Marbury

the orators

oratory was supposed to be obsolete in the TV age. But it has played a key part in barack obama's rise. His speeches during the campaign have been justly acclaimed, and it was a speech that shot him to national prominence in the first place. His speech to the Ebeneezer Church in South Carolina is a good example of his ability to combine argument, rhetorical sinew, and uplift.

it must be a while since oratory has played a key part in an american presidential campaign. We have seen rabble-rousers (Dean), feel-your-painers (Bill Clinton), and folksy charmers (Reagan). But who, since Kennedy, has been able to make speeches that appeal powerfully to head and heart?

as for british political campaigns - well, it has played even less part, though Blair wasn't too shabby behind the podium. Here is a list of great british speeches put together by  nick anstead, whose excellent blog i hadn't come across before. It's a pretty good list. I would add Neil Kinnock's speech to the Labour Party conference in 1985,  confronting the Militants.

1. Calgacus / Tacitus, speech to the Britons (85 AD).
2. Winston Churchill, “We will fight them on the beaches…” (1940).
3. Thomas Rainsborough, address to the Putney debates (1647).
4. Queen Elizabeth I, “Heart and stomach of a king…” (1588)
   
5. William Gladstone, first home rule bill (1886).
   
6. David Lloyd-George, proposing the people’s budget (1909).
7. Oliver Cromwell, “for godsake go…” (1653).
   
8. Geoffrey Howe, savaged by a dead sheep (1990).
9. Earl Spencer, funeral oration for Princess Diana (1997).
10. Harold MacMillan, “wind of change…” (1960).

fight night

after last night's disappointingly dull Republican debate (McCain tired, Romney mildly peevish) let's hope that the Democrats make up for it this evening.

it's the first debate with only two candidates on stage, mano-a-womano. It's the last chance before Super Tuesday for one candidate to score a decisive win in face-to-face combat on live TV. What should their respective strategies be going into this debate? What should they focus on communicating, about themselves and their opponent?

both candidates called me this morning for advice on how to play it. Here's the gist of what I said:

Hillary, you need to play nice, and demonstrate the depth of your policy knowledge at every opportunity. You will no doubt come pre-prepared with a load of ammunition on Obama's record, gathered by your formidable team of researchers. But use it sparingly. You went tough and mean before South Carolina and the voters recoiled a little. They like you most when you're showing a human, warmer, even slightly vulnerable side - tearing up in a diner, reaching out a hand to Teddy Kennedy. When Obama attacks, stay unruffled. Voters know you're tough as nails already - you don't have to prove that anymore. So kill Obama with kindness, without patronizing him. And be a geek - debates aren't about uplift. They play to your natural strength - demonstrable authority and knowledge.

Barack, I think you have license to be tougher than ever on HRC. Voters know you're a nice guy (snubs notwithstanding), and they know you stand for big themes like Hope and Change. But they need to be convinced that there are real, good, substantive reasons for waving goodbye to the family that they have put their faith for the last fifteen years. You've already begun to sharpen and hone your critique of the Clintons. Now, here's the thing: you need to do this whilst still coming off as the nice guy. You need to do it with good humour and wit. You need to do it more in sorrow than in anger. If you come off as disrespecting Hillary then you'll lose. It's a horrendously difficult balancing act to pull off. But you're a gifted candidate - and the stakes could not be higher.

bye bye john

the withdrawal of john edwards from the race leaves two questions hanging:

(1). to whom will his voters turn now?

(2). who will he endorse?

there are gigabytes of speculation about these questions pinging around the blogosphere as we speak, and I won't add to them at any length, because the only straight answers are, nobody knows. But here are some observations:

(1). there is no simple answer to this now, nor will there be after Super Tuesday. His voters will break in different ways in different states. Some will vote for the other candidate promising a change from the establishment status quo. Some will turn to the other white candidate. Some of them may even vote John McCain, in states where you're allowed to vote as an independent.

(2). on the face of it, you'd say Obama. He's the other candidate of change, and Edwards has praised him consistently, and criticised HRC consistently, over the course of the campaign. BUT Edwards is nothing if not ambitious. He hasn't given up on being President of the United States at some point in the future. So, he's quite capable of endorsing Hillary should he judge it's in his self-interest to do so. And that will depend on fine calculations about who he thinks will win this race, who he perceives to be taking him and his key issue of poverty the most seriously, and what he thinks the post-2008 political landscape will look like.

rudy for veep? watch out...

now that rudy is dropping out, there is speculation that McCain might ask him to be his vice-presidential candidate. Rudy is strong in states like New York and New Jersey where Republicans don't usually have a chance. But a warning issued by Al Sharpton in 1997 still rings across the years...

i pity the guy who takes Rudy for vice-anything. He'll need a food-taster.

lessons from florida

the always readable David Brooks on what he learnt from yesterday's primary:

first, good candidates are never completely out of it...(McCain) just plugged along. He stayed true to himself. Eventually good and honest candidates get rewarded no matter how badly outspent they are, no matter how few consultants they have...

from the onion's profile of HRC..

