Obama As An Orator - Is He Good, Or Are Most Modern Speakers Just Bad?

[Median Democrat]

I think Obama is a very good speaker. However, I think the fixation on his speaking skills is not just due to ability to give a speech, but because so many mondern speakers and speeches are just piss poor. The only other speaker on par with Obama is Bill Clinton. However, consider some of the other RNC speeches that the pundits have applauded, most notably Palin's.

The pundits loved all the clever little digs and one liners. However, notice the cadeance and applause lines. It was three sentence *clap* three sentence *clap* throughout the entire speech. I agree that there was not much content, but a lot of that was also due to the modern practice of building in these time-sucking applause lines for the purpose of creating political theater. Indeed, several times during the Palin speech, the cadeance was off, and the audience just started clapping before she delivered the punch line of a barb, which just shows that there weren;t really even listening, just reacting to the cadeance of the speech.

I have a book of great speeches, and the art of giving speeches is a lost one. Where are the speeches that are designed to stir and inspire the passive masses, not the partisans who agree with you anyways. You listen to MLK's I have a dream speech, or JFK's speeches, and you felt inspired and intelligent for having heard their words. With most modern political speeches, you just have the slining of talking points designed to make an impact in a 30 second soundbite.

This is why I think that Barack Obama is actually very old-fashioned. His speeches do not have built in breaks for applause lines. To understand and appreciate the speech, you need to hear the whole thing, but if you do, you are rewarded with both information and inspiration. Obama is not historically unique, but for modern times, he's a throwback.

As for McCain's speech. Its like Palin's, but with much worse delivery and as little content. Arrgh! And McCain admires Reagan?

[Captain Hilts]

1. Both. nt

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

8. That's it in a nutshell

Most modern political speakers have been C-/D+ performers. The exceptions being Ronald Reagan (yes, I despised him, but remember the Challenger speech and the fact that he didn't scream at his opponents, Rep or Dem, but undermined them with subtlety and self-deprecating humor), Mario Cuomo, who would have made Cicero applaud, and, in his own way, Bill Clinton, whose primary problem was that he was too goddamn long-winded. Obama is in the Reagan/Cuomo class as a pure orator, and probably better than either.

Gore is good now, though he was terribly wooden ten years ago; no-one named Booosh can deliver a coherent, much less a decent, speech, Quayle and Palin are flat out embarrassments. Kerry was a flamethrower this year, but at best OK four years ago. Hillary has become steadily and predictably decent; when she is herself she can be very good, when she is "handled" she is much less impressive, but has improved consistently through this campaign cycle. McCain is gawdawful at his best and horrifying at his worst. Biden is a constant B+ performer when disciplined. Obama gets an average of A-. but his big speeches are almost always A+.

[MannyGoldstein]

2. Speech Styles Are A Product Of Their Time In History

FDR was a fantastic orator - for the first half of the last century. He'd sound simply bizarre now.

FWIW, I think that Obama is an astounding orator for our time. Every bit as good for our time as JFK and MLK were for their time.

[Captain Hilts]

27. TRUE! FDR now sounds like Thurston Howell III.

[jberryhill]

3. Electronic Amplification

The old arm-waving over-enunciated style that persisted long after electronic amplification gave way at around the time of JFK. Television may have played a large role in that.

Barack Obama has a somewhat homogenized, and hence more broadly palatable, cadence and style of African American church preaching. It's sort of like early white rock & rollers taking black rhythm & blues and translating it into something that didn't scare white people as much.

[Median Democrat]

6. Its More Than That - The Informational and Inspirational Content Are Way Down

McCain and Palin speeches, of course, contained a lot of self-biography. However, they just amount to self-indulgent testimonial. At least Obama made some effort to not only tell his story, but to connect it most Americans AND to his policy proposals.

With electronic amplification, I think many speakers use it as a crutch to simply yell applause lines into the microphone "Tax Cuts!" *clap* "Freedom!" *clap* in lieu of explanation and informational content.

You read or listen to JFK, MLK or even Bill Clinton. They managed to make fairly informative speeches that were also quite information, which did not have to be delivered in the halting style of today's modern speeches. Obama also has that gift.

The unfortunate fact is that modern pundits seem to easily swayed by the volume of applause, rather than the actual content or delivery of the speech, which just encourages speeches that are delivered in the 3 line *clap* style. Unless you are in the room clapping along, the speech leaves you left out if you are not already sympathetic to the candidate.

Oh well, I do miss the old school speakers. It is nice to hear a speech and feel smarter and inspired for the experience.

