Vicki Woods: Barack Obama - the earth didn't move for me
[Vicki Woods writes in the Daily Telegraph.]
Barack in Berlin was hyped and touted to such a level that I raced downstairs to watch the live broadcast of him wowing the Germans on Thursday. Glass in hand, phones off the hook, expectant. Oooh, lovely sunny day for it, eh? Plenty of long-shots, distant views of the Brandenburg Gate, American flags, high crowd volume - expert foreplay, all in all.
Live speeches, like live rock concerts, do transport people. Once there were shamans and high priests and magicians to whip us up into altered states, now it's rock gods. And the occasional politician.
When he came floating out along the sea-blue walkway (wearing a sea-blue tie: nice touch, Obama-handlers!), I was ready for my Obamagasm.
Clinton always sucked me in, when he was on his hind legs and orating. Such a sexy beast of a politician, he was. Such a powerful speaker: sleepy eyes, steely hair, the hoarse, urgent, folksy voice like whipped butter dripping through cornbread. Until he bombed the aspirin factory, I'd have followed him anywhere.
Blair almost sucked me in. Just twice, back in the last century. For half an hour, during the speech that made him (Labour Party conference, 1994, the one where he ditched Clause 4), I got quite carried away.
His brilliance burned the platform at Blackpool and I was among a frenzy of red-jacketed women worshippers. As he railed at Tory sleaze, I felt all the ancient atavistic political instincts twitching, just as they did when I was sweet and 20.
All the ancient grievances and envies of youth against age, have-nots against haves, powerless against powerful, poor against rich.
Luckily, I saw Alastair Campbell smirking afterwards and knew I'd been gulled.
And then for another 10 seconds, when a new dawn had broken, had it not? After the sleepless night and the Portillo moment and the excitable Peter Snow looking awestruck under the history-making red landslide?
Even I thought, blimey, maybe he's the real deal. I gave him a pass, right up until he hammed up Diana's funeral. That deliberate crack in his actor's voice, those gulps and stammers, reminded me not to forget again that curmudgeon is my middle name.
I'd never watched Obama deliver a proper speech, only bits of debates with Hillary and endless snips from his stumping. US telly is viciously sound-bitey and repetitive and anyway, it's hell staying up until 4am only to get, "Yes we can!" and "Change we can believe in!" over and over.
But I wanted to see if he's any good, because I have little doubt that he's going to be the next US president.
He is good, oratorically. I mean the process is good, and the presentation is terrific. Once you start listening to a man who clearly believes he can talk to crowds and keep his virtue, who speaks in lyrical cadences, who braces his words with pace and rhythm and proper care for the use of English, you do find yourself willing to be seduced.
Tall, dark and handsome, occasionally self-deprecating, at times, nearly witty - what's not to love? But the earth didn't move.
It's so easy-cheesy to flatter a crowd of (mostly young) Berliners on a sunny day in a handsome park in what we must accept is the de facto capital of the glorious EU.
You can flatter their fathers' history, which is not that easy to do in Germany. (Margaret Thatcher had a hard time loving the reunification of a Greater Deutschland.) You can whip them up with constant references to "our generation" (that's you, kids) and give them lots of hope, via half-promises about working for climate change (wild applause) and peace in our time, "When we give meaning to the words, never again in Darfur!" (Yells and chants of Obama! Obama!).
People who want to win like channelling winners, hence all Obama's deliberate flicks towards the supremely charismatic JFK and America's all-time favourite prez, Ronald Reagan, both of whom rocked Berlin. Obama didn't lard the JFK resonances over much, probably for fear of being told: "Senator, you're no John F Kennedy," by some oldster, for whom John F Kennedy was "a friend of mine". But he jived through ol' Ron's famous soundbite ("Mr Gorbachev, tear down that wall!") over and over...
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
Barack in Berlin was hyped and touted to such a level that I raced downstairs to watch the live broadcast of him wowing the Germans on Thursday. Glass in hand, phones off the hook, expectant. Oooh, lovely sunny day for it, eh? Plenty of long-shots, distant views of the Brandenburg Gate, American flags, high crowd volume - expert foreplay, all in all.
Live speeches, like live rock concerts, do transport people. Once there were shamans and high priests and magicians to whip us up into altered states, now it's rock gods. And the occasional politician.
When he came floating out along the sea-blue walkway (wearing a sea-blue tie: nice touch, Obama-handlers!), I was ready for my Obamagasm.
Clinton always sucked me in, when he was on his hind legs and orating. Such a sexy beast of a politician, he was. Such a powerful speaker: sleepy eyes, steely hair, the hoarse, urgent, folksy voice like whipped butter dripping through cornbread. Until he bombed the aspirin factory, I'd have followed him anywhere.
Blair almost sucked me in. Just twice, back in the last century. For half an hour, during the speech that made him (Labour Party conference, 1994, the one where he ditched Clause 4), I got quite carried away.
His brilliance burned the platform at Blackpool and I was among a frenzy of red-jacketed women worshippers. As he railed at Tory sleaze, I felt all the ancient atavistic political instincts twitching, just as they did when I was sweet and 20.
All the ancient grievances and envies of youth against age, have-nots against haves, powerless against powerful, poor against rich.
Luckily, I saw Alastair Campbell smirking afterwards and knew I'd been gulled.
And then for another 10 seconds, when a new dawn had broken, had it not? After the sleepless night and the Portillo moment and the excitable Peter Snow looking awestruck under the history-making red landslide?
Even I thought, blimey, maybe he's the real deal. I gave him a pass, right up until he hammed up Diana's funeral. That deliberate crack in his actor's voice, those gulps and stammers, reminded me not to forget again that curmudgeon is my middle name.
I'd never watched Obama deliver a proper speech, only bits of debates with Hillary and endless snips from his stumping. US telly is viciously sound-bitey and repetitive and anyway, it's hell staying up until 4am only to get, "Yes we can!" and "Change we can believe in!" over and over.
But I wanted to see if he's any good, because I have little doubt that he's going to be the next US president.
He is good, oratorically. I mean the process is good, and the presentation is terrific. Once you start listening to a man who clearly believes he can talk to crowds and keep his virtue, who speaks in lyrical cadences, who braces his words with pace and rhythm and proper care for the use of English, you do find yourself willing to be seduced.
Tall, dark and handsome, occasionally self-deprecating, at times, nearly witty - what's not to love? But the earth didn't move.
It's so easy-cheesy to flatter a crowd of (mostly young) Berliners on a sunny day in a handsome park in what we must accept is the de facto capital of the glorious EU.
You can flatter their fathers' history, which is not that easy to do in Germany. (Margaret Thatcher had a hard time loving the reunification of a Greater Deutschland.) You can whip them up with constant references to "our generation" (that's you, kids) and give them lots of hope, via half-promises about working for climate change (wild applause) and peace in our time, "When we give meaning to the words, never again in Darfur!" (Yells and chants of Obama! Obama!).
People who want to win like channelling winners, hence all Obama's deliberate flicks towards the supremely charismatic JFK and America's all-time favourite prez, Ronald Reagan, both of whom rocked Berlin. Obama didn't lard the JFK resonances over much, probably for fear of being told: "Senator, you're no John F Kennedy," by some oldster, for whom John F Kennedy was "a friend of mine". But he jived through ol' Ron's famous soundbite ("Mr Gorbachev, tear down that wall!") over and over...