I have to disagree with one small thing about Ezra’s otherwise excellent post—-I think Obama’s speech last night was incredibly inspiring.  Since Reagan especially, Americans have been conditioned to think “inspiring” looks like empty but well-spoken platitudes, but history actually shows that the greatest speeches are the ones made during hard times, to buck people up for the fight ahead.  Sure, the media will try to handicap Obama by comparing him to Reagan and suggesting that he would have been better to just lie to people about the state of the economy, because that’s more “inspiring”, but I prefer the Churchill method of going straight for the “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, etc.” method of speaking during hard times.  And that’s what Obama did.  Marc described it as a half time speech when you’re 21 points down, and while I usually blanch at sports metaphors, I thought that one was apt.

Pop quiz: Who said what?

In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market.

Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

It was clear that Obama realized that he shouldn’t reinvent the wheel—-FDR got us through one depression, so look to him as the model.  (The first was Obama’s; the second FDR’s first inaugural speech.)  If you read the entire text of the famous “fear itself” speech, you see that Obama used it as a model.  The theme was the same: I’m not going to bullshit you about how bad the situation is, but I believe that we as a nation will recover and persevere.  I’m going to explain how we got here, and where we’re going and not pretend that these things are above your head.  You the citizens and I are a team. 

The educational aspects of the speech initially bothered me, but I realized that it was actually more than just educating the public on the hows and whats, but kneecapping the Republican spin.  By explaining the facts instead of reaching for empty, soaring rhetoric, he made it hard for Republicans to hit back with a bunch of lies.  Not that I don’t think that Jindal’s original draft of his response speech was good—-at this point, Republicans have to speak in such heavily coded language that they’re incoherent to people listening without a translation sheet that explains how on earth Katrina could be considered a positive thing for Republicans, for instance—-but I think it was made even more incoherent because he had to do some quick rewrites.  Obama didn’t play along with the he said/he said game, where Obama says, “I won’t raise your taxes,” and Jindal says, “Yes he will,” and you believe who you want.  Obama explained who gets a tax cut and who gets their taxes raised.  Jindal couldn’t, after that, claim that he’s going to raise your taxes, because at that point it’s obvious he means, “He’s going to raise my taxes so you can pay your rent.  Screw you; I want a Ferrari.”  Not very politic, that argument.  And while I figure most people who watched the speech are up enough on the news to know that we’re having a credit crisis, truth is even most of those people don’t know what that means and why the inability to borrow money would have such widespread ramifications.  After watching that speech, you can’t not get it.

Most importantly, for our purposes in the Living Room Of Leftist Doomsayers, Obama talked about the endemic problems that made this collapse inevitable, and will make future collapses inevitable if we don’t quit with the band-aid solutions and really start to rebuilt our society.  The car comment undercut that—-if we’re talking big change, we should at least think big on getting people out of the cars and into greener forms of transportation—-but still, I think he was sincere.  You don’t make bold statements like that unless you’re trying to prepare the country for something.  Obviously, from the rest of the speech, the fight he’s setting us up for first is the universal health care fight.  I’m stoked that Congress and the administration realize that they have to move now, before Republican naysayers and their friends in the media sow enough doubt and dishonesty that it makes it much harder to pass.  Democrats have to know, also, that for health care to have positive effects on their re-election and consolidation of power, it has to be in effect by 2010, so that people can express their gratitude at the polls.  And has to really be working by 2012, when Obama’s up for re-election.  That they’re leaking information about their intentions to bloggers just shows that they’re gearing up for the fight.  Universal health care is exactly the sort of big change that Obama’s speaking about.  Let’s hope there’s more on the horizon.

All in all, the speech made me giddy, though part of that might be Jindal’s massive suckitude in the Republican reply.  I’ve never been inspired by a President, or probably any sitting politician, like that.  I’m sure most of us have spent some time in the past few months laying in bed, worrying about the uncertain future.  I often wonder how the people during the Depression must have managed, and if it’s true that they really did draw comfort from FDR’s speeches and fireside chats.  After that speech, which owes so much to the blueprint laid out by FDR, I really see how much comfort they did draw from it.  I felt a little bit better, like we’re really going to get through this.  Like Nancy Pelosi, I found myself grinning, because it’s such a relief to have something going right when we’ve become so accustomed to everything turning to shit.

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