Sarah Ruhl on Barack Obama

MacArthur Award winning playwright Sarah Ruhl (Euridice, The Clean House) sent us a letter to swing voters. We hope you enjoy it:

Letter to Swing Voters

I have loved Republicans. And I do love some Republicans. I have opened Christmas presents from Republicans, celebrated Seder with Republicans, sat at death beds with Republicans, argued with Republicans, and been comforted by Republicans. I am not a Republican. And that is why I wanted to write a letter to you, my Republican brethren, my Republican family, the family I have argued with over party mix, the family who I drive long distances to see, to sit on your lap, to ask for your advice, and now I ask you: is there a two percent chance you will vote for Barack Obama? If not, don’t bother to read this letter. But if there is a two percent chance, let me try to convince you.

The charges leveled against Barack Obama include the fact that he is a good speaker and a good writer. This troubles me. Leadership going back to Cicero has involved speaking, writing, thinking and persuading. We live in a dangerous world, a world in which we now need a thinker, a cogent speaker, and a leader who can inspire us to come together and face deep challenges. Our new president will do this, largely, through language—and hopefully, through language that reflects moral action. After all, leaders do not govern in pantomime. I believe that we even govern in poetry during specific times in history—in times that demand poetry rooted in the blood of action. JFK spoke in poetry in order to inspire a generation during the Civil Rights movement. Martin Luther King spoke in poetry to inspire us to the better angels of our nature. Lincoln spoke in poetry to end slavery and bring together the Union. I am afraid that the current political climate tells us: “We govern in sound bites, not poetry.” The reason? Because sound bites make us do nothing. Sound bites make us sit passively while politicians evade their reasons for going to war. If the sound bite is repeated often enough, and in response to the wrong questions, we sit back and do nothing, hypnotized. Political poetry, at its best, does not hypnotize. It inspires moral action from a place where deep thinking and deep feeling are married in the spoken word. It is only when we are inspired by the ideal of justice that words even begin to sound like poetry—otherwise, they sound like platitudes.

Whereas Barack Obama has language, and therefore thought at his disposal (because let’s be clear, thought and language are related), his opponents would govern in sound bites. “I’m a maverick.” “He’s a maverick.” And I’d like to note here that the first meaning of maverick was “an unbranded or orphaned animal, as a calf, traditionally belonging to the first person to claim or brand it”. I hesitate to suggest that our mavericks on the right are orphaned calves waiting to be branded and sold by their party, by the first person to give them a sellable brand. Still, I am tired of hearing McCain and Palin chirp, “I’m a maverick,” and, “he’s a maverick,” in response to all kinds of complicated questions as though that one word, “maverick,” clears up huge questions of affairs of state.

Perhaps I am biased. As a writer, and a playwright in particular, I believe that language reflects thought, and the potential for moral action. Language is not empty. Especially from the leader of the free world, language becomes a speech act. That is to say, language is how we pass laws, how we declare war, and language is how we persuade other leaders and the populace to hear our point of view and to act. We have not had sophisticated language coming from the White House for the past eight years, and I’m afraid we haven’t had sophisticated thinking either.

I believe that the people who have responded strongly to Barack Obama’s candidacy, including myself, have responded to him not merely because he is a good speaker but because there is something about his language, his writing and his speech, that feels authentic. It feels as though his language might actually reflect a real self, and a self that is capable of moral action, matching and extending his speech into the realm of historic deeds.

The next President will have to be a Roosevelt, a Truman, a Reagan, a JFK, a Lincoln all rolled into one. That is to say—we’ll need someone who can rally in times of economic crisis, end a complicated war, inspire people to hope, deflect dangers abroad, and bring together a polarized nation. Obama has been criticized for not being only one thing—not black, not white, not only from Hawaii or Chicago. I would argue that at precisely this time we desperately need a leader who is not only one thing. We need someone multi-faceted, with broad appeal. We don’t need a maverick if a maverick is an orphaned calf looking for a brand, nor do we need a maverick if a maverick is a fighter pilot with a streak of recklessness. And we certainly don’t need a maverick Vice- President, when simple-minded, vague, inarticulate solutions to complex problems could mean the death of the economy and the death of the nation. We need a sober thinker, speaker and leader who can sift through complex problems and persuade people to enact complex solutions. We need, we desperately need, Barack Obama.

Sincerely,

Sarah Ruhl

Sarah Ruhl is a playwright originally from Chicago. She is a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a MacArthur fellow, and lives in New York City.