Paul Waldman explains that Obama‘s rhetorical skills do not make him omnipotent:
“We campaign in poetry. But when we’re elected we’re forced to govern in prose,” said Mario Cuomo, then-governor of New York, in a 1985 speech. “And when we govern — as distinguished from when we campaign — we come to understand the difference between a speech and a statute. It’s here that the noble aspirations, neat promises and slogans of a campaign get bent out of recognition or even break as you try to nail them down to the Procrustean bed of reality.”
The man then hailed as the Democratic Party’s greatest orator knew what he was talking about. And there is no doubt that the party’s current lead orator, Barack Obama, has understood this truth all along. But those swept up in the oratory still seem to need occasional reminding of this reality. As health-care reform teeters between success and failure, the economy limps along, and more and more Americans wonder what we’re doing in Afghanistan, the prose of governing is more than a little unsettling for some.
