Trump’s national security strategy speech: is that you, Donald? - Financial Times

20/12/2017

Trump’s national security strategy speech: is that you, Donald?

The US president has adopted a new tone — at least some of the time

SAM LEITH

Please don’t say ‘Between you and I’

President Trump leaves the stage after delivering his speech on national security © Getty

YESTERDAY 20

Two voices are there: one is of the deep;

It learns the storm-cloud’s thunderous melody,

Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea,

Now birdlike pipes, now closes soft in sleep:

And one is of an old half-witted sheep

Which bleats articulate monotony,

And indicates that two and one are three,

That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep:

And, Wordsworth, both are thine.

JK STEPHEN

The octave of JK Stephen’s sonnet about William Wordsworth — scaldingly funny and very unkind — came into my head this week when I read the transcript of Donald Trump’s national security strategy speech. Two voices were there, indeed.

One of the peculiarities of the public speech of Donald Trump’s presidency is that, where most presidents are able to marshal a number of registers (lofty, intimate, folksy, statesmanlike, cajoling, determined), number 45 seems to speak with two altogether distinct voices.

There is the one that attracts all the attention — the angry, narcissistic, insulting tone of his unfiltered Twitter feed and his rabble-rousing improvisations at rallies and in interviews. And then there is the one — widely assumed to be a sign that his cooler-headed advisers have taken control — that sounds conventionally presidential.

Those expecting the defeat of Roy Moore in Alabama to produce an eruption of the former, for instance, will have been disconcerted to read his response: “Congratulations to Doug Jones on a hard fought victory. The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win.”

That same voice was on show in his national security strategy speech. It was conventionally figural, rather elevated in style (though punctuated with characteristic applause-drinking repetitions of “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”) and full of decently turned balancing and antitheses. His staccato, conversational style had given way to more sonorous cadences.

He opened with a rising tricolon: “America’s security, prosperity, and standing in the world” — and offered two more in the following two paragraphs.

He spoke with a flourish of pleonasm (those repetitions of “to”), of having “carried America’s message to a grand hall in Saudi Arabia, a great square in Warsaw, to the General Assembly of the United Nations, and to the seat of democracy on the Korean peninsula”.

It was all there. Donald, one wanted to ask: is that you?

On he went, piling tricolon on tricolon (in one case, even embedding a tricolon within a tricolon); articulating “fundamental truths” in a five-term anaphora (“A nation . . . a nation . . . a nation”); isocolon; epistrophe; syntheton . . . it was all there. Donald, one wanted to ask: is that you?

The odd phrase — perhaps extempore — slipped in from the other register. “Very expensive and unfair”; “great job . . . great job”; “that’s the way it’s supposed to work”; “we’re getting rid of that”.

But the unfiltered President Trump would never speak a line such as: “Our new strategy is based on a principled realism, guided by our vital national interests, and rooted in our timeless values.”

It is not fair to draw from all this the conclusion that the president speaks with forked tongue: the content of the speech — from his line on the economy, trade deals and immigration right down to allusions to “America first” and the “forgotten people” — was entirely consistent with the sentiments expressed in his wilder communications.

What was radically different was style. We might prefer the more presidential voice, but it carries risks. A speaker’s appeal — their ethos — depends to a large extent on the audience feeling that they know them. If a speaker has two entirely distinct voices an audience will be more likely to suspect (as we do) that words are being put into that speaker’s mouth.

It comes down to the question asked in the opening words of Hamlet: “Who’s there?”

Sam Leith is the author of Write to the Point: How to be Clear, Correct and Persuasive on the Page (Profile Books)