Obama's basketball coolness

Randy, his Columbia classmate, still calls him Barry, but I like to think of Obama as Racky B, a kind of hip-hop Rocky in the way he deals with his opponents— his Republican friends, as he likes to call them. Damned if he didn't throw multiple shout-outs to John McCain during his health-care speech, as if there wasn't a trace of bitterness or even memory of the ugly campaign that McCain desperately waged.

Like so many men reared in a sports culture, I suffer from an incorrigible habit of nicknaming people, and it doesn't stop with Racky B. As the summer drew lazily forward, and Michelle faded from the front pages to the fashion pages, and the increasingly quagmire-like nature of our fruitless Afghanistan offensive became apparent, I regressed from my original French Obama nickname— "bon, bon, très bon" to the more dismissive "Bom Bom Man." A sound that may once have borrowed innocently from the natural cadences of Obama name now began to feel eerily ominous.

Anyway, there he was again, standing before Congress, the lean, lanky, left-handed jump shooter who has become the leader of the free world, trimmer than ever, it seemed, perhaps in need of an occasional 30-minute trip to the weight room after playing basketball. But Michelle, decked out in pink, maintained her steadfastly approving smile throughout. Obama has to be doing some things right.

From Mort Sahl to Jon Stewart

As he spoke, and the words themselves obviously meant something— were carefully chosen for their power to inspire— I remembered listening to John F. Kennedy speak in 1960, on the radio, as I was just about to complete my freshman year in college. I was leafing through my record collection as I listened, when I stopped at a Mort Sahl album called The Future Lies Ahead— a nonsense absurdist title that belied the fact that Mort had taught me most of what I knew about current events, kind of the way the current Generation Text learns from Jon Stewart. I suppose I was in the vanguard of bright kids who didn't read a newspaper.

I had always thought of myself as apolitical, but perhaps I'd more accurately be characterized as scrupulously wary of doctrine and cant. That's why I so loved Mort Sahl. I'm no fan of the New Yorker's glib Malcolm Gladwell, but some of the ideas he advances in Blink are surely sound: Notice your early impressions, and give them credence beyond what can be rationally defended. Either I like someone or I don't, and so much has to do with style. Undeniably, Obama's style is just cool— even by Marshall McLuhan's definitive conception— and it's clear that he developed a great deal of it on the basketball court.

Combining Shakespeare and sports

Though I've voted a couple of times— only once between Cleaver and Obama— I've generally ignored presidential addresses. I might have caught two or three of Clinton's, but the staging and choreography became increasingly repellent to me. But with Obama, I quickly came to see his speeches as pageantry, with his rhetoric providing Shakespearean drama, in combination with the sporting event ambiance that his ball-playing colleagues genially add. In Barry's cabinet of brothers who love to play, even the white guys seem carefully chosen: down the line from Eric Holder at the health care address was a ruggedly handsome guy whom I couldn't identify, but who looks just like the old NBA star Jerry West.

The TV cameras gave us a long run-up before the actual speech. Obama looked more and more resolute as tip-off time approached. He was ready to go, finely honed (even if a few pounds on the scrawny side), psyched and pumped, but contained. Exuding panther-lurking power, but treading as softly as a cougar. How would he withstand the evening's agenda? The longer haul of the health care battle?

The adrenaline builds

The tip finally came. My anxiety turned into excitement. The adrenaline now had somewhere to go. Object-seeking libido cascaded through my body. Obama's timing, choice of tropes, and throwing of the right bones was masterful: We've pulled the economy back from the brink… but we're not out of the woods yet: Not until we create more jobs, which we must.

Does this mean the WPA again? I wondered, and Republicans may silently have moaned. One Congressman, from South Carolina, who couldn't remain silent and civil, called the president a liar. Unflustered, Barack continued with his carefully measured argument. Still in gear, he gently neutered the outrageous death panel scare with well-chosen examples.

A pause to breathe: Racky B departs, deviates, improvises, pulls it out, like a good point guard calling for his forces to regroup in a half-court setup when they can't get a layup on the fast break. But there was still a shot-clock ticking— now, reiteration for incantatory meaning: We have not only to clean up crises, but also to build a future. He would not be the first president to take up health care, but he was determined to be the last!

Research, rhetoric…. and timing

Meaning? I wondered: Perhaps a physician-led aristocracy would mask the real power and control of insurance companies. Our president deftly analogized health coverage to automobile insurance in explaining why it needed to be mandatory. His argument genuflected judiciously to many Republican-identified conservative values. And he tacked true to his centrist rhetoric: "To my progressive friends." "To my Republican friends."

So many questions percolated upward: It wasn't just great timing, great theater, but more: the admixture of scrupulously scholarly research and rhetoric, with sufficient provision of gravitas, made for a perfect brief. At times Obama's rhetoric would so crescendo that I wanted to stand and shout out (and did), "Take it home, Racky B! You know how to use them words, bro." And it's true: The man can chop it up!♦


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