By Bruce Fisher
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wbfo/local-wbfo-682487.mp3
Buffalo, NY – Now, in this presidential election year, now is the time for soaring oratory. I wonder if we're going to get FDR's powerful uplifting reassurance, or young JFK's challenge to public service rather than self-service, or Ronald Reagan's simple command -- Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall.
In Washington, the monument to Franklin Roosevelt is strong words in stone. His challenges were so stark, so humbling: a third of the nation was unemployed, and Roosevelt knew, without psychiatrists to help him, that his country was literally depressed. And he said so, and he said, here's what we're going to do: we're going to work.
And Roosevelt said, I hate war. He said, "I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded . . . I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed . . . I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war." That's what he said, and it was so simple. It was that simplicity and that directness that gave Roosevelt the moral authority to lead us.
You know, I believe in the power of words, even now, when almost all of America has food, and roads, and electricity, and indoor plumbing. We do not now expect a president or a candidate to lead millions of us in a crusade against our own desperate poverty, or to motivate us in a mass mobilization against vast armies.
Our struggles now seem smaller: our leaders smaller, their words, smaller. How sad that our candidates are speaking only about our comfort as consumers, and not about our souls.
America is a debtor nation now. China makes our shopping cheaper. The war you hear about from conservatives and liberals alike is a war on taxes. Roosevelt's words were our companions through crisis. Roosevelt spoke in the intimate confines of living rooms, over the radio; he explained policy, simply, as when he said "I've seen war. I hate war." And then when he said that we had to go to war - when he said, "America will be the arsenal of democracy," we were united. Kennedy united us too, in a great national movement that he sparked by saying "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." And Reagan, though he never wrote his own lines, he knew them; he knew his role: "Tear down this wall," he said. So simple. So strong.
Will we hear it this year? Which one can explain, rally, challenge us? Who is as large as we need to be - whose words will make us better? Maybe the days of great words are over. Hope not.
Listener-Commentator Bruce Fisher, former deputy Erie County Executive, writes a weekly column on the presidential race for "Artvoice."
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