Bush's 'Freedom Speech'

I just glanced at the article by William Safire in today's New York Times. Some highlights:

I rate it among the top 5 of the 20 second-inaugurals in our history.

Actually Bill, President Bush represents only the 16th second-term president. So unless you have included:

• FDR's 3rd and 4th term speeches,
• the '87 speech that Reagan gave at the Greater Salt Lake City Kiwanis Club where he mistakenly imagined himself at an inauguration, and
• Washington's largely unknown "No-Freakin'-Way-You're-Suckerin'-Me-Into-a-Third-Term" speech,

you might want to take some time to review our nation's history. Or how about this little gem:

Lincoln's profound sermon "with malice toward none" is incomparable, but Bush's second was better than Jefferson's mean-spirited pouting at "the artillery of the press."

Reading this I am reminded of a conversation I had with a friend of mine recently about the art of Rhetoric. (Bear with me here, Bill. I'll speak slowly.) Rhetoric succeeds when it persuades on three levels. Aristotle called them Logos, Pathos and Ethos. (You can read about Aristotle in your history books, Bill. You'll find him in one of the chapters preceding the part about our two-term presidents...) Logos is Rhetoric's persuasive appeal to reason. Pathos is Rhetoric's persuasive appeal to emotion. Ethos is Rhetoric's persuasive appeal of one's character. Now I understand you are gettin' up there in years, but I seriously doubt you had any opportunity to see or hear the speeches of Lincoln or Jefferson. My guess is, you read them (or more likely read about them). But guess what? An inaugural address is not written solely to be read. It is about more than words on a page. It is also about how those words are delivered. And by whom. One only need first read then watch Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech to understand the difference. Lincoln's inaugural address may indeed be the greatest address of all time, but I don't know how it was delivered. He may have spoken with the fortitude of James Earl Jones. He also might have sounded like H. Ross Perot. So save the hyperbole, you jackass.

This one is good too:

The president identified the enemy (and did not euphemize it, as Nixon's writers did, as "the adversary") a half-dozen times in this speech. The archenemy of freedom, now as ever, is tyranny.

That's thinking big, with history in mind. That comes from reading Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident, and sends a message of hope to democrats jailed by despots in places like China, Zimbabwe and Saudi Arabia.

Are we really expected to believe that a guy who doesn't read a newspaper, can't even be bothered with PDB's, reads Natan Sharansky? Really? My money says he can't say Natan Sharansky.

OK, one more because I just can't resist:

A metaphorical nitpick: he said our liberation of millions lit "a fire in the minds of men ... and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world." I would have replaced "this untamed fire," which could be dangerous, with "the light from this fire," which would have illuminated the "darkest corner."

That's right, the president says we are going to bathe the world in some kind of apocalyptic-sounding (metaphorical) fire and the self-proclaimed former "speechwriter" apologizes for "nitpicking"? Maybe I'm nitpicking, but I think "taking a shit on the heads of tyranny" would have been a much more effective metaphor...