What makes for a credible public voice? A key ingredient is truth.
The crucial difference between Winston Churchill and Baghdad Bob was not their nations’ respective fortunes in war. It was that Churchill was open with the British public about the difficulties his nation faced. He could have tried to pretend otherwise, but he wisely chose not to diminish his own credibility with happy talk.
This comparison comes to mind because President Obama’s address Tuesday night suffered from his enduring failure to understand this. Obama is reputed to have a talent for soaring rhetoric — although can you think of anything memorable he said that wasn’t also risible? — but he is hopeless at connecting with people by acknowledging their real concerns about domestic and international problems.
To be clear, we share Obama’s view that America is not in some kind of hopeless decline, not even now. But he cannot credibly make the case for this by acting as though his own administration’s failures don’t exist, and downplaying the very real threats facing the nation.
Perhaps the bitterest dose of happy-talk came when he, almost unbelievably, praised the scandal-plagued Department of Veterans Affairs. That agency’s poisonous and self-serving bureaucracy knowingly left hundreds of thousands of veterans waiting without care. It probably caused many to die early. In a long-gone era when governments were able to control information, he might have gotten away with it. But for any informed person his comments were jarring.
More alarming perhaps was the complete failure to mention North Korea’s recent belligerence. It is true, as he noted, that the United States is the “most powerful nation on Earth.” But unfortunately that probably serves as little deterrent for an aggressive and mentally unstable dictator who claims to have a hydrogen bomb and might well have the capability to deliver it to Obama’s hometown of Honolulu.
Contrary to Obama’s happy-talk, American power, however defined, already failed on his watch to deter a much less unstable tyrant from invading and annexing a portion of Ukraine. When Obama said that “no nation dares to attack us or our allies because they know that’s the path to ruin,” he was simply telling a lie. The United States promised to protect Ukraine, but it did not do so, and this was evidently obvious to Russia that this would be so.
Likewise, Obama gave passing mention to his nuclear deal with Iran, ignored the fact that Iran has already twice ignored the deal without suffering any consequences. Nor was there any mention in Obama’s speech of the incident that the whole nation was discussing just hours before he stepped up to the podium — the arrest and detention of 10 U.S. Navy personnel by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards who were operating in the Persian Gulf.
Obama could have mounted a much better defense of his time in office had he acknowledged such basic failures. He could have explained why they could not be avoided, or why they are a necessary evil, or part of a bigger plan — or something. But he didn’t. He treated the country with characteristic contempt, assuming that he could ignore issues that worry people, and get on with what he likes to do most, which is to scold and hector America about how it can be better than it is.
Thankfully, this was Obama’s last State of the Union speech and the country will not have to endure another such dispiriting evening.
