And here's the thing:to understand the next four years of American politics,you are going to need to understand something of the politics of ancient Greece and Rome.
There were many controversial aspects to this presidential election,but one thing is uncontroversial:that Obama's skill as an orator was one of the most important factors in his victory. The sheer number of people who heard him speak live set him apart from his rivals and,indeed,recall the politics of ancient Athens,where the public speech given to ordinary voters was the motor of politics,and where the art of rhetoric matured alongside democracy.
Obama bucked the trend of recent presidents not excluding Bill Clinton for dumbing down speeches. Elvin T. Lim's bookThe Anti-Intellectual Presidency:The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush,submits presidential oratory to statistical analysis. He concludes that 100 years ago speeches were pitched at college reading level. Now they are at grade 8 level.
Obama's speeches,by contrast,flatter their audience. His best speeches are adroit literary creations,rich (like those doric columns) with allusion,his turn of phrase consciously evoking lines by Lincoln and King,by Woody Guthrie and Sam Cooke. Though he has speechwriters,he does much of the work himself.
James Wood,professor of the practice of literary criticism at Harvard,has already performed a close-reading exercise on the victory speech forThe New Yorker. Can you imagine the same being done of a George Bush speech?
During the Roman republic (and in ancient Athens) politics was oratory. In Athens,questions such as whether or not to declare war on an enemy state were decided by the entire electorate (or however many bothered to turn up) in open debate. Oratory was the supreme political skill,on whose mastery power depended. Unsurprisingly,oratory was highly organised and rigorously analysed. The Greeks and Romans,in short,knew all the rhetorical tricks,and they put a name to most of them.
It turns out that Obama knows them,too. One of the best known techniques was the use of a series of three to emphasise points:the tricolon. (The most enduring example of a Latin tricolon is Caesar's:"Veni,vidi,vici" I came,I saw,I conquered.)