Obama speech underplays strikes in Syria

 

by Peter Paskale

It wasn’t a speech. It wasn’t even an address. It was a book report.

Speaking today on the White House lawn as Marine One spooled up it’s engines behind him, President Obama tripped-up the media. What was billed as a ten minute speech on last night’s Syria actions against ISIL,  was delivered in just 3 minutes 11 seconds. Obama was already striding back to the White House door before TV news crews even realised that the speech was over.

What happened? For a President whose foreign policy credentials are so often doubted, you would think that he might have wanted to make a little more out of the moment.

What happened was a delicate, if dull, attempt to keep a coalition together. A coalition in Congress, and an unusual coalition in the Arab world. Both are exceptional and crucial.

Lets consider the speech for just one moment. The president paid tribute to the armed forces involved. He paid tribute to the Arab nations who joined the attacks. He laid out the rationale for the attacks. End of story.

We heard no moments of pride, and it was almost devoid of rhetorical flourishes. All of Obama’s usual speech elements were, oddly, missing.

The clues to Obama’s mission in this speech were the words “bipartisan”, which occurred twice, ‘coalition’, which occurred once, and a special-guest appearance by that horribly tired old cliche “shoulder to shoulder”. These four phrases comprised the closest that we could hear to any form of a dominant message, and that message was ‘let’s stay together’.

We did receive one slight rhetorical flourish, and that was when the president used a form that carries the marvellous name of Dirimens Copulatio – it’s the “not only, but also” figure. The purpose of Dirimens is to amplify a point – to make things appear bigger. We heard it in the president’s phrase “…this makes it clear that this is not America’s fight alone.” Again – this is a shove towards that topic of bipartisanship.

It must have been tempting for White House speech writers to incorporate a couple of political point-scorers on behalf of the president. He’s taken such heat in recent weeks and months for a seemingly toothless foreign policy. When we’ve just seen American missiles and jets pounding a repulsive terrorist group, then surely this is the time to notch up at least a couple of political bonus points?

Absolutely not. Had the president attempted to take any form of political credit for last night’s attacks, what would then have happened to that rare bi-partisanship? It would have fractured – both at home, and potentially between the growing coalition of Gulf States.

That’s why we got a book-report on the White House lawn, and not a speech, and for today’s needs that was just what was needed. It will hold the coalition together.

Now let’s see how he does at the UN. Will we get more of the same, or will there be a change of tone?

Dirimens copulatio and LBJ’s War on Poverty Speech

by Peter Watts

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the speech in which President Lyndon B. Johnson declared war on poverty.

Listening to a section of it on my car radio this morning, I heard the phrase:

“Our aim is not only to relieve the symptoms of poverty but to cure it – and above all to prevent it.”

That’s dirimens copulatio, which is the “not only…. but” figure.

Rhetoric is a tangled heap. The past 3000 years have allowed the magic word spells we call rhetorical figures to be defined and re-defined so many times that you often find multiple definitions for the same thing. Dirimens is the ultimate example because 2000 years ago Cicero was already disagreeing with Aristotle about exactly what it was.

I’m going with Cicero’s definition because frankly, it makes more sense. He said that the purpose of dirimens was to amplify a topic, making it seem larger and more striking. Hence the format:

• We’re not only going to do x, but we’re going to do y as well.
• Not only do people suffer from x, but they have to suffer y as well.
• You’ll not only win x, but we’re going to throw in y as well.

Instead of dirimens copulatio, maybe we should call it the game-show figure, because it’s exactly what a game-show host would say to rouse the thrashing zombie-mob in the audience to even wilder applause:

“And tonight, not only will you win this car, but we’ll even throw in a free year of gas”

Next time you’re making a presentation, try a dirimens copulatio. Not only will it emphasise your point, but it’s straight-forward as well.

But be careful how you Google it. It’s surprisingly easy to mis-spell!