Barack's 24hr Transformation
By Graham Davies

The dust has settled: time for a measured judgement on Barack’s speech.

He had to show that he was a Doer as well as a Dreamer. And he just about managed it.

After only just surviving the plot initiated by George Bush and executed by the Chief Justice to make him fluff the oath, the speech got off to a stiff and slow start. We knew that he had to dampen high expectations just a little, but the first minute or two was very bland fare indeed.

But then the Obama Presentation Machine kicked in. This time he had decided he was driving a Bentley, not a Ferrari. The pauses were long and his voice tone was lofty. The intimate style that he uses in front of small audiences (300,000 or less) was gone. It’s hard to be engagingly warm with each member of an audience of 2 million people.

His real achievement was in being specific. This was an exercise in practical prose, not soaring poetry. He had some clever phrases (“we will reach out our hand if you will unclench your fist”) and he avoided “Yes We Can” platitudes. His micro-message was deliberately business-like: “it is time to get up, dust ourselves down and get on with the business of re-building our country”.

The key moment for me involved quite a pointed dig at his immediate predecessor, when he said “we reject the false choice between our safety and our ideals”. The real test for this speech was whether the noble ideas could translate into practical actions. When he suspended trials at Guantanamo Bay the very next day, he made an unequivocal statement of intent. Barack, man of vision, immediately became Barack, man of decision.

Now all he has to do is end two wars, broker a settlement in the Middle East, fix the economy, rescue the environment and create a credible Health Service.