The slogan on Barack Obama's web site reads: "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."
Two articles yesterday commented on Barack Obama's rhetoric, specifically having to do with verbal focus: Self- or other-directed, exclusive or inclusive, "I" or "you"?
Caroline Winter, filling in for the venerable William Safire, wrote a piece in The New York Times Magazine, about capitalization of pronouns, but departed from her discussion of punctuation to discuss usage. She noted that the use of "I" implies self-inflation and that, "on the last day of voting...of the primary season" Hillary Clinton said "I" 64 times, John McCain, 60 times, and Barack Obama 30 times; and that Obama counterbalanced his use of "I" with 37 instances of "we" and 16 instances of "you."
This is entirely consistent with Obama's intentional word choice first spotted by The New Yorker last November: "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.'"
The strategy paid off. In what most political analysts agree was the turning point in the primary campaign, the Iowa Caucuses, Obama won with 37.6% of the vote, while Clinton placed third with at 29.5%. On Election night, after the final results were in, Obama and Clinton spoke at their campaign headquarters. Each of them spoke for about the same length of time; yet each differed significantly in their focus. In Clinton's concession speech, she said 'you" 17 times, and "I" 35 times, while Obama said "you" or variations of "you" 26 times, and "I," only ten times.
In 2006, George Will, the noted conservative columnist, crossed party lines to recommend that Obama run for the presidency by noting that Obama shared certain key qualities with Ronald Reagan. The Republican writer praised the Democratic politician: "For a nation with jangled nerves, and repelled by political snarling, he offers a tone of sweet reasonableness. But yesterday, Mr. Will returned to form. Writing in The Washington Post, he said, "Obama should be told: Enough, already, with the we-are-who-we-have-been-waiting-for rhetorical cotton candy that elevates narcissism to a political philosophy."
"We" is actually a combination of "I" and "you," and "you" works.