Obama and Palin: Astaire and Rogers, after the divorce?
Last Sunday I called Palin an “Obama for the Right.” At the time, I was referring to her similar lack of national-level political experience, as well as the accusations that she’d been nominated for her femaleness and he for his blackness.
But now that I’ve heard her address the crowd at the convention, I see that, like Obama, she has a tremendous gift for delivering a speech. As I’ve written here, I’m not one for admiring political oratory. Except for Churchill, it pretty much leaves me cold. But I can recognize a good (no, not Churchillian) speaker when I see one. Both Obama and Palin fit that bill.
Their styles, however, are diametrically opposed. He is cool and cerebral, but soaring and majestic. His deep baritone voice is part of the appeal; perfect for speechmaking. She has a more ordinary timbre with a slightly Fargo-esque accent. She relies more on humor and “just-folks” charm, while conveying a sense of authenticity about her common-woman origins that reminds me of the best of country music.
There’s an old saying about Ginger Rogers: she did everything Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels. Reminds me of Palin vs. Obama, in a bizarro sort of way. Although Palin and Obama are most definitely not dance partners, their characteristics remind me of the different strengths and vibes Rogers and Astaire brought to their art: he, the partrician, suave, skinny, cool guy; she, the forthright, scrappy, beautiful, girl-next-door who could match him step-for-step.
The undeniable strength and appeal Palin demonstrated last night must be hard for Obamaphiles to stomach. Till now, they had the corner on the fresh blood, the fresh face, and the oratorical chops. Where did she come from?
[NOTE: This is funny:
It’s as if some mad right-wing scientists designed and built an android to counter all the things that Obama is. Can she be real? Can it be that there was this actual human entity, on ice in Alaska, waiting for this moment to be thawed out and set loose in the lower 48?]
Ginger Rogers is from Fort Worth, Texas – my hometown! She was an actual human entity, kept on a horse in Texas, waiting for the proper moment to be set loose on Hollywood …
Obama studied the preacher’s style in black churches. The YouTube clip of him speaking interlaced with scenes from the movie Malcom X show this perfectly.
Palin has the natural cadence of a lunchroom bull session, perfected. There’s a sense of humor and shared experience that people recognize instantly.
Great quote about the android. It’s right on. It’s just too good for the Republicans to be true. A perfect match for the Democrats’ man.
Here’s another quote from the Althouse blog
“There is nothing more amusing this morning than reading the comments on the New York Times about how terrible Sarah Palin was giving her speech last night.
“She is gifted in this arena. In Clinton, Obama territory. Why people can’t begin by acknowledging that – whatever their political stripe – is simply an indicator of blindness caused by hyper-partisanship”
My thoughts exactly right down to the Obama and Clinton comparisons. Bill Clinton’s speech at the 2004 convention was, for me, incredible. I enjoyed Guiliani’s speech last night but she blew everyone away.
As for biased critiques, the relentless attacks on SP — by women — on Twitter is surprising.
To me, it seems that women in general can only benefit from the fact that someone like Sarah Palin is being hailed by conservatives as their nominee for high public office.
But not too many people seem to have celebrated the fact that a black woman became the Secretary of State after a black man so I’m not that surprised that partisan issues can get in the way.
The Democrats don’t want to give equal opportunity to people. THey simply wish to use the issues of race and sex to gain total power over this nation. What they will do with that power, however, will have nothing to do with what people would consider “classical liberal’ values.
And when I say classical, I don’t mean pre FDR times. I mean ANcient Greece classical.
Forgive me for going on. One thing I hated was that we’re going to shake up Washington baloney. The guy they voted for has been in office for the last eight years hasn’t he?
If someone is a governor she makes a big deal about being an outsider. If someone has been a senator for many years, he brags about his experience. It’s such a transparent ploy. My guess is that the Americans who listen to these speeches are not the dumbest or most ignorant people in the country. So, why should anyone think they will take these insincere gambits seriously.
Same as the maverick comments. How many times does an audience have to be told that John McCain is a maverick who is going to shake things up.
Final point. Pretty distant hugs SP gave McCain. Was that an anti-sexist move since he wouldn’t hug a man. Or was it anti-sexual. It surely wasn’t warm.
For me, listening to political speeches is akin to watching advertising. 99% of the time, you watch and you’re always conscious that it’s an ad, even if you can appreciate, Oh, that was a nice touch. Then, once in a great while, there’s an ad (or a speech) that breaks through that filter and feels genuine, and you say, Wow, that was a great ad (or maybe you say nothing at all and just subtly change your perception of the product being advertised).
Neither Bill nor Hillary has ever come close to doing this for me, too much calculation. I always feel like they’re trying to sell me aluminum siding. Even Reagan never did it for me, just too self consciously folksy. Yes to all the greats: MLK, Kennedy, Churchill. For me, Obama’s speech on race was in this class. His acceptance speech was okay, but too much of a laundry list. So he can’t even pull it off all the time.
