[MUSIC FADE]
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Good evening. As we speak, our nation faces a multitude of challenges.
BOB GARFIELD: Thus, on Tuesday evening commenced Barack Obama’s first address to the American public from the sober, hallowed, quintessentially presidential confines of the Oval Office. Presidents usually choose other settings as thematic backdrops, notably, George W. Bush declaring victory in Iraq aboard an aircraft carrier.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.
[AUDIENCE CHEERS]
BOB GARFIELD: But when the issues are grave enough, the Commander in Chief speaks to us from the center of his command.
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY: Good evening, my fellow citizens. This government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba.
PRESIDENT RICHARD M. NIXON: I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.
PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.
PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core with the tragedy of the Shuttle Challenger.
PRESIDENT GEORGE H. W. BUSH: Just two hours ago, allied air forces began an attack on military targets in Iraq and Kuwait.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Today our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.
BOB GARFIELD: Enter the Gulf Oil spill. Obama recognized a historic opportunity akin to the banking crisis, when Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel sagely observed, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. So with the dual goals of demonstrating that he was on the case and selling his energy policy built around capping carbon consumption, Obama sat at his massive desk and, in a mere 18 minutes covered the spill, the administration’s response, the environmental implications, BP’s liability and the notion of Deepwater Horizon as a historical turning point, an offshore Pearl Harbor, arousing a complacent society once and for all to free itself of carbon dependency. Yes, we can, the President said, because we have history on our side. We have American pluck and ingenuity on our side and, on top of that, God will hold our hand.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: The blessing is that He is with us always, a blessing that’s granted even in the midst of the storm.
BOB GARFIELD: The notices were not very good. John King of CNN suggested it was too political. Roger Simon on Politico.com said it was insufficiently detailed. John Dickerson in Slate said it was insufficiently confrontational and RedState.com, pulling out the long knives, compared it to Jimmy Carter’s so-called “malaise” speech. Youch!
But while pundits across the board agreed the speech was a dud, it seemed they couldn't quite put their fingers on the problem.
MALE CORRESPONDENT: I thought it was a great speech if you've been on another planet for the last 57 days, but what – was that what was needed tonight? Didn't…
MALE CORRESPONDENT: I didn't feel any energy in the first two-thirds of the speech in which he talked about cleanup. He’s not a cleanup guy. He’s a guy who dreams and who changes the country…
MALE CORRESPONDENT: I don’t sense executive command. And I thought that was the purpose of his speech tonight. Command…
BOB GARFIELD: What if the dissatisfaction had less to do with the text than the subtext or, more accurately, the subconscious? Having used his Politics Daily column to predict the substance of the speech pretty much point by point, Tuesday night Walter Shapiro noticed something disconcerting about the look of the thing.
WALTER SHAPIRO: I think that there is a reason why in selling his health care program, for example, he didn't use the Oval Office address. In talking about his Afghan policy, he didn't use the Oval Office address. I really think they realized that this is not a setting that shows him off to best advantage. Somehow, he looked small.
BOB GARFIELD: Yeah, behind that massive piece of furniture this vital, dynamic, telegenic president indeed appeared slight, gangly, almost adolescent. Is that the President of the United States trying to reassure and persuade us or the Secretary General of the model UN?
WALTER SHAPIRO: Here we have the worst environmental eco-catastrophe facing America, and we are talking about how a man looks sitting behind a desk. I hate to lower it to that level but we all know, for better or for worse, such atmospherics tend to be important in forming political perceptions.
BOB GARFIELD: But, of course, these things matter. In his campaign, Obama had tried once in a TV commercial to approximate White House trappings, but quickly abandoned the technique. There too he had looked diminished, sapped of the power, the electricity and the almost spiritual command he brings to a podium. In his Politico column, Roger Simon wrote, quote, “Maybe using the Oval Office upped the ante too much. Maybe we expected too much.”
[MUSIC UP AND UNDER] Right, and maybe we were disappointed, even though we weren't quite sure which expectations hadn't been fulfilled.
[MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
