Swinging for the Fences

The power of oral rhetoric may lie in part upon the originality of formulation, carefully crafted phrases employing elements of alliteration and repetition tied together with the proper meter and timing. George W. Bush's Second Inaugural Address was a competently delivered speech, but its real resonance lies not with its beautiful poetry of phrase but in the fact that its ideas are not original. The speech's power, for those not gagging with political resentment, lies in the fact that its ideas grow organically out of our shared history and political culture. The speech is a masterful rephrasing and renewal of ideas over 200 hundred years old. Consider specific examples how Bush's speech calls upon our shared political literature and speeches.

• Bush specifically evokes that nation's founding documents when he asserts, "From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth." This is a restatement of Jefferson's phraseology in the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

• The country is politically divided and Bush reached out in the speech to heal these divisions: "We have known divisions, which must be healed to move forward in great purposes - and I will strive in good faith to heal them." This genuine call for reconciliation matches the intention but not quite the poetry of Lincoln's First Inaugural Address: "Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."

• The central theme of Bush's speech is the ascent of humanity towards the goal of freedom. Bush asserts that, "We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom." This is no less confident than the pledge in John F. Kennedy's Inaugural that, "We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

• Bush modestly evokes hope that these efforts are consistent with the will of God, but modestly acknowledges no special or unique knowledge of that will. Bush's admonition that, "God moves and chooses as He wills." parallels the warning in Lincolns Second Inaugural Address that "the Almighty has His own purposes."
  The copyright of the article Swinging for the Fences in Conservative Politics is owned by Frank Monaldo. Permission to republish Swinging for the Fences in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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