As for Palin, again, I’m not part of the base, but I don’t see it. Her delivery was amateurish and her voice is strident. Also, there was a curious schizophrenia to the speech, perhaps due to the melding of a man’s voice (Mathew Scully, who wrote it) with the ‘folksier’ elements bolted on to tailor it to her story.
One more thing. This idea that Obama-philes are secretly quaking in their boots about Palin is not something I have personally heard from anyone, and I’ve talked to a few Obama fans about this. Perhaps she’s being misunderestimated but just to convey that it’s not something I have heard from anyone except those on the right insisting it MUST be happening. (Now you all can say, “Hah, overconfident liberal elites, we’ve got you right where we want you!” Perhaps.)
I have a question to anyone who knows…
We’ve seen times when Obama and Palin’s teleprompter failed.
When Palin’s failed, she kept going on smoothly.
When Obama’s fails, he stops, stutters . and waits for it to come back.
Now it’s my little theory that Obama’s speech are just flim flam by his Rasputin David Axlerod. That nothing in his history backs up the ideas he expreses in his speeches.
Also, is it just me, but I think I notice that Obama never talks in the same vocabulary when he’s donig interviews or q&a as opposed to his speeches.
So to me I believe his speeches are something totally foreign to him, but he can read them well when he has the words.
Outside of a speech he reverts back to his Chicago self.
I dont know enough about the woman to notice these differences but her history more than justifies her rhetoric.
Recruiting Animal makes a good point:
“My guess is that the Americans who listen to these speeches are not the dumbest or most ignorant people in the country.”
Who is really watching the conventions besides us political junkies, and haven’t many of us already made up our minds? My guess is that Palin’s speech last night, Obama’s speech a few days back, and McCain’s speech tonight aren’t going to have the impact any of us expect. It’s the aggressive ads from both parties that come in the last couple of weeks that may make the difference for uncommitted voters.
To me, Palin has an extraordinary combination of (native, “unsophisticated”) wit, steely courage and determination, and humorous warmth.
Reminds me of my mom, and my wife.
(Psychiatrist goes all Oedipal on us.)
Neo, you know I virtually always agree with you, but I have to dissent somewhat with your take on Fred and Ginger. The “she did everything he did, but backwards and in heels” line always rankled me, not because it was a feminist trope, but because it misses the point of the magic they made together.
This was impressed on my awareness again recently when I watched most of the films in the oeuvre yet again (I own the boxed set of DVD’s). When they dance together (see, perhaps especially, “Top Hat”), they are so attuned as to seem a single being rather than mere dance partners. One doesn’t really compare them because they appear to be indivisible.
Jamie Irons
Jamie Irons: Well, I certainly don’t mean to slight the idea of partnering (as you might remember from this post). I’m thinking of Fred and Ginger after they split up.
The prompter failed for palin during the speech, turns out she works well with or without one.
on churchill… well, did you know that all his speeches fill 8 volumes containing more than 4 million words?
I guess we lost something when we got vassals to do all the work around the person, rather than only rely on what the person does and nothing else.
i have also known that everyone hasnt realized that the definition of sexism has expanded till we cant operate equally. we no longer can actually tell sexism from other behaviors.
obama is not a good speaker, he is a good actor who when he has a telepromter can act while reading. he can work on his working the crowd. which is why he falls apart when he is on his own and he is not wearing the clothes that others make for him. palin, as mentioned above, carryed on without anyone noticing prompter problems. so i would say that she has the skill, obama mimics the skill in ideal situations.
She relies more on humor and “just-folks” charm, while conveying a sense of authenticity about her common-woman origins that reminds me of the best of country music.
i think what your reffering to used to be called “salt of the earth”.
this is opinion:
“she did everything Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels.” ah, but she did one more thing, and he did too that they both didnt do. he led, and she could take a lead and be guided. the skill is one of letting go and trusting. his is to coordinate, time, position, and a whole lot of other things, so that he can create the situation for her to be in that state so that the audience takes up her mood since they are most focused on the woman.
on another note the saying you refer to is from a comic strip that appeared in 1982. “she did everything Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels”.
http://www.reelclassics.com/Actresses/Ginger/images9/ginger_frankernesttoon.jpg
This Frank and Ernest cartoon is reportedly the origin of the now-famous statement often wrongly attributed to Ginger herself, that she did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels. Former Governor of Texas, Ann Richards, is also often wrongly credited for this quote, because she used it in her keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in 1988.
it was also said by bette midler i think when she played the part of dixie in a movie that spanned the life of two show people.
the main difference i see between the two of them is that obama is a poser, he has a huge team that provides for him. palin outdid hiim without that whole big machine behind her working in her favor to the point of blatant appearance.
