IN HIS MANY MONTHS on the campaign trail, Barack Obama has distinguished himself as the finest orator in recent political memory. With such skills in this area, it's little wonder that Obama and his campaign have put talking on a pedestal. When Obama talks, he does great. Even his detractors can't deny it.
But there's a stark disconnect between the talking Obama and Obama the man of action. Or rather Obama the man of inaction. It says something rather profound about Obama that his most noteworthy campaign-related act to date has been to sit passively in a church pew for 20 years worth of Sundays.
As Jonathan V. Last has noted in these pages, there's a hollowness to Obama's rhetoric. When Obama delivered his famous (and effective) "just words" rejoinder to Hillary Clinton's barbs, the speech inadvertently revealed the emptiness of Obama's rhetoric. "All men are created equal" was indeed more than just words. It was more than "just words" because the men who signed the document that made that claim risked their lives to prove it. They backed their words up with war. In short, their accompanying actions are what made the phrase immortal. If the phrase had emanated from some effete intellectuals in a Boston drawing room who went back to being effete intellectuals after delivering their proclamation, guys like Barack Obama wouldn't be quoting them today.
The question with Obama remains exactly what actions he'll take to give real meaning to his fine speeches. Interestingly, it's not just Obama's right
wing critics who have complained about the emptiness of his rhetoric. Until the left finally circled its angry wagons around Obama over the last few weeks, you could find prominent left-wing bloggers complaining about Obama's failure to embrace progressive plans on an almost daily basis.
Of course, there's a certain cleverness to the strategy of combining inspiring rhetoric with no accompanying plan for action. I thought Obama's speech after his victory in the Iowa caucuses was the finest and most inspiring political address I had ever heard. Even though I didn't feel a tingling in my leg like Chris Matthews does on such occasions, Obama surely knows that if he's reaching heartless conservatives like me with his speeches, then he's got himself a launching pad to go after all sorts of voters. Why take the chance of turning off such voters by offering plans for action that they may not like?
My problem with Obama and my fear of a potential Obama presidency is that his ostentatious plans for inaction may be more than just a clever political strategy. If you look at his record, Obama seems to lack much fondness for action. His record is littered with evidence that he's a congenital ditherer who doesn't bother to offer actions that support his words. As a Senator, Obama has talked about bipartisanship but never actually done anything of a bipartisan nature. In the Illinois state legislature, Obama had all those "present" votes.
Still more disturbing are some of the prescriptions for purported action that the Obama campaign has issued. In this month's American Prospect, Team Obama spoke with Prospect senior staffer Spencer Ackerman to outline the bones of what will be the Obama Doctrine. I know, it all sounds very butch for a dovish modern Democrat--a genuine Doctrine! But unlike the Monroe Doctrine or the Truman Doctrine or the Reagan Doctrine or even the Bush Doctrine, the Obama Doctrine mentions nothing so quotidian as backing up foreign policy aims with force.
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