Presidency: “The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is … Scary Monsters”

I’m pretty certain that the impressive speech he delivered to the joint session of Congress in the aftermath of September 11 will make its way into documentary histories of American politics, to be studied next to other presidential moments of crisis-driven speechmaking.

But I can’t say the same for his first State of the Union message. Sure, historians of foreign policy will cite it for its explicit commentary on North Korea, Iran and Iraq, but that is small potatoes compared to what might have been if George W. and his speechwriters hadn’t missed their golden opportunity to rename the era in which we are now living.

That opportunity coincided with one oratorical moment, just after the President suggested that we have left the era defined by the Sixties and are entering a new one in the wake of national catastrophe. He said that we have been living in a self-indulgent period characterized by the infamous slogan “if it feels good, do it,” but now we’re poised for a new age, one defined by a new phrase. When I heard the introductory clause of this sentence, I sat up with interest, readying my ears for what might come. It was a perfect rhetorical entry: the dichotomy of narcissistic pleasure versus altruistic commitment was ready-made to support a dramatic declarative conclusion. What I heard was something that aimed for terse but fell ludicrously short. The phrase to define our new epoch, I learned, is “Let’s Roll.”

It’s hard to imagine a less substantive, less specific idea. Stalin must have uttered the Russian version of this more than a few times, as Hitler did when looking toward Stalingrad. The active verb here is catchy but it implies no objective, and certainly no moral objective. Maybe the people of Sodom said “Let’s roll” when trying to bang down the door of Lot’s house.

Of course, the first time that the President cited these words he meant to honor the heroic passenger who used them as a charge to take back an airline from hijackers. That citation, which came in the informal context of a press conference, was appropriate.

But in the context of the State of the Union address, as a catchphrase for a generation or an era, the phrase is unfortunately a rhetorical lead balloon. It would be the same as Franklin Roosevelt saying, “We have nothing to fear but … really scary things like monsters, or fiscal conservatives…” Or Lincoln referring to “a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that … we’re damn good, especially compared to those Limeys.” Or King: “I have a dream that one day … will be the first day of the rest of my life.”

Let’s roll … over what? Those silly little Enron stockholders? You can see the problems of the verb with no object.

Sometimes being short of words is an asset, and sometimes a virtue. But it may also be a sign of incomprehension or worse. If the executives at Enron are any example, President Bush was simply incorrect when he said that we have left behind the era of “if it feels good, do it.” Maybe yesterday’s White House addiction was sex and today’s is money, but it’s a guilty pleasure just the same, and it means we should expect neither a new era nor a new oratory.