Obama's strained Virginia Tech metaphor

Let me join Mickey Kaus and Isaac Chotiner in hating on Barack Obama's strained attempt to link the massacre at Virginia Tech to other kinds of "violence" such as Don Imus's racial slur:

Obama said the killings were "the act of a madman on some level," and later noted "maybe nothing could have been done to prevent it."

Nevertheless, he said, it should cause the nation to reflect on violence in its culture, including the "verbal violence" shown by radio talker Don Imus in his "nappy-headed hos" comment.

"So much is rooted in our incapacity to recognize ourselves in each other, to not realize we are connected fundamentally as people," he said.

The Politico's Ben Smith strikes the right notes in critiquing the speech on his blog (MP3 audio):

It's worth a listen, and it captures what moves a lot of people about Obama, and bothers others: His instinct for abstraction and large themes, and his sense that America's problems have at their root solutions that have as much to do with hope and process as with any specific course of action.

Other politicians would -- and will -- stay with the concrete. They'll talk about this tragedy, and, soon, gun control.

But while Obama mourns the slain students, he takes the massacre more as a theme than as a point of discussion.

"Maybe nothing could have been done to prevent it," he says toward the end.

So he moves quickly to the abstract: Violence, and the general place of violence in American life.

"There's also another kind of violence that we're going to have to think about. It's not necessarily the physical violence, but the violence that we perpetrate on each other in other ways," he said, and goes on to catalogue other forms of "violence."

There's the "verbal violence" of Imus.

There's "the violence of men and women who have worked all their lives and suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them because their job is moved to another country."

There's "the violence of children whose voices are not heard in communities that are ignored."

And so, Obama says, "there's a lot of different forms of violence in our society, and so much of it is rooted in our incapacity to recognize ourselves in each other."

Many politicians would avoid, I think, suggesting that outsourcing and mass-murder belong in the same category.

Indeed. As I wrote before, Obama's goo-goo appeal has limited reach beyond upscale primary voters. Most people don't care about his abstract appeals for reform of the political process. Similarly, vague (and incoherent) analogies between a shooting and the "violence" of outsourcing are not going to resonate.

Comments

[wonkie]

If Obama's "goo-goo" appeal is so limited why are the crowds so big, thhe small donor base so broad, and thhe favorable ratinngs so high? Obama's "ggo-goo' appeal workks with people who are not political obsessivves prescisely becuase it is broad and thematic. I get that intellectual cringe reaction, too, from this particluar speech, but I'm a news junkie. Most people aren't. Most people know thhat there isn't a specific law or a nice neat proposal that will solve the problem of individual rage. On the other hand, a nice sermon about hope feels a lot better than a lot of partisan yelling and does less harm. Obama has a very good track record generating practical, legislation to address real problems, so I don't mind the abstractions and many, many people outside thhe blog world like them.