The coolness of civic republicanism

Throughout the campaign, Barack Obama's critics and opponents have charged that his campaign is more about celebrity than substance. Clinton did so when she complained that his soaring rhetoric was really all fluff, and McCain did so when he compared Obama to Paris Hilton (and, perhaps not-so-accidentally, the anti-Christ).

From the perspective of many, the stigma of a celebrity candidacy is something to be overcome, and if celebrity is confused with stupidity or vacuousness—style over substance, as Cicero would put it—it certainly is. But over the weekend, Matt Bai in the New York Times Magazine suggested that celebrity and the presidency are not mutually exclusive.

Who’s to say that Americans are misguided for craving a little cool in their candidates? It’s not simply that ours is a country of celebrity-seeking robots (although there may be some truth to that as well). Perhaps it’s more that Americans are weary of a political system that has all but ground to a halt, and every four years they search for the galvanizing personality who stands a chance of dislodging it. The infatuation with star quality reflects, on some level, the yearning for the next Roosevelt (Theodore or Franklin) or Kennedy (John or Robert), some reformer with the dynamism and charisma to renew dialogue at home and kinships around the world, to tell us the truths we need to hear without telegraphing defeat.

Bai isn't describing something new but rather a fundamental aspect of the tradition of American political rhetoric that, in many ways, we have forgotten. Throughout the nineteenth century, American presidents and politicians—Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Webster, William Jennings Bryan—drew from the tradition of the rhetoric of the Roman Republic, particularly the rhetoric of Cicero. This rhetorical style, what Robert Hariman describes in terms of civic republicanism, idealized politicians who stood "in the breach" of history in the service of the republic.

The best politicians in the civic republican tradition (whether they were Cicero fighting to preserve Roman government against Ceasar's dictatorship, Lincoln defending the principles of the Union, Bryan trying to keep farmers from being crucified "upon a cross of gold" by the gold standard, or FDR flying to speak to the Democratic National Convention when getting on a plane was considered both unprecedented and dangerous) took on the status of cultural heroes, demigods in the political pantheon, the ultimate of "cool." Of course, civic republican orators, like all celebrities, certainly tended toward egocentrism—no one could have accused Cicero of humility, for instance—but theirs was an egocentrism with the country at heart.

So Obama's sweeping rhetorical prowess is in many ways actually the norm of American politics, not the exception. Celebrity has always been a part of American politics. If Obama stands out as unusual, it is because American presidents have moved away from the civic republican tradition, becoming more managerial and policy-centered instead. As long as Obama stands within the civic republican tradition—speaking to American ideals, bridging the gaps between ideological divisions, emphasizing substance instead of style—he should not be confused with another Paris Hilton or Britney Spears, as a "celebrity" in the crassest sense. Rather, he should be understood as following in a deeper American tradition in which sweeping, grand rhetoric was placed fully in the service of the republic. With Obama, the old has become new again.