President Obama came to Penn State today to speak about Energy Innovation and how important students are to this cause. He explained vaguely about plans for the future to make our homes and businesses more efficient. He also talked about how Penn State will lead one of the government sponsored Energy Innovation Hubs in Philadelphia.
As important as energy innovation and needs for efficiency are, I do not think that today was a kairotic situation for President Obama to talk about it. I understand that the President is a VERY busy person and that changing his schedule to fit the right kairos is very difficult. However, topics such as energy renewal and innovation are constantly replaced by more pressing issues such as the crisis in Egypt and because of this incident; energy renewal will be pushed back to the end of the agenda for the government. I find this situation to be fascinating because the President failed to find the kairos for this cause and in effect energy renewal and efficiency will, at first, be considered but when more “urgent” issues, like I mentioned before, like the political instability in Egypt, arise this speech will be long forgotten along with the facts and points from the speech.
It would have been more effective if the President had talked about Egypt and it political instability and somehow linked it to our dependence on foreign resources for oil. In this way, the message would have felt more urgent and it would have been a very appropriate time for something like this to be mentioned.
It is true that more of our attention will be going to the crisis in Egypt instead of on energy. Actually, there always seems to be more urgent issues, such as fixing the economy, that energy never gets as much focus as it should.
ReplyDeleteThough you do bring up good points in your argument about how the President could have better supported his argument for clean energy research, I do disagree with using Egypt as an example. For one, Egypt is not a primary exporter of petroleum so we are not dependent on them as far as oil. Secondly, the reason the President spoke about energy research was he was attempting to further his domestic agenda which is heavily focused on creating jobs from new clean energy industries. The President did not mention Egypt because they are one of our closest allies in the Middle East and it is not the opportune moment to criticize the Mubarak administration because of our close relations in the past. That being said, I do agree with you that reducing our dependence on foreign oil is paramount in this endeavor for clean energy research. Great ideas.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I do agree that the crisis in Egypt may be more a important issue to attend to at a time like this, I think that the Kairos of the speech was right for the audience at Penn State. More of the audience here can relate to energy conservation and efficiency, since it is something that students can be aware of and implement into their own lives. Students would not be able to help much in terms of the Egypt crisis if he had chosen to talk about that. For Penn State at least, I think the time and place was right to talk about energy efficiency. If he had done a national broadcast instead of coming to Penn State, I agree that the Kairos might be more appropriate if he chose to talk about Egypt to get the whole population's awareness.
ReplyDeleteOne thing to consider is the specific audience involved. The speech was originally to be just to a small group who had a vested interest in the topic--those involved in the research he was actually addressing. With another day to prepare (due to weather), and I'm sure some behind-the-scenes pressure from Penn State, additional tickets were made available to the broader community.
ReplyDeleteSo as a rhetor, should Obama stick with the original focus of his message? This would have been quite appropriate, given that it's something his audience is working on daily, and something he'd just addressed in the State of the Union. Or should he broaden his message out to those not part of his initial primary audience?
Of course, the speech would get some media coverage regardless. But it's a difficult balancing act to decide how much one should adapt to the unexpected changes in audience.