[toddGA]

4. I've got all the JFK speeches on LP and CD

and i think that Kennedy had smarter, better written speeches, filled with historical and literary references that echo with those who know them. on top of that he had a great sense of rhythm.

even so, in my judgment obama is a much better, more powerful, and more natural orator. i think his denver speech beats anything kennedy ever did in terms of delivery. kennedy's '60 acceptance speech, the berlin speech, the inaugural, and his address to the nation on calling for a civil rights bill were better documents, though. very,very moving to read.

i don't think anybody is in the same orbit with MLK, JR. we'll never see anything like that again, although obama comes close in terms of pathos.

it's true, though, this is a lost art. i think past speakers could assume the people were smarter than speakers these days.

[iconicgnom]

5. It's not the best position to be in, to depend on speechwriters and stage managers.

It gives up personal autonomy.

[TTUBatfan2008]

7. Perhaps that's a key to his success...

he writes 95% of the content in his speeches on his own. Also, Barack is gifted with a voice that is very appealing to the ears. It's not in any way harsh, he has a good attitude...a POSITIVE attitude...and it really comes through in his voice. Even when he HAMMERS someone with a good one liner, he never comes across as a mean person like Bush for instance when he delivers that awful line comparing "the angry left" to John McCain's captors in the Hanoi Hilton.

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

10. You are right

That ringing, mellifluous baritone of Barack's sits nicely in the ear, and then some.

[ContinentalOp]

14. That's a great and often overlooked point too.

Apart from his speaking skills, he really has a great voice. In contrast to someone like JFK who had the ideas, could write, and could deliver a speech eloquently but had a pretty annoying tone of voice.

[casus belli]

9. And...AND...he writes his own speeches...

that's something you almost NEVER see these days.

[alcibiades_mystery]

11. Why African American speakers manage audiences more effectively

It's true that the sentence--applause line---sentence---applause line delivery is nearly unbearable for anyone who prizes eloquence. Obama avoids it. How? Or rather, why?

The answer is rooted in the call and response tradition of African American oratory, and really its sermonic tradition. In turn, the call and response tradition can be traced further back to cultural traditions that are more refined in African cultures, but also social values (interactivity, rhythm as a mode of interacting with the world, communal participation, etc.). Mind you, call and response in rhetorical performances are - as far as we can tell - universal. However, they are ritualized differently based on prevailing social values. So, if you've ever been to a Catholic service, you probably heard "The Lord be with you." You'll then here a communal mumble in return: "And also with you." That's call and response, but it is a highly ritualized call and response that is grounded in the rigid authority structure of the Catholic church: the audience responds only in set places when prompted by the "authority" figure (the priest). That's a historically specific political value about community structures that modulates universal call and response behaviors. If you go to an AME church, you get a much different call and response ritual: the audience responds seemingly randomly with approval or other interjections in ways that you would never see in a Catholic church (OK< maybe some of the hippie Catholic churches of the 1970's, but that's it). Needless to say, there is still authority in the AME church, but the relationship between the speaker and audience is conceived differently. Moreover, since African culture retained (and still retains) an oral tradition long after Western culture transitioned to written traditions, a much higher premium is placed on spoken virtuosity in African and African derived cultures, a phenomenon long noted in areas as diverse as "playing the dozens," freestyle rapping, spoken word poetry, and the African American novel, which most experts will tell you has traditionally played the oral-written problem as a main theme. Not least is the African American sermonic tradition, where you get response "approvals" for your style of delivery as well as your content.

So, how does this explain Obama's eloquence. I think you are quite right that a lot of it has to do with Obama's ability to manage the applause breaks. When you come up in or otherwise enjoy long exposure to free form call and response, you become much much better at managing audience responses. As a result, you are better able to produce varying rhythms in your delivery. You can introduce rising and falling tones, you can mimic the content (as when MLK using a rising tone for the words "this nation will RISE UP,"), you can even syncopate. You can, in short, make your speech into music. This is what sucks about contemporary political oratory: there's no music to it. It is an utterly Western literary form that operates as if the power in words were merely in their "meaning." Oral traditions are much closer to the rhetorical practices of delivery, where it becomes clear that the rhythm and force of the words themselves, their physical SOUND (or what linguists might call, the aural signifier), and its combination into a musical piece, is just as important (this is also, incidentally, why people mistakenly believe that rap is not music: they fail utterly to hook into the way the lyrics are about creating an additional rhythm over whatever other beats are on the track).

So, why is Obama so eloquent? He manages call and response much more effectively, talking through or suspending the rhythmic cue for the applause. In the offing, his speeches become more musically (or physically - the physical sound) interesting.

Just as a final word, written forms of course incorporate oral rhythms, largely through the inclusion of rhetorical figuration. So, just to take a junior high school example, you have the ascending tricolon, like the famous line from the Declaration "...our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." That's a rhythmic construction; you can hear the rhythm in it (tap it out on a desk: 2, 3, 6).

[Retrograde]

12. Amen, sibling

It's not a culture I'm personally familiar with, but Mr. Retrograde, who was raised in Mississippi and Alabama says Obama's style reminds him of the Black ministers he remembers from his childhood. It's all in the cadence, and simple, short, to-the-point sentences with continual reinforcement of themes. Music, as it were.

