ABSTRACT
After eight years of life under a president whose power was exercised partly through the denuding and crippling of language, to the point where once familiar words lost their meaning (Clear Skies meant more pollution, Enhanced Interrogation Techniques meant throwing the Geneva Conventions out the window, etc.), the excitement is still high over having a leader who not only respects language and the intelligence of those to whom he is speaking, but who is genuinely eloquent and can deliver phrases that make our spirits soar. Is there any real doubt that Barack Obama, still relatively new to the national stage, has already delivered several orations that will be read and remembered for as long as American history is taught, and at least one (the Race Speech delivered in Philadelphia on the heels of the Reverend Wright revelations) that may very well live on as one of the key addresses in our republic’s life? As a writer, and as a citizen whose primary participation in his times has been through the construction and dissemination of sentences, I fervently believe in the power of the word. So in the shock and aftershock of the Safeway slaughter in Tucson, I waited with unusual eagerness for Obama to weigh in on the tragedy.
