Weekly Mind Dump: Biden's Churchillian Moment
President Biden mobilized the English language and sent it into battle this week.
Week of 2/3-2/9, 2023:
“He wasn’t a natural orator, not at all. His voice was raspy. A stammer and a lisp often marred many of his speeches.”
“He’s saying I’m a threat to democracy. He’s a threat to d-d-democracy. Couldn’t read the word.” “He can’t string two sentences together.”
The first quote describes — no, not Joe Biden — but Winston Churchill.
The second quote was made about Joe Biden by — you guessed it — Donald Trump, whose congenital cruel streak includes mocking those with disabilities, including a New York Times reporter with deformed arms and the late wheelchair-bound conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer.
The contrasts between Biden and Trump were made that more striking with this week’s State of the Union address. The former appeals to the better angels of our nature, whereas the latter panders to our basest emotions.
I’ve done plenty of speechifying in my time before audiences ranging from UN conferences to local book clubs. And I’ve written a fair number of speeches for government VIP’s. I’ve also listened to nearly every State of the Union address since JFK’s. We at the State Department, moreover, were routinely asked by the White House to provide raw input to the president’s speech writers for his annual message to the nation. Joe Biden is not a great orator. He stood in Barack Obama’s shadow in that department, but his bravura delivery this week may be the best SOTU address I can recall. State of the Union addresses traditionally have the solemnness of Sunday church services. That all changed when an obstreperous GOP congressman heckled President Obama during his 2009 SOTU. Biden’s unscripted and sharp repartee with Republican banshees this time around recall raucous British House of Commons debates.
The parallels between Churchill and Biden in contending with their respective speech impediments are interesting.
Churchill’s greatest love was the English language, which he constantly strove to master, but his speech was marred by slurred “s’s” and an occasional stammer. To overcome his impediment, he rehearsed speeches aloud to make sure he wouldn’t muffle or stumble over words, particularly those starting with “s.” He would often repeat, “The Spanish ships I cannot see since they are not in sight.” His frequent speaking engagements helped him to control his stammer, though he was less successful in curbing his lisp.
Biden has a congenital stutter that he has also striven to control. He was excused from having to practice giving speeches in high school because of his deficiency. To this day, he occasionally trips over words and clips his sentences so that he sometimes sounds like he’s mumbling. His public addresses are filled with quotes from Irish poets, carried over from a childhood of reciting William Butler Yeats in the mirror to overcome his stutter.
When he was 23, Churchill wrote, “Sometimes a slight and not unpleasing stammer or impediment has been of some assistance in securing the attention of the audience.” He continued,
Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it wields a power more durable than that of a great king. . . [B]efore the orator can inspire audiences with any emotion he must be swayed by it himself. When he would rouse their indignation his heart is filled with anger. Before he can move their tears his own must flow. To convince them he must himself believe.
He further believed that people should never submit to failure, stating years later, “Never give in! Never give in! Never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.”
I see these sentiments reflected in Biden’s State of the Union, particularly in his rousing peroration:
My fellow Americans, the issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are; it’s how old are our ideas.
Hate, anger, revenge, retribution are the oldest of ideas. But you can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back. To lead America, the land of possibilities, you need a vision for the future and what can and should be done.
Tonight, you’ve heard mine.
He further echoed Churchill in his scathing assessment of his democracy-demolishing opponent:
CHURCHILL ON HITLER: “This bloodthirsty guttersnipe . . . a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. . .”
BIDEN ON TRUMP: “Now — now my predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin, quote, ‘Do whatever the hell you want.’ A former president actually said that — bowing down to a Russian leader. I think it’s outrageous, it’s dangerous, and it’s unacceptable.” And “You can’t love your country only when you win.”
As with Churchill, Biden starkly laid out what’s at stake:
This is no ordinary moment. Freedom and democracy are under attack both at home and overseas at the same time.
In a literal sense, history is watching. History is watching — just like history watched three years ago on January 6th — when insurrectionists stormed this very Capitol and placed a dagger to the throat of American democracy.
Compare Biden’s future-looking oratory and warnings about the dangers to democracy to Trump’s dystopian view of America conveyed in his last State of the Union address in 2020:
The years of economic decay are over. The days of our country being used, taken advantage of, and even scorned by other nations are long behind us. Gone, too, are the broken promises, jobless recoveries, tired platitudes and constant excuses for the depletion of American wealth, power and prestige.
Fact checkers identified at least nine key falsehoods in Trump’s remarks. “It was a manifesto of mistruths,” Pelosi told reporters after having torn up the transcript on camera just as Trump finished.
Great orations capture a people’s imagination, spurring them to engage with their leader to achieve his goals. Gaining their trust by telling them the truth, furthermore, will make their support ironclad.
“He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle,” journalist Edward R. Murrow said of Churchill. While Biden lacks Churchill’s powerful eloquence, I see him marshalling language to wage an existential battle for his country against evil as his British predecessor did.
Given the largely positive reviews of Biden’s address, we may be witnessing a turning point.