It was as remarkable and powerful a piece of presidential oratory as many of us have witnessed in our lifetimes, a transcendent moment in a profoundly transformational period in modern history.

Barack Obama, coming off a watershed week in his presidency, used his funeral oration for slain South Carolina legislator and clergyman Clementa Pinckney to comfort both the grieving family as well as a horrified nation. But he also used his address to lead, to inspire, to motivate — and, hopefully, to persuade.

The president’s eulogy spoke to the urgent need for deeds, not more words, to combat vestigial racism in an America born in the original sin of slavery and heir to the hateful legacies of Jim Crow, segregation and systematic political and economic disenfranchisement.

Coming as it did in the immediate wake of the momentous US Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, it’s clear the president’s remarks extended well beyond the need to simply revisit fixed positions and obsolete attitudes on race.

President Obama’s central argument was not just persuasive but indisputable. It was as compelling a case as has ever been made for forging new ways of thinking and behaving, finding new ways of acting and interacting which can affect genuine change in a changing world.

“It would be a refutation of the forgiveness expressed by families [of the Emanuel AME church shooting] if we merely slipped into old habits, whereby those who disagree with us are not merely wrong but bad; where we shout instead of listen; where we barricade ourselves behind preconceived notions or well-practised cynicism,” said the president.

“Reverend Pinckney once said, ‘Across the South, we have a deep appreciation of history — we haven’t always had a deep appreciation of each other’s history’.

“What is true in the South is true for America. Clem understood that justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other. That my liberty depends on you being free, too. That history can’t be a sword to justify injustice, or a shield against progress, but must be a manual for how to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past — how to break the cycle. A roadway toward a better world. He knew that the path of grace involves an open mind — but, more importantly, an open heart.

“That’s what I’ve felt this week — an open heart. That, more than any particular policy or analysis, is what’s called upon right now, I think — what a friend of mine, the writer Marilyn Robinson, calls ‘that reservoir of goodness, beyond, and of another kind, that we are able to [draw upon] in the ordinary cause of things’.”

The power of persuasion is at once one of the most formidable but intangible at a president’s disposal. It is nowhere enumerated in the US Constitution. But this informal ability to mobilise public support and mould and reshape public opinion is one of the most potent tools in the presidential arsenal.

As Harry Truman — a robustly persuasive individual who used this power to tremendous advantage — once argued: “All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing and kicking to get [people] to do what they are supposed to do anyway.”

So the ability to exert moral suasion, to convince individuals, the country and sometimes the entire world of the righteousness of a cause or the necessity of a particular course of action, is always a hallmark of successful administrations (and always conspicuous by its absence from the failed ones).

Soaring eloquence and flawless charisma of the type possessed by President Obama are helpful when it comes to rallying support. But they are not always necessary. Truman, for instance, was nothing if not a plain-spoken man, his language entirely bare of rhetorical flourishes and conspicuous ornamentation.

But he communicated with the same passion, integrity and cast-iron sense of conviction as the current president — and conviction is an indispensable prerequisite when it comes to persuading people to do what needs to be done.

The ability to deploy the power of persuasion, the ability to use high office to exert moral suasion, is not unique to the American presidency. It’s a tool available to the leadership of all countries, a means of exerting leverage to further high-principled goals, a means of setting the tone of national thought and debate — and setting the bar for social responsibility to new highs.

For what’s true of the US South and America in general is also true, in a minor-key way, of Bermuda. Too often we are still shouting when we should be listening; too often we are still barricading ourselves behind the iron doors of fixed opinion and antiquated prejudice rather than engaging the new forces shaping our fluid and dynamic world.

Societies and social mores are never static. Both are constantly evolving.

Perfection might be elusive but it is nevertheless something to always be pursued.

And the animating principle of most western cultures in the post-Second World War era has been a constant striving towards improvement.

The focus, even in tiny Bermuda, has been on empowering the powerless, on ensuring the full participation in society of those who have been traditionally marginalised or oppressed or ignored.

While full equality can never, of course, be legislated, ensuring full equality of opportunity and full equality before the law can and must be a primary objective of all enlightened communities.

But in Bermuda as in the United States and other countries, the forward march of progress has often encountered inertia, inflexibility and, sometimes, outright hostility and sabotage.

In the past we have been lucky to have had leaders who have persuaded, encouraged and sometimes shamed Bermuda into accepting the need for accelerated social change in an ever-changing environment.

From Sir Henry Tucker to Dame Lois Browne-Evans to Sir John Swan, from Dr EF Gordon to Dr Pauulu Kamarakafego (Roosevelt Brown) to Dr John Stubbs, we have not lacked for either inspiration or direction at the watershed moments in our development.

But that is far from the case right now. When it comes to not just shouldering the full burden of our racially divided past but overcoming its legacy, when it comes to extending full civil and legal rights to people whose lifestyles we may not approve of, when it comes to accepting the legitimate aspirations — and contributions — of those we are often too quick to label as interlopers, Bermuda is lagging behind.

We have too few leaders who are prepared to take the lead on these matters. Rather, we have too many opportunists who cheerfully engage in provocation and polemics deliberately designed to further divide us rather than to bring us together.

We have too many political adventurers who seem entirely more intent on exacerbating social tensions for short-term gain at the polls rather than in binding up our wounds for the long-term good of Bermuda and all Bermuda residents.

And, finally, we have far too many complacent fence-sitters who, in the celebrated words of one of President Obama’s predecessors, “hold fast to the clichés of our forebears”, who “enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought”.

There have been some small signs of hope this indolence may be giving way to a growing recognition of the need for not just persuasive leadership but meaningful action on all of these fronts.

Last week’s sensible, sensitive and largely consensus-driven Senate discussion on the routinely divisive issue of race relations is one such example.

It would be heartening to think other, similar initiatives may soon follow.

For Bermuda must ultimately accept that justice does indeed grow out of recognition of ourselves in one another, that freedom is not divisible, that lazy but deeply ingrained habits of thinking and behaving cannot be allowed to permanently obstruct progress.

Until we do accept — and act upon — these realities, we ourselves will not embark on what the American president has rightly called “the roadway to a better world”.

— Tim Hodgson