Although in Judaism, rulers are never prophets and prophets are never rulers, have we met the exception? On the 20th of January 2009, Barack Obama gave his inaugural speech as the 44th president of the United States.

The speech offers an excellent opportunity to understand how the future is embodied in the past. The substantive content of the speech was compelling though its rhetoric rarely soared, to many commentators’ surprise. But it evoked the rhythms of American Black preachers, the Jewish prophetic voices of what was erroneously dubbed the Old Testament for they knew it could never be subsumed by the so-called New One. The speech began with death and the ghosts of the past – for his mind was full of the memories and thoughts of “the sacrifices borne by our ancestors” whose spirit does and “must inhabit us all.” The speech contrasted the still waters of peace and rising tides of prosperity and those interruptive moments of gathering storms and clouds. The speech then went on to document how the latter characterizes the present moment.

For some commentators, this was a cliché-ridden start. They failed to recognize the ironies in the language employed, for still waters run deep and the most frequent comment on Barack Obama is how cool he is in a crisis. They did not recognize this as an indirect allusion to the great depths beneath the calm exterior and his ability to retreat within himself and get in touch with the passions and quietness within.

Barack Obama is the Black voice resonant of the Kool Kat and Ralph Ellison’s invisible man. Most significantly, the phrase certainly evoked the most famous of Biblical psalms, the 23rd, and the role of the Lord as the shepherd of his flock “who leadeth me beside [my italics] still waters” and then “through [my italics] the valley of the shadow of death” into a future of hope and a capacity to confront evil and taste the abundance that life has to offer without fear of enemies or favouritism to friends, with the future promise of both goodness and compassion so that he or she who passes beside the still waters “will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Though many commentators might not recognize the reference to the past containing the message of how one travels into the promise of the future and a guarantee of eternal life, at least one-third of Americans would grasp the message instantly and subconsciously. Further, though we think of a cliché as an overused expression that has lost the force of the original meaning, it must be remembered that the root of the word comes from stereotype, the casting of a repeatedly used phrase as a single slug for printing. In his rhetoric, Obama recovers the deep structure of the origins of the cliché to restore "the remembrance of timeless words."

    Look at the other supposed cliché with which the speech began – “the rising tides of prosperity” But what are the current associations of the phrase “rising tides”? The disaster of Katrina that was the turning point in President Bush’s downward spiral in popularity at the same time as it was a high point of the kindness of those who took in strangers “when the levees broke”, and the future of rising tides brought by climate change that threaten to inundate the populous coastal cities of the world! So the rising tides of prosperity hid the near death of America’s most joyful city as the surge of waters covered the Black sections of the city. What lay ahead is the prospect of the death of civilization in the future. Neither still waters nor rising tides of prosperity are what they appear to be.

    The issue and challenge for a president as the shepherd of his nation is now to guide his flock through the valley of death, not as in a horror movie, but as an inspiration as long as God’s chosen remain faithful to the ideals of their forebears and the founding documents and institutions of the state. At a time of peace when the waters were still, the leader, instead of indulging in cynicism under the mask of a charming smile, should have provided a guide for the flock beside those waters to make the hard choices for the coming radical disruptions in the course of history instead of wallowing in the waters of greed, corruption and irresponsibility, instead of standing pat rather than moving forward, instead of protecting special interests rather than serving all the citizens of the USA.

This was not a speech of clichés, for the vision was opposed to worn-out and stale dogmas (the false past), petty grievances (the misguided present) and false promises (the illusionary future). Barack Obama was offering a transcendental past that was immanent in the present moment of turmoil and that guaranteed hope and an unwavering spirit to tackle evil in the future. What a different sense of evil and goodness Barack offered in contrast to George Dubya.

    Barack Obama could not have been more explicit in rephrasing his message: “in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things…to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation,” l’dor v’dor. America is a young nation, but it is time it grew up and became a mature adult. It is time for the American nation to accept its full responsibilities to its own citizens, all of its citizens, to the world and first and foremost to the ideals of its forefathers.

But this isn’t what Paul meant in Corinthians 1 13:11 when he asked the followers of Jesus to set aside childish talk, thought and reason and simply accept the message of love. It is clear in what Barack does and in what he says that he is a thinking and reasoning man as well as a man of talk who can give old meanings to new words. That is why he is a man of what Christians call the Old Testament. Though he offers hope as a universal unifier directed at the future, he does not put forth love as the panacea for our troubles, let alone love for the reborn Greek Christos. Instead, deeds, work and self-sacrifice in honouring one’s forefathers provide the path of righteousness and truth rather than the sacrifice of the Other so that you too may be saved.

For the promise of freedom from slavery and the equality and dignity of all is God-given but man-made: “that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.” Obama’s rephrasing of Thomas Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence affirming the rights of everyone to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” echoed Abraham Lincoln’s 1857 speech criticizing the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dred Scott case and Senator Stephen A. Douglas’ defence of that decision in which Chief Justice Roger Taney excluded Blacks from the protection of the American Constitution. All are equal not as a matter of reality, for we are different sizes and different weights and have different countenances. All are equal in terms of rights and opportunities so that the Declaration of Independence provides the rationale for why a constitution and institutions are needed to enforce and deliver rights and why rights need to be married to the rule of law and enduring convictions married to sturdy alliances.

    And who are the carriers of that sense of sacrifice and of dedication to that message? Not philosophers like myself who enjoy the leisure of critical reflection. The carriers of the past are the doers, the risk takers, the workers, the soldiers who sacrificed their lives at Concord and Khe Sahn and who lie in the graves of Arlington, but nevertheless manage as good ghosts to “whisper through the ages” with their spirit of service and sacrifice to carry the past into the future as a promise for generations to come. How did the “bitter pill” become transformed in his speech into the “bitter swill of civil war and segregation”?

It certainly evoked something very different than swallowing something that tasted horrible for one’s long term health and benefit. Instead “swill” connoted something filthy like the waters that covered New Orleans that we wallow in at our peril – divisions, strife, civil war, segregation – versus the unity and common purpose that Barack Obama invoked. Swill is what is fed to pigs. In black homes it was usually the ends, scraps and leftovers dumped in a big bucket that became sour and rancid when fermented in the sun. How do we escape from that swill?

By echoing the opening words of one of America’s greatest musicals, South Pacific, the 1949 Rogers and Hammerstein tale of racial prejudice – by picking ourselves up and washing “that man (who was sitting right there on the stage as Barack Obama raked his record with biting language) right outta our hair” and the rest of the others who sow conflict and discord, whether they be terrorists in the caves of Pakistan or knaves in the caves of Washington who “cling to power through corruption and deceit” like Karl Rove.  

    The values he invoked at the base of America was not the neo-con self-interest, but “the values upon which our success depends – hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old. These things are true.” “What is demanded is a return to these truths” in “God’s call on us to shape an uncertain destiny.” And who did he end his speech with – a quote from George Washington: “let it be told to the future world…in the depth of the winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive…that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet (it).” The remembrance of timeless words provides the foundation for a future resurrection to enable the flame of freedom to be passed on to future generations.