The recent movie “The King’s Speech,” has been well and broadly reviewed for the wonderful acting of stars Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush. The film recounts the story of the arduous treatment of King George VI of England’s debilitating stutter. While the film tells a story of what media pundits call “an unlikely friendship” between Lionel Logue, an Australian actor manqué who has developed a speech defects practice and the imminently to-be-crowned British monarch, it addresses many issues relevant to the mystery of sovereignty itself. As we approach President Barack Obama’s second State of the Union address, and think about our own executive’s voice, “The King’s Voice” can be gainsaid for the way it animates key sociological insights into the nature of political legitimacy, sovereignty, democracy, and the role of the leader’s rhetoric in binding a nation together (especially a nation at war).
Ever since Ernst Kantorowicz analyzed the medieval theological innovation of the “king’s two bodies,” (a theology that managed the contradictory ideas that the king is divine and thus immortal and that the king is mortal and thus vulnerable to corruption and disease), we have recognized the ways in which real-world kings and presidents have been maneuvering to appear human and transcendent simultaneously. Other sociological and anthropological work on transcendence, political ritual, war and legitimacy (Durkheim, Weber, and Geertz spring to mind) has made us conscious of the ways that rulers use their bodies and their voices to demonstrate and symbolize the collectivities they rule. Historically they have done so by highlighting their sovereign exceptionalism. At the same time, an American democratic diffidence toward transcendence and the divine has also insisted that our leaders be “just like us.”
“The King’s Speech” draws our attention to the role of the voice of the monarch in addressing the nation and, in moments of national peril, literally constituting the nation as a self-conscious entity ready to make sacrifices. George VI, catapulted by the abdication of his older brother into being king, must make an important speech as Britain goes to war in September 1939. He stutters badly under the best of circumstances and struggles to make his voice perform its authority. Meanwhile, the elected government of Britain actually takes the country to war, apparently accepting this symbolic division of sovereign labor as the King addresses the nation by way of his radio speech. The film plays with the liminal moments of sovereignty – changes of tone and posture and eye gaze are immediate upon the death of George V with his wife and sons in the room and the immediate transfer of sovereignty from George V to Edward VIII; more changes later upon George VI accepting his brother’s abdication. The film appears to be more explicit about democratic challenges to royalty in highlighting the ironic and playful banter engaged in by Lionel Logue as a commoner who “talks back” to a king. That Lionel, the commoner, can speak easily and Bertie, the king cannot is indeed ironic – but the film stops there in its deconstruction of the British monarchy. It, too, remains in the thrall of the sovereign sacred. Nevertheless, the film brilliantly focuses on the non-trivial qualities of speech, voice, gesture, and presence in constituting legitimate authority.
As Barack Obama, a wartime president, prepares his own exhortation to the nation, commentators have already anticipated the importance of the sovereign voice. Writing in Newsweek, Jonathan Alter notes that the nation needs rousing and that: “Fortunately, we have a president with the rhetorical skills to rouse us. Unfortunately, he hasn’t so far. Obama’s biggest mistake in his first two years was that he took Mario Cuomo’s famous dictum—“you campaign in poetry and govern in prose”—too much to heart. To succeed, he needs to govern in poetry, too. He needs to use the music of his voice to sell math and science and engineering and entrepreneurship and all the other skill sets we let deteriorate when our brightest college graduates went to work on Wall Street.”
Alter is right about the need to govern in poetry, but he’s wrong about the substantive referent. The sovereign voice is domesticated and profanized when it speaks of math, science, and entrepreneurship, no matter how important these things are for society. The core of sovereignty lies with its authority to wage war.
Ultimately, as Max Weber taught us, political legitimacy relies upon the constant reiteration of the state’s monopoly of the legitimate use of force – violence, the war and the nation bound together, the nation heeding the voice of the sovereign, for better or for worse. The United States of America is still fighting a war that has uncertain enemies, uncertain goals and uncertain achievements. Barack Obama may speak of many things in his State of the Union address, but he must find a way to re-authorize the war that the nation is currently waging, to make it necessary and legible for his nation. Unlike George VI, Obama has been known to be a brilliant speaker, but both sovereigns have shared the mandate of legitimizing war in the eyes and ears of their nations with their voice.
I’ve often wondered about this. Are we really at war? I’m actually not sure who our enemies are? I’m not sure what the objectives are? I’m not sure how we’ll know if we have won or lost? I’m not sure what the military and political objectives are. It is very difficult to pull a nation together around a war concept unless the answers to these are clear, and there is support for them. Depending upon when we start counting, is this America’s longest war? Is it one war or a series of wars? Is it against state actors, others or both? Is it really possible to have a war with non state actors. I have lots of questions , and very few answers. My guess is that the “sovereign” will be most effective if the questions are answered, clearly and concisely, and a public good can be identified as the result of waging it. At the current pace, we are burning out the military and placing tremendous hardships on their families and communities. Can we coalesce our allies around our consensus position if and when it develops? Do are enemies know that they are enemies and will they concede before we exhaust our human and other resources? The existential negation of the enemy (Carl Schmitt’s concept) is difficult unless we know who the enemies are. Are we willing to sacrifice anything to win this war (wars) assuming we are actually in one (them)?
President Obama has the potential to be, and perhaps is, a transformational leader. Transformational leadership has been discussed extensively in the literature on organizational development. Iain Hay explored the concept in his paper, “Transformational Leadership: Characteristics and Criticisms” (http://www.leadingtoday.org/weleadinlearning/transformationalleadership.htm).
In the paper, Hay cited a summary of aspects of transformational leadership by A. G. Stone, R. F. Russell and K. Patterson as follows, “… the transformational leader articulates the vision in a clear and appealing manner, explains how to attain the visions, acts confidently and optimistically, expresses confidence in the followers, emphasizes values with symbolic actions, leads by example, and empowers followers to achieve the vision.”
In his conclusion, Hay wrote, “Through charisma, individualized consideration, intellectual stimulation and inspirational motivation, transformational leaders have great potential to promote performance beyond expectations and to effect enormous changes within individuals and organizations. It appears to be a form of leadership well-suited to these current times characterized by uncertainty, global turbulence and organizational instability. However, as we have seen from examples such as the horrors of Jonestown, there are some risks associated with this form of leadership, particularly with respect to idealized influence. The capacity for individual and organizational transformation must be accompanied by moral responsibility, for transformational leaders shape powerful social and institutional cultures which may either be liberating or oppressive.” I’ve seen this leadership model at work first hand in businesses, and I wonder if it has an application in thinking about President Obama’s challenges and his approach to leadership.