Two great articles about Obama’s speeches *UPDATED*

Daniel Henninger and Dean Barnett have both written absolute excellent articles about Obama’s rhetorical style, both its assets and its limitations. I think you’ll find them very interesting reading, because they both point to the grip his words have on those in his audience, the fact that his speeches are remarkably lacking in substance and (from Barnett), the fact that, when he’s unanchored from his teleprompter, he’s an uninspiring speaker at best.

I also finally figured out what Obama’s speeches remind me of and, of all things, it’s an old Agatha Christie book known either as Destination Unknown or So Many Steps to Death. It is one of Christie’s sillier books. She wrote it during the Cold War and the premise is that scientists of all political stripes are vanishing and it’s suspected that they’re being enticed beyond the Iron Curtain. The heroine, Hilary, ends up being able to track them down to a huge compound in the Atlas Mountains. On her first night there, she and the assembled scientists (and wives), gather to hear the “director” give a speech:

Try to remember his words later, Hilary found herself unable to do so with any accuracy. Or perhaps it was that the words, as remembered, seemed trite and ordinary. But listening to them was a very different thing.

Hilary remembered once being told by a friend who had lived in Germany in the days before the war, how she had gone to a meeting in mere curiosity to listen “to that absurd Hitler” — and how she had found herself crying hysterically, swept away by intense emotion. She had described how wise and inspoiring every word had seemed, and how, afters, the remembered words in their actuality had seemed commonplace enough.

Something of the same kind was happening now. In spite of herself, Hilary was stirred and uplifted. The Director spoke very simply. He spoke primarily of Youth. With Youth lay the future of mankind.

“Accumulated Wealth, Prestige, Influential Families — those have been the forces of the past. But today, power lies in the hands of the young.

[snip]

There was more of it — all the same heady intoxicating stuff — but it was not the words themselves — it was the power of the orator that carried away an assembly that could have been cold and critical had it not beens swayed by that nameless emotion about which so little is known.

As it turns out, the “Director” is merely an actor, hired by the book’s actual malfeasors, to give speeches that say actually say nothing, but into which each listener can read his own beliefs. They’re sort of Rorschach speeches for the ear.

Now for the required disclaimer: I am not saying that Obama is Hitler. I am saying, however, that both his speaking style and the audience reaction to that style are typical of the connection between a demagogue and his audience. It’s not knew, it’s been around for a while, but in an age of inarticulate politicians, we’re unused to it and have no resistance.

(A little historical note: my father, who escaped Hitler’s Germany in 1935, heard Hitler speak at a public rally. And my father, who was Jewish and therefore unlikely to be swayed by Hitler’s words, noticed exactly what Hillary’s friend said: His speeches were commonplace. It was his connection with his audience that was out of the ordinary.)

UPDATE: In today’s Best of the Web, James Taranto comments on the number of stories about women fainting at Obama rallies. Reasoned appeals don’t make people faint. This is all about that weird demagogic connection, which bypasses reason entirely and goes into some scary emotional realm that shouldn’t have a place in American politics.