The Decline of the American Orator

We used to produce fine orators, capable of stemwinders in this country. Daniel Webster, William Jennings Bryan, Teddy Roosevelt, Robert LaFollette, John L. Lewis, Martin Luther King. Unfortunately, they are now few and far between, and notice as the list goes on, they became more and more, with the exception of Roosevelt, outsiders.

I don't think we've had a politician of either party capable of giving a stemwinder since Mario Cuomo. Even Reagan and Clinton, both obviously fine speakers were not particularly good at the full-out off the cuff passionate red-meat speech, Reagan because he wasn't good at lengthy, spontaneous discourse; Clinton because he wasn't particularly capable of being pissed off for 45 minutes at a time.

This article from the UK Independent hightlights this fact (in somewhat nationalistic terms) of how Britains Parliamentary System produces much better scrappers than we do.

We tend to see politics as a public bloodsport. In the US politics is as brutal as anywhere. But the violence usually takes place off-stage, in the lobbying process, in the money game, in the ruthless manipulation of scandal. True, every four years there are presidential election candidates' "debates". But - with the exception of Bill Clinton - every recent American president would have been slaughtered weekly if he had to face Prime Minister's Questions. On the public stage, US politicians are not accustomed to serious challenge.

Take Norm Coleman. He is a smooth, upwardly mobile Republican senator who is making a name for himself at the helm of the Permanent Sub-Committee for Investigations, not least because of his call for Kofi Annan to step down as United Nations secretary general over the scandal. As Mr Coleman knows, no American politician ever lost a vote by bashing the UN.

A telegenic former big city mayor, he looks younger than his 55 years. Every senator, it is said, looks in the mirror and sees a future president. And who knows, maybe a White House run is in Mr Coleman's future. But on Tuesday, to UK and US observers alike, he looked way out of his depth, manifestly unprepared for what was coming when Mr Galloway began to testify.

Perhaps he believed that a smooth ride would be ensured by the traditional deference accorded the Senate (which is fond of referring to itself, with barely a trace of irony, as "the world's greatest deliberative body"). In fact, proceedings only served to underline the average senator or congressman's ignorance of the world beyond America, be it the underlying realities of the Middle East, or the polemical ways of British public life.

"If in fact he lied to this committee, there will have to be consequences," said Mr Coleman after the encounter, in the manner of a petulant schoolboy outgunned in an argument, but who gamely insists on having the last word, however feeble, in an attempt to retrieve his dignity.

And like the hapless junior senator from Minnesota, the US media too did not know quite what had hit it. For all its imperfections, Congress - in particular the Senate part of it - commands a rigid respect. Coverage of it tends to be strait-laced and humourless. Into this primly arranged china shop crashed George Galloway, to deliver a public broadside against US policy in Iraq, and the US system, unmatched since Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

In Britain, the prospect of such a confrontation would have sketch-writers and columnists salivating days in advance. But that is not the American way.

We really must do something about the orator gap.

It simply stuns me that Coleman actually thought he could get the upper hand in a confrontation with Galloway. To invite him to present, in his fiery prophet mode, which appears to be on 24/7, before a panel of traditionally mealy-mouthed, coddled American Senators is the ultimate in stupidity. No way an American Senator wins that battle, ever. As I've said before, Galloway has been wrong about much in his life, but has been stupendously right on one thing. On a smaller scale he has that in common with Churchill in mirror fashion. Churchill was wrong about colonialism time and time again, he was an old 19th century Brit not seeing that times had changed, from woman's suffrage to India. Yet, on one thing he was spectacularly right, and he turned out to be the right in a spectacular and tragic fashion.

What Galloway is right about is less spectacular on the scale of world history -- at least so far thankfully -- Iraq, but it doesn't make it any less correct. And for more than 1,600 american soldiers dead; for as many as 100,000 Iraqi civilians the results are just as catastrophic as any war ever fought, and just as unjust.