I remember the first time I suffered from sticker shock.
My used car, the one that got me through high school and two years of college, was sputtering and spewing as used cars with 87,000 miles tend to do.
I went to an auto-repair shop. The mechanic looked at my car then said rather bluntly, “Lady, here’s what the problem is, here’s how I’m gonna fix it and this is how much it’s gonna cost.”
The problem and fixing part I understood, but the price was significantly higher than I had expected.
I asked the mechanic if there was a cheaper solution. With a crooked smile he replied, “Sure – if you don’t mind breaking down on a busy highway.”
Message received. I took the costlier, car-won’t-fall-apart-on-the-road option and drove off into the sunset.
Which makes me think of President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration speech. Our country, in many important ways, is broken. We need a serious overhaul. And it’s going to be costly. So, how do we fix us?
The country, and probably world, is waiting with anticipation to hear what Obama will say on Inauguration Day about our future.
Talk about pressure.
Being a writer, I empathize as much with Obama’s speech writers as with the president-elect. The bar has been set high for Obama to hit an oratorical home run first time at bat.
Originality will be the key. Obama should avoid exhausted rhetoric. I mean, one hint of “Ask not what your country can do for you,” and his speech writers will be penning want-ads on Craigslist by morning.
Originality is important.
So, too, is authenticity, which is not to be confused with audacity, a word that made the title of one of Obama’s best-selling books. Stay real. Don’t fall into flowery language with empty elevator-music phrases. Give some – do I dare say it, John McCain? – straight talk to the audience.
If you tell me to have hope, shoot straight and tell me why.
If you want me to make a sacrifice, show me what it’s going to entail. If you want me to follow, please indicate where we’re going minus any fancy rhetoric requiring a dictionary.
No doubt, Obama is one of the best at rallying a crowd with his natural gift of passionate prose. By all means, he should use metaphor. But, he also will be well served to remember to channel my former mechanic. Keep it simple and honest: Here’s the problem, here’s how we need to fix it and here’s what it’s gonna cost.
Look, I’m not a complex political animal, nor is, I suspect, the average American citizen. I’m a working mom trying to balance home, work and life, while also balancing my checkbook. And I’m worried, too.
Inspiration is important, critical even, to the president-elect’s historic speech. Extraordinary times do call for extraordinary measures, but that doesn’t have to equate to out-of-the-ordinary wording to a worried audience.
Our nation is sputtering and spewing. Show us the way to the highway of hope before the sun sets on our country.