The Devaluation of Oratory in Democracy
President Joe Biden could not have given a speech more diametrically opposed in rhetorical power and quality to President Zelenskyy this week. Biden’s State of the Union will be historically remembered as a mix of tepid and strange, like re-using a tea bag in hot water drawn from the tap.
The State of the Union speech is not required by the United States constitution. Here’s the section that is relevant:
Article 2, Section 3:
He [The President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information on the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
This was done in writing for most of the history of the United States. It was Woodrow Wilson who first started to use it politically, as something to get attention back on the President and Presidency for political gain. Since then, it’s become a tradition, one that I think we might consider doing away with.
Biden’s speech was harmful to the importance of rhetoric. Specifically, it reinforced a definition of rhetoric as inert, inactive, exclusive, expository, and descriptive (opposed in this case to constitutive) of the world.
After the refreshing power of public address demonstrated recently by Zelenskyy, who should be on everyone’s mind – The Ukrainian Ambassador to the United Nations, the Kenyan Ambassador, and others come to mind – Biden’s speech seems tone-deaf to where we are in terms of public address. When speech becomes obligation we are doomed as a democracy. This is what Biden’s speech represented: An indicator to go look at other indicators. Directions on where to go. No attempt to invite any kind of conversation, interpretation, or thought. The State of the Union should be more than that, although yes I do realize that most of the time they are not very good.
It’s time to eliminate the State of the Union, or demand something better from our President.
Here are some issues and concerns I had with the speech:
No cadence or fluidity: There didn’t seem to be any indication that President Biden was interested in holding for applause, letting his words sink in, or letting the attending audience participate in the creation of the meaning of his speech. It’s a nice powerful bit of visual seriousness and support when the President waits for members of Congress to express through cheering their support of an idea – or at least indicate their will toward an issue that was brought up.
The Absence of the Rhetorical Use of Silence and Acclimation: When applause tried to occur, Biden just powered through the applause. He didn’t wait. It was very awkward, and really detracted from any sort of powerful moment he wanted to convey. He didn’t seem to care, or be aware, that these moments work very well when played back on clips in the national media. There’s no circulation here. Like a first-year university student in a public speaking course, he couldn’t wait to get to the end.
Expository not Argumentative: The speech never built up anything. It was like a school report. Here’s this number, that one. No indication of how we are supposed to think about it, but more vitally: No indication as to how we should feel. Even moments where he was trying to get us to move thoughtfully or emotionally came off flat, such as “We’re all going to be OK.” The way this was delivered and offered conveyed a feeling of worry to me, as I’m sure it did to many people.
A Flat Consistent Tone: There were a few moments where Biden’s tone of voice should have shifted to offer proof through conveying feeling, which Aristotle called pathos. The speech was like a bad pop song, mixed to the maximum levels of the recording with no quiet spots and no loud ones. A pivotal moment might have been to switch from a defiant, powerful tone when discussing Putin and Ukraine to something more somber when discussing the losses Americans faced across the board during the pandemic. There were many moments to shift tone to indicate the feeling, or the part of the narrative that America was in, and how we were overcoming those moments. All lost on Biden, who was giving a school report.
No place for us: We were told who we are, what we think, what we feel, and what we believe. There were zero constitutive moments here for us to think, feel, or imagine who we are or who we could be. We were told things were bad, and getting better. We were told that investment is increasing. We were not invited to invest. We were simply told how things are.
Rhetoric’s primary power is that of imagination and the creation of possibility in the minds of the audience. We can take this in a number of directions, but for the purposes of this essay, let’s limit it to the idea of feeling immersed in something. Biden could have, through tone, delivery, and making a space for us to think and consider things – provide our own views along side his – immersed us in an America that faces and faced unprecedented threats but is seeing it through. We could have been right there, seeing the dawn, participating through our thoughts in feelings in the change. But instead of this dip in the ocean of potential, Biden showed us the rhetorical equivalent of a home video of a tropical fish tank. Here it is; accept it as it is. If you want to see more, go there and look at it yourself.
This kind of poverty of rhetoric impacts democracy by taking the primary instrument of democracy – the oration, the sharing of ideas through speech – and rendering it into an obligatory ceremony of listing supposed facts. The most vital part of democracy is the ability to share perspective, but not as fact – as invitation to imagine something otherwise. Any nationally televised speech by a chief executive to the assembled members of congress should not just be political ritual, but a model or an ideal of sorts as to how to use our words to reach others. Stop listing accomplishments; start crafting possibility. Give the people something to hold and make their own, something to build their own ideas off of in their communities and families. Biden didn’t just give a bad or confusing speech; he actively harmed the role of oratory in a supposedly democratic system.