A sun for us to orbit

A man increasingly accustomed to striding through thickets, President Barack Obama cruised with ease through another one Tuesday, delivering to the considerable consternation of his opponents, and they are a swelling legion, a noontime address to the nation’s students. The American experiment has survived, the Constitution remains intact and schoolchildren have not begun reporting parents to the Proletariat. It was only a speech after all.

Accusations were made, as frequently they are in situations such as these, that the president, by way of seizing the classroom platform, sought to inject partisanship into that hallowed realm known as education. Every modern president can be accused of having done the same, and every one perhaps can be impugned somewhat. Go figure. Politicians sometimes behave like partisans. Who knew?

By measure of Obama’s capacity to divide, which daily increases, his 2,500-word address barely budged the needle. The real thrust of the thing was to call students to take responsibility for themselves. This needs to be heard and heeded. It is popular for parents to blame teachers and teachers to blame parents. Students themselves ought to shoulder the responsibility for their own actions or absence of them and ultimately for the lives they shape. On this, Obama spoke rightly, and we support him.

Typically, Obama shared his own story, which is assuredly a moving one. He is the embodiment of uniquely American possibilities. But he ceases to inspire to the precise extent that he elevates himself, a frequent occurrence. After relaying his experience of waking at 4:30 a.m. to study with his mother, the president proceeded to detail in the manner of a scold how he’s talked to teachers and parents about their responsibilities. Then near the end of his remarks, he added this: “I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn.” Gee, we thought taxpayers did the hard work of providing for schools.

This mirrors Obama’s tendency to think of himself as the sun around which a world orbits. His speech was laced with references to himself – the word ‘I’ or a variation shows up 50 times and references to ‘we’ or ‘us’ just nine times. The contrast is vivid compared to an address to students given in 1988 by another great communicator, Ronald Reagan, who referred to himself 27 times and ‘we’ or ‘us’ 23 times.

That speech included this closing: “More than two centuries of American history — the contributions of the millions of people who have come before us – have been given to us as our birthright. All we can do to earn what we’ve received is to dream large dreams, to live lives of kindness and to keep faith with the unfinished vision of the greatness and wonder of America.”

Here evinces a deep contrast between two men entrenched in their ideologies. Obama sees a country badly in need of fixing and himself as the inspiration to right wrongs. Reagan saw a country where possibilities abound and compel the belief that greater greatness lies within reach. Blended, the message might truly uplift: Taking responsibility in the classroom and beyond and looking to this as a place where dreams live, the nation’s young people might see an America whose brightest days even in these dark economic times are waiting to be lived.

Such a vision, we hope, is one people of all partisan hues might still share and strive to fulfill. It requires remembering that America’s famously rugged individualism was not carved around a singular individual but around the concept of a nation of individuals given leave by liberty to follow the inspiration of Thoreau, ‘advancing confidently in the direction of their dreams toward success unexpected in the common hour.’