Political Poetry

Want to know why Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee are doing so well?  Peter Schramm thinks he has an answer.

Fred Thompson’s comment "We just got our ticket to the next dance," reminds to say a brief word on the language used by both Huckabee and Thompson, and why it appeals to folks. Romney (and Hillary) speak in platitudes and abstractions, and this, in large measure, explains why their campaigns don’t seem to have energy. Their words don’t bring forth images. They are too abstract, stiff, cold. Her rhetoric always gives the impression that she is talking at you, rather than having a conversation with you. A candidate should be able to talk with people in a way that also gives the (honest) impression that he is having a conversation with not only them, but also with himself. This mode verges on poetry, not just rhetoric. I recollect Fred Thompson’s statement a few days ago that although he wanted to be president he really didn’t like campaigning (Peter Lawler noticed this); he was questioning himself, hence seemed very honest, authentic. (That it was misunderstood by the MSM is another matter). (snip)

This, I assert, is one of the reasons why Huckabee and Thompson are liked (and is also related to why Obama is liked, but that is a more complicated story) and explains why their supporters are more enthusiastic and why such candidates are said to be more "authentic." I don’t mean to say that the candidates’ positions, etc., don’t have anything to do with it, but "white papers" can’t seduce, only spoken words can in a campaign.

This lack of poetry in our language is one of the reasons, perhaps, people feel alienated and frustrated  about our politics.  That "seductive" language, that language that reforms our view of reality, that puts complicated matters into imagery that is both understandable and inspiring is sorely lacking.  As Prof. Schramm indicates, most of our politicians use rhetoric that rarely moves beyond insipidity.  This is what happens when your language is dictated to you by consultants who have market tested various appeals with multiple focus groups.  You are likely to get something that sounds average, trite,  pre-packaged.

Think of the language of Lincoln, surely the greatest poet president.  Phrases such as "mystical chords of memory," "last best hope of earth," "those who gave the last full measure of devotion," "with malice toward none, with charity for all," "a house divided cannot stand" (ok, he stole that last one), speak to the soul.   It was Mark Steyn (go to the 34th minute) recently who pointed out that the great songwriter E.Y. Harburg (you'll know him as the man who wrote the lyrics to "Over The Rainbow") argued that "music makes you feel a feeling, words make you think a thought, song makes you feel a thought."  Political rhetoric is similar to song.  Inspiring rhetoric marries those two appeals to both the head and the heart. While I might argue that Huckabee and Obama are more heart than head, Schramm's larger point remains. 

The dearth of poetic politics perhaps is a natural outcome of our post-literacy visual age.  We don't know how to read, say, or hear words, and so it is no accident that there are so few of them that are the least inspirational.

Update: Welcome to the National Review readers.  Tour our site and see if you like it.  And just for you I edited some of my typos.