Before today’s mass audiences, a president’s ‘vital speech’ has power: to persuade, convert and to compel. The truism holds even in a world flooded with media communication and comment. If the President discerns events in their beginnings, foresees what is coming and forewarns others, the speech becomes an influential transaction.
The vital speech, delivered convincingly and persuasively, represents the height of presidential leadership. Neither overlooked nor forgotten, however, are regrettable occasions upon which the President failed to lead. That is, he failed to speak and to speak authoritatively. Specific examples follow.
In the spring of 1994, from Africa and the landlocked Republic of Rwanda, the Clinton Administration received overwhelming evidence: The extremist Hutu government was slaughtering tens of thousands of Tutsis, the country’s own people. Rwanda’s staggering evil would eventually claim the lives of between 800,000 and a million people. The genocide violated international laws of crimes against humanity, which are laws the U.S. helped enact at the 1949 Genocide Convention in New York.
Desperate pleas for American intervention reached the White House, at a minimum for the President’s vital speech: A verbal outpouring of condemnation, coupled with requests for other nations to join the U.S. in Rwanda’s rescue.
Critical days and hours passed while President Clinton mulled. Finally, he chose no speech. Four years later, March 25, 1998, the president spoke before a huge crowd at Kigali Airport in Rwanda. He admitted failure in the Rwanda Genocide. He apologized, and in so many words, acknowledged his refusal to speak out was a betrayal of humanity— on a massive scale.
During his first term in office, President Donald Trump authorized a permit extending the Keystone Pipeline from Canada across the western U.S. The 1,200-mile tube was designed to transport 830,000 barrels of crude per day to oil refineries in the lower Gulf states. The giant project caused intense controversy. U.S. landowners, Indian tribes and environmentalists opposed it. Petroleum industries favored the pipeline, as the dispute steadily weighed on the public interest.
President Joe Biden wasted no time. On his first day in office in January 2021, he revoked the Pipeline permit. Although a major policy action, the President gave no vital speech of explanation, no reasons for his action and no evidence supporting a presidential decision of major importance. His omission affirmed a political principle: silence in the face of critical controversy has the tendency of causing confusion, indecision and loss of purpose.
A third case of reticence: In the early months of 2014, the world order in Europe, ordained and in place since World War II, was destabilized. In a premeditated violation, Russia invaded the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (Crimea). The Russian Bear then annexed a peninsula on the Black Sea, home to 2.35 million people.
Across the globe news reverberated, during an era in which the U.S. was the unquestioned superpower. She was a founding member of NATO. She was still committed to defense of Western Europe and to the peace and prosperity prevailing since the end of the Cold War. Russia had blatantly imperiled the status quo.
Time for the President’s vital speech had arrived. Fate urged a determined address in condemnation of Russia’s aggression, a speech that aroused democratic people across the globe. It was an enormous opportunity for President Obama to remind Mother Russia she was violating the very laws prohibiting armed invasions that Russia herself helped implement, following the War Crimes Trials at Nuremberg in 1945.
President Obama excluded the vital speech. He encouraged European allies to enter sanctions, but sanctions fell short of weakening Russia’s military ambitions. Nor did they prevent the invasion of Ukraine eight years later. In his defense, Obama said, “We challenged Putin with the tools we had at the time, given where Crimea was.” Unfortunately, the timetested power of a president’s vital speech was unutilized. What advantage was gained?
Vital speeches of American Presidents tower in importance over those never delivered. However, a closer look at the unspoken may be helpful in recognizing the extraordinary achievement of those Presidents who knew when and how to deliver the vital speech— and proceeded to proclaim them.
SOURCES.: The Clinton Administration Failure to Intervene in Rwandan Suicide,” J.K.Rak, The Macksy Journal, Vol.1,Art.111, 2020; “2014 Russian Annexation of Crimea,” https://en w ikipedia.org/wiki/2014_ Russian_annexation_of _Crimea;“Obama defends 2014 Crimea response,” Nick Robertson, The Hill, Ju 22,23, pp1/92/9; “Statement by the President on Ukraine,” The White House, Office, Press Secretary, Mar. 20, 2014; “Rwanda genocide”,: Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/.
• Retired attorney Jim Thomas lives in Atlanta. Email jmtlawyerspeak@ yahoo. com
