Did President Obama achieve his political goals in his first State of the Union address to Congress? That debate continues apace. But according to RD contributor Daniel Schultz in this excerpt adapted from his forthcoming book, Changing the Script (Ig Publishing, 2010), the president failed to articulate anything truly new or truly hopeful —Ed.
To have hope, the people must be able to trust that there can be meaningful change. This is precisely why the 2008 Obama campaign ran against the policies of the Bush Administration under the rubric of “hope.” Modest, incremental change motivates no one.
Old Testament scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann says that when “serious hopefulness” is locked out of the public conversation, the consciousness created to serve the interests of the powerful cannot be pierced, and the idea of real change cannot be entertained.
What is most needed is what is most unacceptable—an articulation that redefines the situation and that makes way for new gifts about to be given. Without a public arena for the articulation of gifts that fall outside our conventional rationality, we are fated to despair. We know full well the makings of genuine newness are not included among these present pieces. And short of genuine newness life becomes a dissatisfied coping, a grudging trust, and a managing that dares never ask too much. (The Prophetic Imagination, p. 63)
This is what Obama seems to have been shooting for—and failed to achieve. Where his rhetoric soared on the campaign trail, in the State of the Union it seemed pinched and small-bore. Perhaps the president, himself a talented writer, should have exerted more control over the drafting of the speech. The basic problem, however, was not rhetorical but conceptual. By hedging his bets and working within a conservative framework, Obama missed an opportunity to summon the nation to what theologian John F. Haught has called God’s “gracious, extravagant, and surprising future.”
The president seems to have misunderstood the intertwined tasks in articulating a vision of “serious hopefulness.” The prophetic task is to accept what has come to an end, and to anticipate alternatives as they emerge. As a strictly religious matter, this is helping the people understand that God has more blessings in store for them, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
The progressive task in articulating hope is to assert, against the forces that limit, harass, and dismiss reform, that it is not only possible, but necessary. Without constant agitation for justice and equality, our economy will never move from the stasis that creates financial catastrophe. This is more than keeping politicians’ feet to the fire. It is bringing into the political conversation a sense of new possibilities and alternatives, no easy task in a public realm that makes a fetish of realism and greets visions with cynicism and indifference.
Obama did some of this, as when he argued for the creation of green jobs, or talked about the need for financial reform. But as some commentators have noticed, he failed to use some key words to recognize the need for economic justice: “foreclosure,” “poor,” “low-income,” “hungry.” And as Paul Krugman notes, Obama’s insistence that the government “tighten its belt” not only rehearses the very same rhetoric used by Republican leaders, it rejects the basic premise of Keynsian economics: that governments should spend more, not less, in a critical economic period.
Furthermore, for prophets and progressives alike, the work is to establish a sense of hope that eludes the control of powerful forces. To be kept in the unchanging order of the “royal consciousness” only breeds despair. The people need to hear that the powers that be are not in final control of their destiny. Again, this is no easy task. Real hope is a frightening, disorienting business, as are new beginnings. There is no guarantee that a reordered economic system can be achieved. In fact, there’s every reason to expect that the current system would reestablish itself.
In order to articulate a vision of hope that will energize people to overcome their fear, prophetic speech must penetrate the numbness and despair that keep them frozen in place.
Prophets know what others do not: that God has a prior claim on the people. It is that claim—and God’s zeal in protecting and upholding it—that constitutes reality, not the smoothly textured lies of power. While that is not the kind of pronouncement typically made in a State of the Union address, there was a missed opportunity even in secular terms. The president could have reminded his audience that their fellow citizens are more than the sum of their economic parts. He did so only in the most muted of tones at the end of the speech, touching on Americans’ “spirit of determination and optimism” in the face of adversity.
Prophetic speech must also recognize the power of language to “shape consciousness and define reality.” If the royal consciousness is be unseated, its control over our vocabulary must be contested, its largely unseen effects exposed. This is hardly a radical insight for those who have studied political struggle, especially in the communications age. Bloggers have done a particularly good job of processing the official rhetoric of politicians and the media to expose how it supports oppression and exploitation.
There is no field more ripe for redefinition than our current economic language, nor any more powerful language for redefining it than scripture. The ever-brilliant blogger, ‘billmon,’ proved this point by mocking a particular euphemism for official corruption through a simple substitution of Bible passages. Thus Deuteronomy 16:19 became:
The unemployment rate is at a record high point, but what's even higher is the rate of underemployment.
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