a synthesis of all values: Obama and the trope of the “false choice” (ii)

Japan, the Maghreb, the Gulf, China—the world is on fire, and a new coalition of the willing rises up to will itself on the peoples of Libya in the form of tomahawk missile strikes and attacks on air defense systems in advance of larger operations the objective of which is what, precisely?—to save the rebel stronghold of the city of Benghazi?—to force Gaddafi, his graduate student son, and their mercenaries to flee so that who, or what, can wear the garland of the state? So U.S. President Barack Obama steps forward to issue a bold statement on … education.

This is tragedy long after it has passed into farce.

Caption: In too deep.

Obama: the lame duck session of the 111th Congress concludes in awesomeness

The lame duck session of the 111th Congress closed on major victories for the U.S. president and his party including Senate ratification of the New START treaty, the extension of unemployment benefits and stimulus funding in exchange for extending for 2 more years Bush-era tax relief for all, the repeal of “Don’t ask Don’t Tell” (DADT), and a comprehensive food safety bill. The victory for the Republicans on the extension of Bush-era tax relief, and the collapse of consensus for an omnibus spending bill that delays consideration on the budget until the 112th Congress, gave moderate Republicans political cover to vote with Democrats on these other bills—in logical terms, the successful assertion of Republican unity on the issues of taxes, and government spending, negated the basis of Republican unity more generally. In other words, the need for a symbolic show of unity—the basis for Republican unity for the past 2 years—had been negated by actual legislative accomplishments, on the key issues of tax rates, and government spending, made possible by the decision returned on November 2 2010.

Caption: Obama’s New START resets the U.S.-Russian arms control regime to an era of linkage between offensive and defensive systems. Hey, what could go wrong?

Yet somehow the president’s account of the accomplishments of the lame duck session of the 111th Congress assumes a different character altogether

PM Harper at Ottawa Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism: “Let us not forget that even in the darkest hours of the Holocaust, men were free to choose good—And some did—That is the eternal witness of the Righteous Among the Nations—And let us not forget that even now, there are those who would choose evil and would launch another Holocaust, if left unchecked—That is the challenge before us today”

Caption: There are lights in these worlds.

[...] “History teaches us that anti-Semitism is a tenacious and particularly dangerous form of hatred.  And recent events are demonstrating that this hatred is now in resurgence throughout the world.  That is why the work of the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism has never been so important or timely as it is now [...]

Transcript of Canadian PM Harper at Ottawa Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism

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Obama’s speech at the University of Wisconsin demonstrates how spoils politics in the late-welfare state era gets performed in the form of a speech: It takes the form of a catalog of boons granted to the deserving, at the expense of the greedy, or the unworthy

Caption: To those who believe that nationalizing the U.S. student loan system will save anyone any money, I offer you the boot.

We finally fixed the student loan system so that tens of billions of dollars—tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies that were going to big banks, they were acting as middlemen, and the student loan programs were going through these financial intermediaries, said the beloved U.S. President at the University of Wisconsin on September 28th.

He continues:

They were taking billions of dollars of profits. We said, well, let’s cut out the middleman. We’ll give the loans directly to students and that means million more students are going to be able to take advantage of grants and student loans [...]

The speech reduces to a litany of spoils for various constituencies

Obama at UW—links to video and text, but I have yet to comment on the speech

• Here be the speech in performance.
• Here be the text of the speech.

Obama organizes his camp-meeting revival of that old-time religion of 2008 on a sprawling state university campus because Young People And Minorities Are All The President Has Left, or so reports Jim O’Sullivan for the National Journal. I’ll get back to you with my thoughts and views on the speech itself. But allow me to offer this to you now from the transcript.

[...] THE PRESIDENT: You can’t make this stuff up. (Laughter.) This is the truth.

Now, the centerpiece of their pledge, their central economic idea — this is it, this is their main idea for growing the economy and dealing with the $8 million jobs that were lost as a consequence of their earlier policies — their main idea is a $700 billion tax cut for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. Right?

The President refers to the Bush tax cuts which are about to expire—so this really isn’t a cut so much as a move to stop taxes from increasing to a level not experienced since 2001 or 2003 depending on the particular tax.

AUDIENCE: Boo!

THE PRESIDENT: So 98 percent of Americans would never see a dime of the $700 billion. Now, keep in mind we don’t have $700 billion. (Laughter.) So we’d have to borrow it. And the party that lectures us on fiscal responsibility wants to borrow another $700 billion to give a tax cut worth an average of $100,000 to every millionaire and billionaire in America [...]

Mr. President? Call your office. Your own party panicked and scattered in all directions on the tax issue—they’re fleeing Washington for the dubious safety of their districts even now, in disgrace, their heads bowed in the ignominy of defeat. See this post, where I tell the sad, sad story:

dear friends, you’re supposed to unite yourselves and divide your opponents, not the other way around—more lessons in the form of cautionary tales from a Democratic party in a state of complete collapse

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President Obama: “guard the change!”—if only he had a Praetorian guard

[...] WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama, seeking to fire up an important part of his support base ahead of November’s elections, told black leaders on Saturday he wanted their support to “guard the change” he was delivering.”I need everybody here to go back to your neighborhoods, and your workplaces, to your churches, and barbershops, and beauty shops. Tell them we have more work to do. Tell them we can’t wait to organize. Tell them that the time for action is now,” he told the Congressional Black Caucus [...]

From: Obama urges blacks to vote and “guard the change” – Yahoo! News.

Obama calls on us to guard the change at the point that the question for voters is whether to change the guards.

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a masters degree in communication? really?—Phil Davison, GOP Candidate, Delivers Stark County Treasurer Speech

Watch and cringe, my brothers and sisters. Here be the context. Compare Davidson’s performance with this.

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on the U.S. President’s incomplete digressio on the economy in the middle of his “war speech”

From the LA Times Top of the Ticket blog, here be the text of President Obama’s Oval Office speech, which was supposed to be a “war speech”, it only wasn’t. It was something else besides.

The part of the speech that puzzles me the most is the digression (digressio) on the economy that begins on a division within a term (or anatomy, which in classical rhetoric means the analysis of a term or issue into its constituent parts), and ends in a call to a vague and under-conceptualized action, almost a pledge, that falls upon the person of the President himself, as well as you and I, his listeners, and a call to action that only foregrounds the ineffectiveness of the President’s policy initiatives to date

great moments in American oratory: “Obama’s Oval Office Address on the Oil Spill”

Caption: President Obama’s Oval Office Address on BP Oil Spill & Energy, available on Youtube.com. Note the unnatural hand-gestures and burnished, reflective, clean-desk surface.

Obama’s Oval Office Address on the Oil Spill, full text, available at RealClearPolitics.com.

The speech got panned, left, right, and centre. Here would be an example

Obama’s address at Carnegie Mellon University 6.2.10, notes and commentary

Here is the much-loved U.S. President, Barack Obama’s address given at Carnegie Mellon University on June 2 2010, available at realclearpolitics.com. So, let’s perform some rhetoric, shall we?—this time in the form of a simple rhetorical analysis of an excerpt of the speech followed by my thoughts and views.

Enthymemes and paradigms, brothers and sisters—these are the stuff of persuasive discourse as we shall observe, yet again.

Speech excerpt—Obama’s concluding remarks—and analysis after the break: