Obama & You

January 30, 2009 by Jerry 

In 2006, Time picked as the Person of the Year, “You,” and published that issue with a patch of Mylar on the cover as a mirror for the readers. The magazine was focused on the personal power enabled by the World Wide Web, but it also drew attention to the power of the word, “you.” If you search the WWW, you’ll find tens of thousands of references to a Yale University study (unsubstantiated by Yale) ranking the 12 most persuasive words in the English language. “You” leads the list. Unsubstantiated or not, Barack Obama fully appreciates the power of “you.”

Early on in his campaign for the presidency, New Yorker magazine ran a story about his campaign strategy: “Obama now tries to make a more personal connection with voters. In the past, he has been accused of making his campaign more about himself than about those who come to his rallies. Now the word ‘you’ is mentioned as much as the word ‘I.’ ‘You’re not heard. They’re not listening to what you need,’ he told a crowd assembled at a rodeo site in Fort Madison on a recent evening. ‘You deserve a president who is thinking about you.’”

During the campaign, Obama’s web site displayed a headline banner that read, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington . . . I’m asking you to believe in yours.”

On the Sunday before his Inauguration, Obama spoke at the Lincoln Memorial, and said, “As I stand here tonight, what gives me the greatest hope of all is not the stone and marble that surrounds us today, but what fills the spaces in between. It is you – Americans of every race and region and station who came here because you believe in what this country can be and because you want to help us get there.”

Two days later, during his Inaugural Address, he used “you” or “your” 15 times, but two-thirds of those referenced another “you,” America’s enemies. The new president addressed them directly:

“Those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

“To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West – know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

But Obama also addressed the “you” of his audience, the “Americans of every race and region and station” he cited in his Lincoln Memorial speech. He brought them into his Inaugural by using “us,” “our,” and “we” – pronouns that involve “you.” To make this point, in the opening moments of his speech, he referenced the three famous first words of our Constitution, “because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebears.”

The chief book critic of The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani, took note of this approach, “As in most of his major speeches, Mr. Obama repeatedly referred to ‘us’ and ‘we,’ while playing down his own role as a leader. His few references to himself were put in the service of making a larger point about America.”

In fact, there were 23 instances of “us,” 62 of “we,” and a whopping 70 instances of “our,” which, when combined with the 15 instances of “you,” represent 7.1 percent of the total 2,388 words in the speech.

On his big day, Barack Obama never lost sight of his audience.

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One Response to “Obama & You”

  1. Jerry Weissman: Obama’s Virtual Town Hall - I | BlackNewsTribune.com on March 27th, 2009 9:10 am

    [...] January and March, I wrote about President Obama’s artful use of the word “you,” the most [...]

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