Obama's Inaugural Speech was wrong??

[dancing-loon]

David Frum: The inaugural address Obama should have delivered
Posted: January 24, 2009, 10:25 AM by NP Editor David Frum, Full Comment, U.S. Politics

President Barack Obama’s inaugural address was a sad, flat effort that cruelly wasted one of the grandest moments in American history: the swearing in of the first black president.

Perhaps you have to live here in Washington to feel the full intensity of the waste.
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This moment meant a great deal to almost all Americans, including many who did not vote for Obama. Obama let them down. The costs of this missed opportunity are not immediately apparent. But they are real and large even so.

What should Obama have said instead? Something like this:

My fellow citizens.
Today, on the steps of this Capitol built by the labour of slaves, I see before me millions of faces, male and female, young and old, of every race and form. But it is not only these faces that I see. Beyond them I see the great monuments of our republic: the memorial to the Virginian slaveholder who declared that all men are created equal and trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just; the great column to the memory of the general and president who laid down his army and his power when his time was done; and beyond them the white marble seat of Abraham Lincoln.

From where I stand, my eyes are aligned with his. And I want to say to him today, if he can watch and hear: From this Capitol, you once pledged with malice to none and charity to all, to bind the nation’s wounds and finish the work we are in. We in our millions are here to answer, Father Abraham, Your work has been finished, our wounds are healed.

And I want to say to another man, who once also fixed his face upon this Capitol front: The day you prophesied has come. We, all of us, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, can together say: “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Our American story was once divided. It is now united. We are one people — and as one people, we confront the grave new problems of our time …

At that point, normal Democratic boondoggling could have resumed — and who would have minded?
Why didn’t Obama do this, or something like it? I can guess at two political reasons — and I fear there may also be a third personal one.

Reason 1: The sad fact is that many of Barack Obama’s African- American supporters would object if he declared King’s dream fulfilled. Through the campaign season, many reporters found black voters who expressed uncertainty over the Obama candidacy. They feared he might lose. They feared even more that he might win. Then they would have to let go of old ways of thinking — and perhaps also forfeit the benefits of America’s vast and far-reaching system of racial preferences.

Reason 2: Eloquent as they were in 1963, Martin Luther King’s words are no longer politically correct in 2009. I can almost hear the gasps of the political advisers: “Black men and white men? Jews and Gentiles? Protestants and Catholics? What about women? What about Latinos? And don’t forget — we have to mention Muslims and Hindus!”

Reason 3: It’s very striking that the one and only reference in President Obama’s speech to the amazing changes that have come to the United States over the past half century was a purely personal one, to “a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant.”

Obama is among the most intellectual man ever to have gained the presidency, but his intellect has always been turned inward. His first book ranks among the finest ever produced by an American president, but it is a book about himself and was produced not at the end of a distinguished career, such as Ulysses S. Grant’s great war memoir, but before that career had even truly begun. Question: Is it possible that Obama could not see what was in front of him because his gaze was fixed upon himself?
Did he fail to comprehend what his inauguration meant to a nation because he was too preoccupied with what it meant to the man being inaugurated?

I don’t answer the question. But I ask, and I worry.
©David Frum
dfrum@aei.org
National Post
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Frum, like Ari Fleischer, holds some weight as a former presidential speech writer. Does anyone here share Frum's sentiments?

I listened to Obama's speech and felt he spoke very well for the alloted time; didn't get lost in details, didn't over-emphasize the slavery issue, but was not afraid to mention his roots; he emphasized the equality of all people; he warned of harder times ahead - no airy promises made; he was careful not to criticize the former administration. It was a well-measured speech, in my opinion.

Having just read the latest entries in the "Israel" thread, I wonder, if one could suspect a Jewish disappointment in this critique?

 

[Liberalman]

David Frum is a conservative Republican speechwriter.

I like to watch conservative speeches because it puts me to sleep faster.

Unlike the conservative Republican's bait and switch speeches

Obama told it like it was and gave more hope to the American people then Republicans ever could

As far as David Frum he should consider taking a refresher course in speech writing.

 

[JLM]

I don't think there's much to discuss here, the whole idea of his speech was that he said what HE wanted to say and what HE believed. Maybe Frum should have submitted an application to make a speech following Obamas and then he could have said what he wanted.

 

[Tyr]

David Frum is a conservative Republican speechwriter.

I like to watch conservative speeches because it puts me to sleep faster.

Unlike the conservative Republican's bait and switch speeches

Obama told it like it was and gave more hope to the American people then Republicans ever could

As far as David Frum he should consider taking a refresher course in speech writing.

Daivid Frum? The National Post? Both slightly right of the far right fringe. Good comedy, but poor journalism

 

[Risus]

Obama's speach was all BS anyway, like most of the things he spews...

 

[Kreskin]

Frum wrote speeches for Bush. Nuff said.

 

[dancing-loon]

David Frum is a conservative Republican speechwriter.

I like to watch conservative speeches because it puts me to sleep faster.

Unlike the conservative Republican's bait and switch speeches

Obama told it like it was and gave more hope to the American people then Republicans ever could

As far as David Frum he should consider taking a refresher course in speech writing.

Yes, he is a conservative. In his bio he says the following:

At age 14 he was a campaign volunteer for a New Democratic Party candidate, taking an hour-long bus/subway/bus ride each way to and from the campaign office in western Toronto. He would read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, a paperback edition his mother had given him. "My campaign colleagues jeered at the book — and by the end of the campaign, any lingering interest I might have had in the political left had vanished like yesterday’s smoke."

Now, why would they jeer? I read the book, too, and found nothing to jeer about.
The fact that he is a Republican is most likely the reason for his sharp criticism of Obamas speech.

 

[dancing-loon]

I don't think there's much to discuss here, the whole idea of his speech was that he said what HE wanted to say and what HE believed. Maybe Frum should have submitted an application to make a speech following Obamas and then he could have said what he wanted.

:lol: He should have!!

 

[Said1]

Wow. Talk about grasping at straws.