I was just thinking about the comparisons between Bush and Obama, and leaving aside for one moment (I'll get back to in a moment) substance, I wonder about Hillary's argument that leaders campaign in poetry but they lead in prose.

I wonder if under the terrible non-poetic rule of GWB we've forgotten what it means to have a powerful orator. William Jefferson Clinton didn't just campaign in poetry, he kept the country together by the speeches he made. You could say he governed in poetry better than he governed in prose. Uniting people in words has been a key of every well-loved world leader who brought people together...remember Ghandi? I don't want to make another JFK reference, but think of a popular well-loved leader (Bush never was loved--at best he was tolerated) who was not an orator? People who campaign in prose often seem to govern in prose as well...I'm thinking Margaret Thatcher. And Bush, who speaks in solecism and governs in solecism.

Powerful oration generally is about selling the intangibles. I'm not convinced that Obama's speeches have less meaning than his oponents because they carry fewer statistics. As for substance, a lot of what makes a good leader we don't know until they actually start doing it. Some people have refused to read Obama's website or to look at his record in the Senate when they accuse him of having no record in leadership. I'm tired of that conversation, so I'm just going to leave that alone for now.

But I do think perhaps there's a reason that Plato wanted to ban Poets from his Republic, and that people are afraid to believe that the ideals Obama gives in his speeches are ideals that he holds. We haven't seen anyone like this for so long we don't know what a gift oration can be in the hands of the right person. You know in movies when things have been getting worse and worse, and finally one character stands up and says something to the other characters, and then they all band together and go after the bad guy and win the game? That's the potential of poetry. It doesn't exist in a walled off box from action. Belief creates and precipitates action. Poetry doesn't need to be limited to a self-realization exercise, but it can provide a fundamental key to sociological movements.

But I'm waxing poetic.

Even in this country, but you're right that it would take a powerful example, someone at least as gifted as Obama with the same or a stronger sense of inner gravity.

But your post has me thinking. Eva Peron had a personal story that fed into her poetry. A mythos. It's like a person takes on a symbolic power, and I'm not sure this has fully happened yet with Obama. It has in local situations, but whether it will fully catch hold nationally, we don't know. The writing of his Bildungsroman first book also helped in creating his mythos, so the possibility is there.

I was thinking tonight as I went to the grocery store that if Democrats nominate Hillary because they think she has more substance then it's not a bad reason to vote for her. I don't agree, but I accept that substance is a valuable reason to vote for someone. Even voting for them over poetry.

The draw of poetry, though, is that it leads into realms of unquantifiable power. Not a reality check, but reaching through the scrim of the prosaic world with it's prosaic limitations. The reason I think that a woman might do this too (although maybe not Mrs. Clinton, or not at this point in her career--probably not in the way we're talking about ever) is that people don't recognize the kind of thing we're talking about until they see it. The double feminine would have a lot to overcome (a double leap) in a masculine-based culture, yet given the right personal story and charisma I don't think we can rule it out as an impossibility. It might happen.

Meanwhile, it still remains to be seen whether the American people will be willing to channel the feminine in Obama and honestly I can see it going either way, so I'm trying not to get my hopes too high. I think to take this one leap, collectively, will still be quite a leap. I thought while I was standing in line to buy milk, cheese, eggs, dried peas and grapefruit, prose too has it's place at the table. Maybe for America right now prose will suffice.