Mr. Obama, It’s Time for Some Poetry

„Please, Mr. Obama! The prose needn’t be as dry as the Harvard Law Review. And we wouldn’t mind being lifted by an occasional verse of poetry. If Mr. Obama is going to connect with voters, he must confront the economic crisis emotionally as well as intellectually. He’ll need to focus not only on optimal policies but also on pithy messages. It does no good to have a great product if no one buys it.

Bill Clinton would make a terrific tutor. Despite his current wealth, he came across on the stump as virtually another victim of the recession while arguing lucidly for Democrats as the best redress for that pain. Mr. Clinton is as much a policy wonk as Mr. Obama, but he devotes far more energy to marketing. Still, don’t write off Mr. Obama too soon. After the 1994 midterm elections repudiated Mr. Clinton, we in the news media wrote ridiculous commentary about how Mr. Clinton might now be irrelevant. As Mr. Clinton wrote in his memoir, “fter the 1994 elections, I had been ridiculed as an irrelevant figure, destined for defeat in 1996.

Didn’t work out that way, did it? Likewise, even F.D.R. suffered a severe midterm defeat in 1938. The New Deal has been halted, The New York Times declared at the time. But Roosevelt learned his lessons and won two more presidential elections after that, cementing his place in history.”