Right Makes Might by Wolfgang Mieder

Author:Wolfgang Mieder [Mieder, Wolfgang]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780253040350
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2019-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

6

“I’M ABSOLUTELY SURE ABOUT—THE GOLDEN RULE”

Barack Obama’s Proverbial Audacity of Hope

PROVERBS, PROVERBIAL EXPRESSIONS, AND OTHER TYPES OF PHRASEOLOGISMS have always played an important role in the world of politics (Mieder 1997; Louis 2000), with their effective employment by such varied twentieth-century politicians as Willy Brandt (Eggert 1998; Mieder and Nolte 2015), Winston S. Churchill (Mieder and Bryan 1995), Adolf Hitler (Mieder 1997, 9–38, 193–200), Nikita Khrushchev, Vladimir Ilich Lenin (Breuillard 1984; Viellard 2001), Mao Tse-tung (Schäfer 1983), Franklin D. Roosevelt (Mieder 2005, 187–209, 284–87), Harry S. Truman (Mieder and Bryan 1997), and others. In American politics, proverbial language has long been part of the discourse (Mieder 2005), with former presidents like John Adams (Mieder 2008b, 169–204), Abraham Lincoln (Mieder 2000), and Theodore Roosevelt standing out as particularly proverbial in their rhetoric. Of course, there were also such proverbial giants as Benjamin Franklin (Newcomb 1957; Barbour 1974; Mieder 2004, 171–80, 216–18), Daniel Webster, Frederick Douglass (Mieder 2001), Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (Mieder 2008a, 328–30; Mieder 2014), and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Karabegović 2007; Mieder 2010), who relied heavily on traditional metaphors and folk wisdom in their oral and written communication with the American people. Modern politicians clearly would do well in taking a look at their reliance on proverbs and proverbial phrases to add some common-sense appeal to their own political messages.

Barack Obama, as a major figure on today’s American political scene, has clearly heeded this advice, as is readily apparent from his two best-selling books, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995) and The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006), as well as his major national addresses and regional speeches (Mieder 2009). As one reads his prose or listens to his speeches, it is evident that this extremely well-educated individual is deeply rooted in American political history, with his three heroes being Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Luther King Jr.

What is fascinating to the folklorist in general and the paremiologist in particular is the fact that Obama shares a certain predilection to proverbial language with Lincoln, Douglass, and King. He has certainly read them, and he must have been impressed and at times moved by some of their deeply felt statements that were quite often couched in proverbial language. Abraham Lincoln’s use of the biblical proverb “a house divided against itself cannot stand” (Mark 3:25), Frederick Douglass’s use of Jefferson’s declaration turned proverb “all men are created equal,” and Dr. King’s insistence on the Golden Rule, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (also used by Lincoln and Douglass) readily come to mind. There is doubtless some direct or indirect rhetorical influence here, which is by no means to say that Obama does not have “a certain talent for rhetoric,” as he justifiably points out in The Audacity of Hope (67; sole page numbers in parentheses refer to Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope). And right he is! In this book of 364 pages,

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