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Barack and Oral Sexiness
for release 03-21-08
Dallas, Texas
by Lightning Rod
When The Poet's Eye sees Barack Obama speak, it's like watching Tiger Woods play golf. Woods plays with clubs and Obama uses his mouth. They both exhibit resolve, determination and mastery of their craft. This mastery of craft is probably the reason we will see our first black president soon. America is SO ready to have a leader who sounds as if he is speaking his own words.
When George Bush was dubiously elected as president I was both appalled and amazed. I was appalled because it was evident that Bush was a handpuppet for powers that he didn't even understand. I was amazed that a healthy minority of Americans had chosen a president, the person who is designated as the spokesman for our nation, who was so grossly inarticulate.
When George Bush speaks, it's a painful experience. He sounds like a schoolboy struggling through text that he plagiarized from the internet and that he barely understands. I'm sure that the man is not a moron, after all he can ride a trail bike. But when he speaks, you get the picture of a weekend duffer trying to play on the PGA tour. He's hopelessly out of his league. He is hardly Tiger Woods. Nobody wants to be crude enough to say it, but this has been an embarrassment for America.
This question comes to the fore: Is being a great public speaker the best qualification for a president? Should policy or ideology be more important? My answer is that it sure the fuck helps to be a good speaker. Ask Ronald Reagan. His policies were fumbling at best but sometimes presence overpowers policy. Reagan didn't bring down the Berlin Wall with the Star Wars myth, he did it with his mouth.
Our president is the voice of our country. The words that come from his mouth can either galvanize the world or charge it with skepticism and doubt and suspicion and fear. Those words, and how they are said, sets our national mood and also influences how we are perceived around the world. Americans are sick of being perceived as inarticulate bullies. They are embarrassed. They want someone to speak for them who can speak with confidence and authority and intelligence. They want someone to speak their dreams and aspirations and not stumble over the words that they didn't invent.
Barack Obama is being smiled upon right now by history. He's the right man at the right time. He's our new golden boy. He's telling us what we want to hear in the way we want to hear it, like it comes from his mind and his heart working together.
Public speaking is about much more than shouting words or reading scripts. It's about assembling and articulating ideas and making an audience believe them. When Tiger Woods drops a shot one foot from the pin on the second stroke of a five par, you get the idea that he knows what he's doing. Obama speaks like he knows what he's doing. It's obvious that he has game when it comes to speaking. We'll see if he can back it up with the improvisational skills that are required to be a great president.
The Poet's Eye sees that if Barack Obama does it, he will do it with his mouth.
The words of the true poems give you more than poems,
They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war,
peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and every thing else,
They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes,
They do not seek beauty, they are sought,
Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing,
fain, love-sick.--Whitman, Song of The Answerer
