Me

It might be more precise to call last Monday’s speech the State of the President Address (SOPA).

After all, it was not the nation that was the focal point of the discourse. It was the President. It was really all about him.

President Aquino’s speeches always tend to be self-absorbed, always egotistical. I will not dare psychologize why this is so. The literature on political leadership does tell us this is not a desirable trait. Empathy is always the most important virtue of those who wish to effectively lead complex communities.

Last Monday’s speech takes the cake as far as self-centered addresses go. Not even Fidel Castro comes close.

The speech began with something already familiar: the President whining about how difficult his job is. He compares his job to simultaneously watching 200 channels on cable TV, anticipating developments on each one at the same instant.

That might not be the best analogy. Watching 200 channels simultaneously produces information overload. The consequence can only be confusion and bad judgment.

The literature on management suggests the contrary. Focus on one problem at a time. Deal with it comprehensively and contextually. Then move quickly to the next one. There are no shortcuts and no substitute for longer working hours.

There is only so much the mind can do. Even an Albert Einstein would not watch 200 channels simultaneously. Although he wondered about the entire universe and nothing less, Einstein focused on a few theorems at a time.

Watching 200 channels simultaneously can only be exasperating and fruitless for the best of minds. No wonder the President appeared a little flustered.

After the obligatory whining about the toughness of the job, Aquino went on to enumerate the good job done by his men (although most of that consists of the routine things government ought to be doing). He sounded like King Arthur calling by name each of his knights around the table.

The object of the exercise was not to elevate the mentioned officials but to reduce them into ornaments of the King. They are “trophy officials” in exactly the same sense as the “trophy wife” successful men acquire for themselves in addition to the Rolex on their wrists. They are mere accouterments of the Leader, the “borloloy” of the tribal chief.

 The President uses them as shoulders to stand on to glorify himself. This is, after all, a speech threaded together by egotism, not by a clear vision for the nation nor a clear sense of historical conjuncture.

After that rundown, the President (again predictably) turns on his critics. Here he begins sounding like the egotistically tyrannical Louis XIV, remembered for declaring: L’etat c’est moi! (I am the state!).

By this point, the President’s logic becomes slippery — and dangerously so. The universe becomes black or white, good or evil, somos o no somos.

The speech reaches its least convincing point when Aquino began slandering all his critics, calling them enemies of “reform” and thus enemies of the people. Like the Palace-salaried trolls, he did not address the substance of criticism. He was content merely name-calling those who disagree.

The exercise in generalized derogation made Aquino sound like Stalin railing against “counter-revolutionaries.” That was a prelude to show trials, summary executions and mass deportations. Fortunately, in our case, we have a strong legal order to protect dissenting citizens from megalomaniacs.

After the ritual bashing of critics, indulged in mainly to soothe wounded pride, Aquino began rambling about his legacy. Not the nation’s destiny, mind you, but his legacy. He rattles off a few names nobody every ever heard about as examples of those who will ensure his “reforms” are perpetuated.

The speech begins to get fuzzy at this point. Aquino talks about living a “second life” after a bullet grazed his nape during the coup attempt of 1987 as he returned to his mother after a night of carousing. Then, without predicate, he talks about his being taken out by a bomb. 

Listeners began to wonder: is he terminally ill or is a coup afoot? All sorts of speculation, as we saw, followed from that botched effort at melodrama.

The self-centered speech was just about ready to implode when Aquino summoned the memory of his parents to reinforce the message he is a man of destiny. This is when he begins to choke and appeared to well up as he moved towards the punch lines. His sisters weep on cue.

There is some debate about that moment. A significant school of thought argues he was actually suppressing his chronic smoker’s cough. Whatever, this was the moment of high drama.

Because this was a speech about Benigno Simeon Aquino and not a discourse about the state of the Filipino nation, it is understandable that it had no policy content. Nothing was said about an energy security strategy. Nothing said about the economic strategy behind the hefty budget proposal the executive would present. Nothing about the OFWs whose remittances are the fuel of our economic growth. Nothing about the disaster that is our agriculture.

The day after the Speech, not surprisingly, there was no public debate on policy. The whole nation remained as clueless about where we are about to go. Coverage centered on the tears and the choking.

It was pretty much like those many days after yet another of Kris Aquino’s very public displays of emotion under the cruel glare of television. We remember the sobbing, but sooner forget what the wailing was all about.