Reason For Presidential Bid:
Left some stuff at White House

Favorite Food:
Wheat slurry injected directly into her stomach

Murder Convictions:
3

Reproductive Process:
Squirts thousands of egg sacs into host intestine, then fertilizes them herself

read the rest, and profiles of the other candidates, here

ah, the mitt

it is going to be very hard to stop John McCain now. His Florida win makes him the firm front-runner for the GOP nomination. But it isn't over yet. Guliani may be bowing out but Mitt Romney will be in it to the last. For those of you who know little about Mr Mitt, here is what you need to know:

(1). Until 2007 he was the Republican Governor of Massachusetts, one of the most liberal states in the Union. By necessity or conviction, he took some very liberal positions on things like abortion and guns.

(2). In this race, he is running as the only true (and electable) conservative. Now, given (1), you can imagine that this has involved some pretty shameless changes of position. There is no doubt that Mitt wears the most impressive flip-flops in the field. This has helped to create a sense that Mitt lacks an authentic sense of who he is - that he is RoboPrez, programmed to win the nomination by any means necessary. McCain, by contrast, offers the most rugged brand of take-me-or-leave-me authenticity in American politics.

(3). Romney is very rich. His daddy (also a successful politician) was pretty well off. But Mitt started a private equity company and helped turn it into a massively successful business. He is spending much of his  fortune on getting elected President, which largely absolves him from the onerous task of raising money, something that all the other candidates have to undertake.

(4). He is good-looking. His wife is also good looking, and so are his five sons and eleven grandchildren, and his dogs. Mitt's hair is famously just so, and his jaw looks as if it was designed with Mount Rushmore in mind.

(5) He's a member of the Mormon Church, which isn't as weird as Scientology, but isn't far off.

(6) Given all these factors, (especially the first four) it will come as little surprise that Mitt is the MLC (Most Loathed Candidate) amongst his Republican rivals. There is an unusual degree of personal vitriol in their references to Mitt, and an unusual degree of disdain in their faces when he speaks during debates.

me, I'd like Mitt to stick around as long as possible. Why? Because of his comedy value. Any candidate that has videos like this and this on his website deserves a long run in the public eye.

also, despite my derision and that of many others, I don't think he would be a bad President. Others may be better, but Mitt wouldn't be a disaster. He is highly intelligent, an excellent manager, and probably - despite his absurdities - a decent guy. His problem has been, he's essentially a get-the-job-done pragmatist who's been running as a conservative ideologue. Hence the authenticity problem.

do I actually think he'll make it to the White House? No. He is stuck with those flip-flops, and they're the only thing about him that doesn't look good.

ouch

it's been a terrific couple of days for barack obama. So why did he mess up yesterday, so unnecessarily?

State of the Union speeches are uneasy occasions for congressman at the best of times. They have to sit and mingle with their enemies in both parties, under the hawkish gaze of the press and the cameras. They have to remember to make the appropriate facial expressions throughout the President's speech. Then they have to make agonizingly difficult decisions about when to applaud, and how (sitting down? Standing up? Dutifully, or with gusto?). And of course, who to sit next to ('Save me a seat, Senator, I'm just off for a piss.') It's an orgy of self-consciousness. And things only get more uneasy when it's an election year. (Apparently Hillary Clinton looked over at Obama at one point during the speech to see if he was applauding a line about Iran, before deciding to follow suit - such fine calculations).

so anyway, Barack takes a seat next to Teddy Kennedy, both having come straight from the Kennedy endorsement announcement. After the speech, Clinton, responding to a gesture from Teddy, comes over to shake Teddy's hand. And Obama turns away, issuing a frosty rebuff - or as we might say in Britain, cutting her dead.

this was, in my view, a needless own goal. First, it gives the press something to write and talk about other than the Kennedy endorsement. Second, it shows the man who constantly preaches about 'reaching out' across political divides turning away from his own colleague. Third, it reminds voters of Obama's worst moment in the campaign so far: his seemingly snarky comment about Clinton during the New Hampshire Presidential debate. As Clinton answered a question about her supposed likeability problem with a degree of wit and self-deprecation, Obama interjected with 'You're likeable, enough, Hillary'. In the view of some commentators it was this moment, more than Hillary's tears, that turned women voters against him and towards her. It suggested a mean-spirited side of Obama that voters hadn't seen before. He may have just created a repeat of that moment.

UPDATE: Obama has tried to explain it away. Maureen Dowd in the NYT is sympathetic to him but doesn't believe his explanation.

UPDATE: watch this clip of Whoopi Goldberg on popular daytime show The View to see how bad this makes Obama look - esp bad as he is already vulnerable to HRC amongst women...most of the TV coverage has been along similar lines

fired up and jolly well ready to go

there is far from a direct causal relationship between what happens in american politics and what happens in the UK. But hey, it's fun to speculate. And certainly, British politicians will be preparing their own spin on the result of the Presidential election come November.

the unlikely event of an Obama victory would come closest to feeling like a global earthquake, a reshaping of everyone's political expectations. Who, between Brown and Cameron, would claim his mantle? Well, both, obviously.  Brown would attempt to incorporate Obama's rejection of spin and low tactics into his own story about authenticity. Trouble is, that story has probably been irreparably tarnished by the events of last autumn. Also, the parallels between Gordon and Hillary are just too neat for the media to ignore: both have been around forever, close to power but never the number one. Both are highly intelligent and politically brilliant, but lack some things - humanity, wit, the ability to improvise - that their key political partners and predecessors had in abundance (for Tony read Bill).

Cameron, as Brown's youthful rival, has a better shot at gaining some reflected glory, and is already positioning himself as a kindred spirit. His challenge will be, as the Economist points out, persuading us that posh is the new black.