(This was adopted from a recent post I made to my local newspaper's forum. It was for a multi-party audience.)
The message we're hearing from the media, originating with Clinton and the Republican candidates, no doubt, is that Barack Obama is a great speaker, but where is his substance?
I think this is a bit unfair. All political speeches during a campaign are more about words than actions. And not just during the campaign; look at the State of the Union speeches for the last 50 years or so.
Obama doesn't have any more empty rhetoric than the other candidates out there. His rhetoric just happens to be quite a lot better than the other candidates' rhetoric, and he delivers it a lot better as well.
Don't believe me? Which candidate do you think said each of these:
[This election] is about what kind of country and world we're going to pass onto the young people who are students here... for each of our children and grandchildren. Are we going to give them the same shot at the American dream that many of us were given?
Well, if we make the right decision in this election, we sure are. We're going to give our young people not only confidence and optimism, but real results, 21st-century solutions for what we need to do to fix our problems, meet our challenges, and seize our opportunities.
[T]hat is why we must rise to the occasion, as we have always done before, to confront the challenges ahead...
What is it about American culture that has led us to become the most powerful nation in the history of the world? We believe in hard work and education. We love opportunity: almost all of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants who came here for opportunity - opportunity is in our DNA. Americans love God, and those who don't have faith, typically believe in something greater than themselves - a 'Purpose Driven Life.' And we sacrifice everything we have, even our lives, for our families, our freedoms and our country. The values and beliefs of the free American people are the source of our nation's strength and they always will be.
That's the kind of leadership we need right now. That's why I'm this race. Because I don't think you should settle for a President who's only there for you when it's easy or convenient or popular - I think you deserve a President who's willing to fight for you every hour of every day for the next four years...
I run to give my children and their children the same chances that someone, somewhere gave me. I run so that a year from today, there is a chance that the world will look at America differently, and that America will look at itself differently. And I run to keep the promise of the United States of America alive for all those who still hunger for opportunity and thirst for equality and long to believe again.
We're here tonight because people want to know that the president is going to secure our borders and make it so it's not more difficult to get on an airplane in your hometown than it is to cross the international border, and that we're going to fix an issue that the federal government has allowed to go unchallenged for a long, long time...
And one of the reasons that we're here tonight is because there's no candidate who has been more consistent and clear about the fact that we should honor the words of our forefathers who said all of us are created equal. And that means that every single person has intrinsic worth and value. And we should uphold the sanctity of human life because it is a cornerstone of our culture of life.
Often elections in this country are fought within the margins of small differences. This one will not be. We are arguing about hugely consequential things... [My opponents] would govern this country in a way that will, in my opinion, take this country backward to the days when government felt empowered to take from us our freedom to decide for ourselves the course and quality of our lives; to substitute the muddled judgment of large and expanding federal bureaucracies for the common sense and values of the American people; to the timidity and wishful thinking of a time when we averted our eyes from terrible threats to our security that were so plainly gathering strength abroad... This election is going to be about big things, not small things. And I intend to fight as hard as I can to ensure that our principles prevail over theirs.
I've removed some identifying text from each one of these, but none of it includes any substantive policy. You can definitely still discern the speaker's party, and you can probably figure out who said each one, but it takes a bit of thinking, doesn't it? Here are the links to the speeches:
Hillary Clinton
Mitt Romney
Barack Obama
Mike Huckabee
John McCain
Browsing through these, I see no marked difference in the quantity of "substance" in Obama's speeches as compared to the others. In fact, Obama offers some real specifics in the speech I linked to (which is very similar to the one I saw him give in Baltimore on Monday). You know, actual numbers.
So why is Obama being singled out as being the flashy one with no heat? All words and no action? All bun and no beef? No one's going to notice when John McCain or Fred Thompson don't have any substance, because quite frankly, theirs is the same ol' same ol' when it comes to political speech. Many of us are half asleep by the end of their speeches.
The fact is, we notice Obama's rhetoric more because his is so much better, and it begs to be accompanied by substance. We're so used to being bored or pissed off by politicians that when one says something positive, and something that makes us feel like we can accomplish great things, the cynicism kicks in, and we wonder where the catch is. We're only asking about the substance because it's the first time in a long time that we're actually listening. The soaring, chill-inducing rhetoric leaves us hungry for What Comes Next.
So this message we're being fed, that there's no substance behind Obama's inspirational speechification, is basically a distraction. Don't believe it just because you hear someone say it. Read those speeches for yourself, absent of tone and applause, and see which ones have substance and which ones don't.
I think anyone capable of putting together a campaign staff and running a presidential campaign that has lasted over a year, Republican or Democrat, is a person who has demonstrated leadership qualities that are necessary to run this country. It's not easy selecting a staff, forming a campaign strategy, fundraising, budgeting, shaking hands, kissing babies, and giving the same speech a hundred times, each time as if it's the first. And I think the fact that Barack Obama has done all this against Hillary Clinton, who was basically the no-brainer lock for the nomination a year ago, and not only held his own, but has come out ahead, speaks volumes for his abilities as an organizer. This is a man who has done an amazing job with his campaign, and I'd like to see what he can do in the White House.