Whatever is to blame for the appeal of Donald Trump, who graces our cover this week (if that’s the word), it certainly isn’t his eloquence.
The point is made for us by Barton Swaim in the course of his survey of American styles of oratory, as heard in, particularly, inaugural presidential addresses, from John Adams and Abraham Lincoln to Ronald Reagan and beyond.
There was a time – according to the “erudite and insightful” study Swaim reviews – when audiences not put to sleep by foggy logic and propositions they didn’t believe had their patriotic and altruistic feelings aroused instead.
But Trump’s “choppy, jokey, vaguely belligerent” chat is “the repudiation of the Great American Speech” – and perhaps that is just what Americans want.
(Thumb sketch of review of Stephen Fender’s The Geat American Speech: Words and monuments)
Let’s double-check those last words. So far, Trump has perfect pitch for millions of us. That’s partly the age we live in, when eloquence has been badly wounded.
In addition, we’ve been hearing uber-nonsense — “foggy logic and propositions [so many of us] didn’t believe” — from the tongue-tied (except when tele-prompted) presidential elocutionist long enough to make many of us ripe for rough approximations that do touch our “patriotic [if not] altruistic feelings.”
Blithe Spirit 