friend, administration insider and speechwriter, in an op-ed in the Washington Post. Gerson's advice: focus on the policies, not the delivery or the messenger. Sounds familiar.

...Many political advisers in both parties employ "rhetoric" as a synonym for "folderol." Winging it in speeches is generally viewed as more authentic, and authenticity plays well with dial groups -- groups that also helpfully inform us that Americans don't like downbeat words such as "war" or "sacrifice" or "poverty," preferring instead cheerful terms such as "marshmallows" and "pixie dust."

This is nonsense. From the Greek beginnings of political rhetoric, the wise have described a relationship between the discipline of writing and the discipline of thought. The construction of serious speeches forces candidates (or presidents) to grapple with their own beliefs, even when they don't write every word themselves. If those convictions cannot be marshaled in the orderly battalions of formal rhetoric, they are probably incoherent.

The triumph of shoddy, thoughtless spontaneity is the death of rhetorical ambition...

It is not a failure for Obama to understand and exercise this element of leadership, it is an advantage.

Some Obama critics go even further, accusing him of inducing a "creepy," "cultish," "euphoria." A candidate delivers a good stump speech, adds a dose of personal magnetism and suddenly, he is a sorcerer, practicing the dark arts of demagoguery.

But Obamamania is pretty mild stuff compared to our rhetorical history. When William Jennings Bryan finished his Cross of Gold speech at the 1896 Democratic convention, extending his hands outward in cruciform melodrama, witnesses described a 40-minute riot, with "hills and valleys of shrieking men and women" and old men "crying bitterly, great tears rolling from their eyes into their bearded cheeks." After Douglas MacArthur addressed a joint session of Congress in 1951, Rep. Dewey Short shouted: "We heard God speak here today, God in the flesh, the voice of God!"...

McCain can and should make an ideological case against his opponent. Why does Obama want to fight terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan but not in Iraq? How would it advance the war on terror to grant al-Qaeda's fondest wish -- an untimely American retreat from the Middle East? Would Obama really devote his first year in office to a series of surrender summits with the leaders of Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea?

These are serious criticisms; the argument against rhetoric is not. Obama's political weakness is that he is too liberal, not that he is too eloquent.

[my emphasis]