{"id":757,"date":"2012-09-07T08:28:16","date_gmt":"2012-09-07T14:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/?p=757"},"modified":"2012-09-07T08:28:16","modified_gmt":"2012-09-07T14:28:16","slug":"a-few-thoughts-on-obamas-speech-to-the-dnc2012-the-call-for-community-trumps-the-primacy-of-the-individual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/2012\/09\/a-few-thoughts-on-obamas-speech-to-the-dnc2012-the-call-for-community-trumps-the-primacy-of-the-individual.html","title":{"rendered":"A Few Thoughts On Obama’s Speech to the DNC2012 – The Call for Community Trumps the Primacy of the Individual"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>You can make anyone in public life sound like the devil if you cherry pick remarks, use them out of context, distort their true meaning, and leave out key details. Granted, some public figures make it easy to do (I\u2019m looking at you Paul Ryan). But last night\u2019s speech by Barack Obama was pretty long on spin. The attacks turn me off, and I don\u2019t think they are essential for explaining the president\u2019s rationale for why he deserves another four years.<\/p>\n

Bill Clinton made the best case for Obama\u2019s re-election on the previous night, and as things stand right now, I predict that it will be enough. The rationale is not that Romney is corrupt or inept, but that Obama inherited such an absolute mess from the previous administration, that it will take more than four years to bring it back. What Obama did a masterful job of last night \u2013 and Clinton the night before \u2013 was showing that there has been just enough progress to warrant another go.<\/p>\n

There are a few key things the DNC 2012 did very well \u2013 better than the Republicans did in Tampa.<\/p>\n

1. Fired up the Base<\/strong> \u2013 It doesn\u2019t seem like the R\u2019s love Romney in quite the same way the D\u2019s love Obama. There\u2019s an emotional element to the D\u2019s devotion. It\u2019s personal. The convention had much more emotion and energy. Those people are going to go home and work their tails off.<\/p>\n

2. Tagged Romney as Bush III<\/strong> \u2013 The convention effectively tied Romney to the Bush era policy narrative, and there is enough similarity in their rhetoric to make the charge stick. Obama was able to sell the idea that he stopped the free falling economy, and in cases where his policies were not stalled or thwarted by R\u2019s they worked: auto bail-out, foreign policy\/Bin Laden, and so on. So when Obama asks if people want to go back to more of the Bush era policies, there is enough of a\u00a0Pavlovian\u00a0resistance that it might be the crucial difference for swing voters. In the end, Barack\u2019s case is the same case that other Republicans ran on in the primaries: Not Romney.<\/p>\n

3. Appealed to our Better Angels<\/strong> \u2013 This is where my faith colors my reactions to the two party narratives. The Republican vision accentuates individualism over community. The D\u2019s narrative does the opposite in arguing that what makes the American experience exceptional is the sense of community, and a common destiny. Ron Elving wrote about this at NPR this morning<\/a>. He said:<\/p>\n

On offer in Tampa was a depiction of America as an entrepreneurial paradise, a place where hard work, innovation and prudence are all that matters. In this imagined America, there is nothing to discourage a motivated man or woman from building a business or expanding an inherited investment. Respect for private enterprise is the coin of the realm.<\/p>\n

This week in Charlotte, we have seen a dream of America as a communitarian paradise, a place where racial, national and religious differences are subsumed in a surge of generalized opportunity and shared success.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Obviously, these two narratives are codependent, and neither is true in the absence of the other. They must be held together\u2026 I wrote a whole book about this, by the way, called An Evangelical Social Gospel<\/a>. They are both true at the same time, and as a Christian, I believe that they are both wrong on so many levels.\u00a0What I don\u2019t like about the president\u2019s rhetoric is that he says, \u201cWe\u2019re right and they\u2019re wrong.\u201d Romney\u2019s rhetoric is exactly the same and it bothers me as well.<\/p>\n

What I want to say is they are both right, and they are both wrong. Only when the two sides are held together in mutual respect \u2013 each holding the success of the group over the success of the individual \u2013 will our society begin to heal the divides that separate us.<\/p>\n

I have to give the American people credit for one thing. There seems to be a consensus that the Republicans in the House are more to blame for the Washington bickering than the president. I think this is accurate as well.<\/p>\n

So when the people of this society consider the U.S. government and Washington on the whole, the major problem we see is that these two sides don\u2019t know how to work together. In that situation the side whose whose narrative is \u201cgroup over individual\u201d has a distinct natural advantage.<\/em><\/p>\n

The appeal to community is just a stronger call for our time. Everything else in our culture absolutizes the individual. It doesn\u2019t help that the folks chosen to articulate the individualist message seem to be pretty cold about it. The truth is that President Obama is not more virtuous or smarter or even more qualified to lead so much as he is just on the right side of history at the moment. The individualist narrative is one of the false gods of our day. If he wins it will be because the community\/oneness narrative is the right message for the time.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You can make anyone in public life sound like the devil if you cherry pick remarks, use them out of context, distort their true meaning, and leave out key details. Granted, some public figures make it easy to do (I\u2019m looking at you Paul Ryan). But last night\u2019s speech by Barack Obama was pretty long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nA Few Thoughts On Obama's Speech to the DNC2012 - The Call for Community Trumps the Primacy of the Individual<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"You can make anyone in public life sound like the devil if you cherry pick remarks, use them out of context, distort their true meaning, and leave out key\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/2012\/09\/a-few-thoughts-on-obamas-speech-to-the-dnc2012-the-call-for-community-trumps-the-primacy-of-the-individual.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Few Thoughts On Obama's Speech to the DNC2012 - 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