Everyone who knows me knows how ridiculously seriously I take my role as grandfather. We have four granddaughters, three of whom live in Vinton and I have seen every week at least (and often most every day) since the first one entered our lives five years ago. It's no secret how much those precocious girls teach me and how they showed me a new way to look at the world, much like their mama did a quarter-century ago.

What they say, how they say it, and the daily difference in their disposition and discussions are constantly enlightening me.

Even so, it was both surprising and disconcerting Tuesday evening, when my President said, during his State of the Union address, something I hear my granddaughters say all the time: I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want.

Ten times on Tuesday (count 'em by reading the link at the end of this column), President Obama said “I want.”

Here are three of those:

I want our actions to tell every child, in every neighborhood: your life matters, and we are as committed to improving your life chances as we are for our own kids.

I want future generations to know that we are a people who see our differences as a great gift, that we are a people who value the dignity and worth of every citizen — man and woman, young and old, black and white, Latino and Asian, immigrant and Native American, gay and straight, Americans with mental illness or physical disability.

I want them to grow up in a country that shows the world what we still know to be true: that we are still more than a collection of red states and blue states; that we are the United States of America.

While I generally agree with these statements – although they have become empty clichés – there is something disturbing to me about a President who says “I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want.”

I expect that from my pre-school-aged granddaughters. I expect more from a President.

Fifty years ago, when the developing medium of television allowed Americans to see a President give his State of the Union for the very first time, LBJ was the speaker. It was Jan. 4, 1965 – the year I was born.

I was just a bit surprised to see that LBJ addressed several of the same issues we heard about in the 2015 version of the State of the Union: Education. Environmental concerns. Russia. Crime in the cities.

But LBJ did not say: “I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want. I want.”

In fact, he said just the opposite:

“A President does not shape a new and personal vision of America” LBJ said. “He collects it from the scattered hopes of the American past.”

Johnson addressed the challenge he had faced over the previous 13 and one-half months since the JFK assassination when he told Congress and the American citizens that the answers to the challenges he face came from the lessons he learned from his childhood home:

A President's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right. Yet the Presidency brings no special gift of prophecy or foresight. You take an oath, you step into an office, and you must then help guide a great democracy.

The answer was waiting for me in the land where I was born.

It was once barren land. The angular hills were covered with scrub cedar and a few large live oaks. Little would grow in that harsh caliche soil of my country. And each spring the Pedernales River would flood our valley.

But men came and they worked and they endured and they built.

And tonight that country is abundant; abundant with fruit and cattle and goats and sheep, and there are pleasant homes and lakes and the floods are gone.

Why did men come to that once forbidding land ?

Well, they were restless, of course, and they had to be moving on. But there was more than that. There was a dream--a dream of a place where a free man could build for himself, and raise his children to a better life--a dream of a continent to be conquered, a world to be won, a nation to be made.

Remembering this, I knew the answer.

A President does not shape a new and personal vision of America.

He collects it from the scattered hopes of the American past.

It existed when the first settlers saw the coast of a new world, and when the first pioneers moved westward.

It has guided us every step of the way.

It sustains every President. But it is also your inheritance and it belongs equally to all the people that we all serve.

It must be interpreted anew by each generation for its own needs; as I have tried, in part, to do tonight.

It shall lead us as we enter the third century of the search for "a more perfect union."

This, then, is the state of the Union: Free and restless, growing and full of hope.

So it was in the beginning.

So it shall always be, while God is willing, and we are strong enough to keep the faith.

With those words, LBJ sat down, ending the very first televised State of the Union speech.

Since then, the annual event has become more of a spectacle than a speech. Basically it consists of 30 minutes of the president talking interrupted by another 30 minutes of members of Congress applauding the parts of the speech that they want to be seen public supporting, followed by countless hours from the media and commentators speculating on the meaning of those words, and that applause.

From year to year, the speeches become less and less intellectual, and more and more symbolic. It's not just Obama: Every president in past several decades has done the same.

Some linguists have even documented this deterioration. A scale known as the Flesch-Kincaid readability test determines the grade level of documents and speeches. According to this scale, this year's speech was the most intellectual of all of Obama's State of the Union addresses: It was on the level of a high school sophomore, says a story in the on-line news site known as Vocativ.

His first had a 9.9 rating; the rest were in the 8s.

Most modern presidents had ratings just slightly higher, although George H.W. Bush's was an 8.6.

The State of Our Union is … Dumber,” reads a headline in a story in the American version of The Guardian written after the 2013 speech.

(Of course, it's not just our presidential speeches that are less intellectual; our TV is too: "Little Rascals" has a higher reading level than the script of "Seinfeld.")

Obama, however, set a new low as he chanted the same words my preschool granddaughters use to tell me it's time to get the ice cream out of the freezer.

Some people would say that this trend in less sophisticated speechifying is a good trend; that it makes the words of our leaders more understandable to more people.

I disagree. Statesmanship is not about reducing your content to your audience's level. It's about challenging your listeners to aspire to your level.

When Obama – who is quite well-educated – was a presidential candidate who twice came to Vinton, he ended each of his speeches here with the same sentence: "Fire up! Let's Go"'

That ending, according to the Flesch-Kincaid scale, had a reading level of -2.8.

In other words, we voted for a President whose campaign speech ended at my 5-year-old granddaughter's reading level. So it shouldn't surprise us that in his most important scheduled speech of the year, when the entire nation was looking to see where and how he would lead, he used my granddaughter's most common appeal.

What I want, however, is a leader who thinks the American people are smart enough to hear his ideas in words that inspire them to think deeper about the issues that matter most to us, and has the ability to put that respect for our intellect into his own words.

Click HERE to read the text of the 2015 State of the Union Address.

Comments

Submit a Comment

Please refresh the page to leave Comment.

Still seeing this message? Press Ctrl + F5 to do a "Hard Refresh".

CO January 21, 2015, 4:27 pm Very well said, Dean!
KK January 22, 2015, 2:13 pm Humm. I never thought about that! But I might also extend this to congress as they play their games! do they not think we are smart enough to see they are wasting our money (their time) and not doing ANY thing and collecting their salary!