The Point: A man of words is a man of substance

By Mark Bowden

Inquirer Currents Columnist

Given the manifest rhetorical talents of Barack Obama, oratory itself has become an issue in this year's presidential campaign. Attacking the Illinois senator for being a great orator may be like condemning Ryan Howard for hitting home runs, but John McCain, being a military man, knows that sometimes the best move is a frontal assault on his enemy's strongest point.

Someone as polished and winning on the stump as Obama is vulnerable to accusations of being "just talk," an impression reinforced by his elite Harvard education and relatively slender personal history, not to mention his proclaimed desire to negotiate directly with our enemies. McCain, on the other hand, is a war hero, a man of action, volatile, and given to bellicosity. He may be no stem-winder, but one look at those arms, permanently bent by battle injury, and nobody will ever accuse him of being "just talk."

As the gun lap of the campaign fires, we are likely to hear many contrasts drawn between the supposed "man of action" and the supposed "man of words." Most people admire McCain's heroism, so let us consider for a moment the significance of words, of narrative, and why, as the Clintons have already discovered, they make Obama such a formidable political opponent.

Great public speech is not just smooth talk. The ability to shape a compelling narrative may be the central political art. When Thomas Paine wrote in February 1776 that "the period of debate is closed. Arms, as the last resource, decide the contest; the appeal was the choice of the king, and the continent hath accepted the challenge," he both defined and shaped a critical moment in the birth of a nation. Nine months later he was with Washington's retreating armies after a string of defeats when he wrote, "These are the times that try men's souls," defining the moment as a crisis, not a disaster, as the moment of truth, a critical turning point in the struggle for liberty.

These were just words, but they shaped out of messy and discouraging events a stirring possibility. Out of many competing shades of reality, Paine was choosing the one he preferred, in such a convincing and inspiring way that he rallied American spirits and arms. He crafted a coherent narrative of the past and present to steer his countrymen toward a brighter future.

So, too, in the last century did Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In a different time, Abraham Lincoln won the Civil War as much by articulating a new vision of America's past and future as he did by marshaling Union armies to defeat the rebellion. Political rhetoric at its best makes sense of the world and points us toward a better future. Part of this art concerns the character of the messenger - Lincoln's simple goodness, Churchill's tenacity, Roosevelt's canny humanity, King's decency and faith. A orator's greatness depends not just on his words, but also on his character. He is believed because he is authentic - he really is what he seems.

Obama has shown his extraordinary gift on many occasions, but never more so than at the Constitution Center here in March, in his "A More Perfect Union" speech, which, especially if he wins this election, will go in the books as one of the great ones in our history. Just when our politics seemed entirely captive to sound bites and the art of exploiting the latest "gaffe" or "reveal," Obama dug deep into our past to offer a powerful narrative about where we are as a historically racist but increasingly mixed-race nation, how we got here, and where we are going.

It is a story of imperfection striving upward, a nation of soaring ideals weighted down by slavery. It finds the central genius of our Constitution in its capacity for growth. In this view, blacks have played the vital historical role of forcing America to live up to its words.

"What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience, and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time," he said.

What gives Obama's narrative even greater power is that he, quite literally, embodies that story. His blended races contain both the past and future of this country, which in the lifetime of most alive today will become more "colored" than white. His success would be a milestone on this great national journey. This story of racial progress is one that my aging generation, black and white, grew up with. Some of my earliest memories of important national events were televised images of civil-rights demonstrations, and time has only clarified what those pictures showed: a brave struggle against deep-seated injustice. Practicing with the baseball team at my lily-white high school in the spring of 1968, I remember seeing distant smoke on the horizon as Baltimore burned in the aftermath of King's assassination, a reminder that America was a more troubled place than the homogeneous idyll our parents had fashioned for us in the suburbs.

If people are listening to his story, and comparing his life story to the story he is telling, that may be because millions of Americans have been waiting for someone to tell it. For years, it has been a story waiting for a teller. The desire for racial equality grows in each succeeding generation. It is a welcome and unstoppable trend.

Obama's election will not complete that struggle, of course, but his candidacy offers something that would feel like a Hollywood ending. Winning, of course, would be a beginning, not an ending, and I am not that impressed with Obama's policies or self-touted good judgment - he was, for instance, clearly wrong to oppose the surge of troops in Iraq, and McCain was rather bravely right. But I am struck by the number of white, middle-aged people I meet who say that while they disagree with Obama on many issues and worry that he is too hidebound a liberal, they intend to vote for him because of what his election would mean.

If Barack Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the sweep of that tale.

Geraldine Ferraro got in trouble for a similar comment five months ago, and it does slight the man's considerable talent and electoral accomplishment, but I suspect that like most "gaffes," the main reason it caused a stir was because it is true. McCain's camp may disparage Obama as just talk, but I suspect it is about to discover the real power of narrative.

Mark Bowden is a former staff writer at The Inquirer and is now national correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly. Contact him at mbowden@phillynews.com.