PROSAIC PRESIDENTS

posted by James Reel

    Last night, driving home from a party, I turned on the radio, heard the opening orchestra-only section of Copland’s Lincoln Portrait, and groaned in anticipation of what would come. I dislike narrated music because the narrators are almost always monotonous, even if they’re professional actors. (For more on my aversion to being read to, click here.) Lincoln Portrait, especially, brings out the worst in narrators. Henry Fonda’s recording with the composer conducting is typical: flat and absolutely devoid of passion or real understanding of the text. What a surprise and delight, then, to hear F. Murray Abraham last night on the New York Philharmonic broadcast, delivering the text like a true believer.
    I suspect F. Murray Abraham read the text better than Father Abraham himself. Lincoln’s voice was described by those who heard it as shrill, squeaking, piping and unpleasant. (For accounts, go here, then go here and scroll to the bottom.) Even his supporters disliked his voice. We’ll have to trust the earwitness descriptions, for no recording of Lincoln’s voice has turned up, although he is rumored to have recorded a wax cylinder in 1863. The power of Lincoln’s oratory rested in the words themselves, their imagery taken from the Bible, their cadences from Shakespeare.
    American presidents since Lincoln, it seems to me, have been poor orators badly served by dull speechwriters. (Kennedy’s speechwriters were the major exception; they stole rhythms from Lincoln. Clinton’s speechwriters stole from Kennedy’s, but by then the cadences were too diluted and diminished to have much effect, particularly when delivered so blandly.) Teddy Roosevelt could be a fiery orator in front of a crowd (you can hear some of his lower-key campaign speeches here), but his delivery was very much a thing of the 19th century, and would seem mannered if attempted today. Still, that’s no excuse for the robotic monotony that has afflicted most presidential addresses during my lifetime, from Eisenhower’s corporate blandness through the drowsiness of several Southerners to the utter disaster that is George W. Bush as a public speaker; he pauses after every three words, as if trying to sound out the next three before moving on. (And is it really so hard to pronounce “nu-cle-ar” correctly?) Whatever their politics have been, our recent presidents have shared one gross defect: a lack of music in their speech.