I’ve realized something important today.

In Democratic Eloquence, Kenneth Cmiel points out how central the speech of experts has become in present day public discourse. Throughout her campaign Hillary Clinton has not only relied on a rhetoric of expertise but has also represented herself as entitled to nomination and election because of her expert status. Daniel Drezner makes such a case on the basis of two now familiar pieces of video. The first is from the New Hampshire Democratic debate.

And the second is the much cited “tearing up” sequence from the New Hampshire campaign.

I agree with Drezner that both these sequences display a powerful sense of entitlement, which Drezner characterizes as follows:

1) Hillary Clinton genuinely thinks the country needs change, and that she has the capacity, as president, to make the country a better place;

2) Hillary Clinton genuinely thinks that no one else but her possesses that capacity, and that it is insulting to suggest otherwise [italics original].

And I would add that both video sequences reflect the claim of expert status that has characterized the Clinton campaign from the beginning. As she says through her tears:

. . . Some of us are right and some of us are wrong, some of us are ready and some of us are not, some of us know what we will do on day one and some of us really haven’t thought that through enough; and so as tired as I am, and I am, . . . I just believe so strongly in who we are as a nation, so I’m going to do everything I can to make my case and then the voters get to decide.

Clinton has softened her claim of expert entitlement; and, as in her question and answer sessions and the staging and tone of her victory speech, she has endeavored to stand with rather than above those of whom she asks support. But the claim is still there: and I fully expect it to remain the centerpiece of her campaign, however she may repackage it in days to come. If Clinton receives the nomination of my party I will support her candidacy with enthusiasm, energy, and money, but in the real time of the present I am supporting Obama.

I was initially attracted to Obama because he is more liberal than Clinton; moreover, his liberalism is of the pragmatic sort, harder edged than the romantic populism of Edwards. I like Richardson a good deal as well, but the New Mexico governor seems not to be a real contender for the nomination, like Biden, Dodd, and Kucinich. Today I have realized that what I like most about Obama is that he speaks the language of my political heart, which is not the language of experts — it is rather the language of authentic new deal liberalism refitted for the twenty-first century. Obama’s language is the language of Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, and Jesse Jackson. Plain speech (another large theme of Cmiel’s book) albeit in Senecan periods, Obama’s rhetoric draws on a deep vein of significance in American public life that conservatives, so-called, have successfully ridiculed at least since the Reagan era (though the great communicator drew on it, himself).

Obama reminds me how it felt to make one with my sisters and brothers and students and colleagues in the marches of the sixties, how it felt to sing “We Shall Overcome” in those days when we lost a lot of fights, but won some too. Obama reminds me what it was like to win (even when we lost), what “Glory, Hallelujah!” meant to us then and how it almost became the national anthem. He reminds me what it was like to love my country when I loved my country with a passion that’s perhaps only possible when one is young. We’ve lost a lot of fights recently, but Obama gives me hope that we might still win a big one or two before what for me will be the end. He reminds me how Bobby Kennedy liked to quote Tennyson’s Ulysses:

                                  Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Drezner says he isn’t supporting Obama, but Michael Gerson almost sounds as if he is. Gerson fairly rhapsodizes in today’s Washington Post, saying that Obama’s campaign is about “the return of idealism,” an idealism that has everything to do with Obama’s authenticity as an inheritor of the rhetoric of King and Jackson.

Obama spent the last days before the New Hampshire primary defending “hope” against Clinton’s contention that the Illinois senator was raising “false hopes.” In the final debate, Obama also defended the use of inspiring words and rhetoric against Clinton’s charge that words matter little in comparison to experience . . . .

And on Obama’s authenticity as an African American:

. . . Obama’s race matters greatly, because most of the American story — from our flawed founding to the civil rights movement — has been a struggle between the purity of our ideals and the corruption of our laws and souls. The day an African American stands on the steps of the U.S. Capitol — built with the labor of slaves — and takes the oath of office will be a moment of blinding, hopeful brightness.

Clinton has staked her campaign on her ability to sell herself; whereas Obama has framed his campaign as an attempt to sell a certain vision of America. Here’s another video clip:

So I’m joining up with Obama, and we’ll see; it’s a good fight to be in . . .