the audacity to speech

i might just be thinking out loud but: people don’t want to be led because they are stupid or ignorant, people want to be led because they don’t want tot do the leading per se. they have much better things to do, like watch the super bowl (i root for the giants). but once in a while, these abiding citizens need some form of status report. in good or bad, they want their leader-in-chief to tell them how things are going. they want to know the state of the union and if there is any need of concern. they don’t really know why but they feel it’s appropriate. they deserve it. some political analyst would probably say something around: the leader has the legitimacy from the people for the elected period of time but that don’t mean he’s free to roam. this is interesting in terms of speech and communication because in every election the candidate talks promises but in the state of the union the candidate-elect actually sums up what he’s actually done. it’s about this balance put in a formal speech.

now, i don’t really care what obama had to say in his last sotu. he’s done enough because he killed osama and it’s not my union to begin with, but what i love about american politics is the due diligence in writing the speech and the analysis that follows in the media. in sickness or health, the speaker needs to lay out words in a proper order, he needs to choose what to talk about, he needs to pick words. the state of the union becomes a statement of the unionee (i know the word doesn’t exist but it should).

here’s the video released by the white house summarily explaining the drafting of this years sotu. watch young favreau joined by david plouffe (taking the shift from axelrod) knee deep in speech writing mechanism. all followed by an orators delivery by the president and the analysis of words by pundits. granted that obama used the word i a lot more than lincoln and that the teleprompter always lingers on the same ending it’s fascinating how they actually do give a fuck about what he has said.

here in romania we have issues, but we don’t like to talk about them. we like to shout, whisper, point fingers. we don’t like to speech about them. we don’t like to give them proper names. we don’t like to communicate them. we like to explain ourselves, to find excuses, to mumble, to refer and defer, to pass the subject on.

just imagine that the battle of gettysburg had more american casualties that d-day and lincoln summarized it all and freed the slaves in a couple of sentences. the gettysburg address has only 270 words and speechwriters know it by heart. do we know avram iancu’s speeches by heart? or titu maiorescu’s? just think about it. long live sam seaborn.