as this goes forward, she is going to end up like teflon. there really isnt anything that obama can say, and there is no limit in what she can volley back at the other side being that nothing she does would be seen as bad when she returns back home.
she literally has no hard ties and so does not have the limits of the deals and the favors and what is owed thoses that helped you forward. she can clean up, and given that her road to stardom was laid out slamming the corrupt and jailing them. the dems may be quaking more than we realize. she may decide to become americas sweetheart by undoing a lot of stuff that they have been slowly sliding by.
the left doesnt really know what to do. their worst mistake was letting obama square off with her as if she was running for president. lifts her up, pushes him dowm. all the stuff in the press you have heard now has been what people have been able to make up or tactic themselves. in a week or two it will have a more reasoned movement. no one has yet been told by keepers what angle to take, what point to hammer, etc. its this gap between the position from above, and the actions of those below who want to act and have no handed direction. they tend to take the initiative, the extreme, and set them back. its a pattern.
probably the tactic later will be one of ignoring her. not addressing her, but focusing on addressing mccain where they can score points. there really isnt anything else in their playbook to counter her, so the best they can do is minimize her. dont bring her up in speeches, so that press can ignore referring to her. rely on disproportionate coverage to shrink her down.
Recruiting Animal-
When you recruit, what do you look for on the resume? Accomplishments. Palin’s are this: she was appointed to a political plum position. She saw corruption, resigned, and blew the whistle. She then ran for governor, beating the sitting governor in the primary and then a former governor in the general. Once governor, she cut spending and reduced earmark requests. When I moved to Alaska thrity years ago, there was talk of building a gas pipeline. No progress had been made since that time. Since Palin began serving, she negotiated an agreement to build one. This will bring jobs to Alaska and energy to the US. Her next goal was to make Alaska autonomous, like other States. Because the Federal government owns so much land, Federalism does not really work in Alaska. Properly managed, Alaska should be a huge net benefit to the US Treasury-its resources are enormous. Instead, it’s a drain becaus the land is locked up. Politicians focus on “Bridges to Nowhere” to get votes because the Federal government makes it really hard to create jobs. Her next major gaol, again, was changing that relationship.
The Teleprompter did not malfunction during Palin’s speech. At several points late in the speech the Teleprompter was clearly visible, and it was current with what she was saying. It struck me because it seemed a strange thing to show – it always diminishes any speech in my mind. I know this was late in the speech because I only saw the last 15 minutes on TV, I listened to the first part on radio in the car.
Jonathan Martin at Politico confirms that it didn’t malfunction.
“This claim has been picked up on Drudge and could quickly enter into the insta-mythmaking about a speech that need not be embroidered.
Perhaps there were moments where it scrolled slightly past her exact point in the speech. But I was sitting in the press section next to the stage, within easy eyeshot of the teleprompter. I frequently looked up at the machine, and there was no serious malfunction. A top convention planner confirms this morning that there were no major problems.”
http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0908/The_teleprompter_did_not_break.html?showall
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2008/09/04/the-sarah-palin-broken-teleprompter-myth.html
turns out to be a jigger… or not…
As I wrote, a scrolling problem. The only question is whether minor or more serious. Seems as though it was minor. But it sure didn’t make it any easier for her to deliver her speech with aplomb.
Here’s some further elucidation on the scrolling problem. It wasn’t major, but it was disconcerting—the machine seems to have gone past the first one or two sentences in each paragraph. Would make it very hard to keep one’s equanimity, but she seems to have done so.
It is delicious that, after Obama vaulted over Hillary (reenacting the sort of promotions of younger, less-experienced men over his grandmother that he and his wife like to talk about to relate to women), he is now being outshone by a younger, female star.
Obama worked great without a teleprompter, Neo. WHich is why Palin must be attacked for reading a speech not her own. My god, what could be done if the issue of her ad lib skills were put into the public conscience?
The guy they voted for has been in office for the last eight years hasn’t he?
Indeed. Kerry has been in office for the last eight years.
Ymarsakar,
we do not know that she didnt write her speech. we assume today that they dont, but that isnt necessarily true… palin came from a start in which she didnt have support and literally had to do it all herself, includng speech writing. when people come up the new normal way, lifted and manipulated up, they get provided by party all kinds of things. Palin however, is not exaclty liked by the corrupt elements of either party and as a threatening independent who could return to a life without penalty leaving the state, they dont provide for her.
in this case, till i hear who wrote that speech i will assume she did. can someone tell me or find out so?
main reason is because arbument from assumption is too much like argument from fantasy… they are equivalent if the assumption fits the fantasy.
It’s no secret who wrote Palin’s speech. It was Mathew Scully, a former Bush speechwriter.
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1838808,00.html