(The Teaching Company's tapes on linguistics by John McWhorter (a Black conservative but an interesting speaker himself) talks about African-American religious speech patterns a little: he agrees it's the musical qualities, developed in and suited to an oral culture)

(edited to give credit where credit is due)

[ContinentalOp]

13. I've never really payed attention to conventions but I was appalled at the Dem convention...

...when I watched the live stream in the background while I worked. I had no idea that so many prominent Democrats were such terrible public speakers. Both of the Obamas, Biden, and Bill Clinton were great of course. Brian Schweitzer was amazing and Kucinich was fun if a little rough around the edges.

But why are so many of these other elected officials such piss poor speakers? So many of them are completely tone deaf, have no sense of rhythm and no comedic timing. So many promising jokes and one liners were botched by ridiculously inept deliveries.

I think the problem is not so much the difficulty of public speaking but the fact that a politician has to be a strange breed of saint to make it in this day and age. A politician is not allowed to engage in the same behaviors as most normal everyday interesting people (drug use, normal human sexuality, atheism) and if they do they have to keep these so deeply closeted that they are forced to live in an insane, unsustainable lie.

So it's not just that we're lucky to have a candidate like Obama who is such a good public speaker. There are probably tens of millions of Americans who could do the same or better. But we are lucky that we finally have a candidate who has the right mixture of speaking skills, academic background, ambition, ideas, etc. to make the whole thing work. I'm sure there are countless talented liberal orators who were defeated by Droney McDullard because they had some kind of "skeletons" in their closets.

[TTUBatfan2008]

17. Tens of millions?

I doubt that. Sincerely doubt that. Obama is the cream of the crop when it comes to public speaking in the world right now. Just to use a sports analogy, he is the Tiger Woods of public speaking. He blows everyone else out of the water pretty much every time there's a pressure situation.

[ContinentalOp]

24. No way is Obama the "Tiger Woods of public speaking".

I mean, that's almost a Republican meme, to argue that public speaking is his main strength. Almost any good standup comic can work a crowd far better than Obama. Hundreds of professional actors could pull off Obama's speeches better than he can. Thousands of preachers and millions of personable, gregarious salesmen could do the same. Sure, tens of millions was an exaggeration but not by far.

The point is none of these people could write these speeches or come even close to any of Obama's other accomplishments. I am unbelievably grateful that we have a candidate who is such a good speaker and I am very confident that he can win but ultimately I'm voting for him because of his ideas, his message, and his life experience.

We are really lucky that we have someone with Obama's many talents as our candidate but public speaking is in my opinion probably the least impressive and most common of those talents. Which makes it all the more mindboggling that it's so unique among politicians.

I think some of these politicians need to lay off the MLK and JFK recordings and actually listen to some standup comics, take some acting classes, and just take a minute to learn how real people talk and how to talk to real people. Whatever tiny amount of appeal Bush may have to some people is entirely due to the fact that he's perceived by those people as being a straight-talking "regular guy." And I'm not talking about some elusive talent here. Most of the monotony, botched jokes, and poor sense of rhythm that I heard from speakers at the convention could be fixed with some really basic coaching or a few simple acting classes.

[JeffR]

25. You raise some very good points

but rest assured if most of the speakers in Denver were far from stellar, most of the speakers in St. Paul were barely capable of talking at all.

[Captain Hilts]

28. Public speaking - his 2004 speech - IS his most visible strength.

It's not being a "community organizer," - a term that doesn't say much specific - or his senate record, which was identical to Clinton's.

Style counts in politics and his sells. That counts.

[dailykoff]

19. David Paterson also gave a good one, funny too

but it was in the early afternoon.

[Median Democrat]

21. Agree - Pundits Also Seem To Focus On Crowd Volume, Which Makes Things Worse

There really is no rhyme or reason to how pundits grade the speeches, except that they generally do tend to rely on crowd volume. A skilled speaker, of course, can generate genuine audience enthusiasm, and the GOP has some good speakers who have good timing even if their speeches lack informational content. Unfortunately, since the pundits often rely on crowd volume, you tend to get these speeches with applause lines that pander to the convention crowd with these halting applause points that destroy flow. Palin had decent time, to be honest, but the applause lines interrupted flow. Yet, due to the volume and enthusiam of the crowd, the pundits declared the speech a fantastic success. However, if Palin gave that speech to a less enthusiastic crowd, would it have been deemed anywhere near as good as it was? The same thing goes for McCain's speech. That was terribly written speech and poorly delivered. Yet, he generated applause, so the pundits praise the speech, which only encourages the nightmare speeches with huge gaps in the middle so that the audience can obediently clap.

Sadly, I also agree with your assessment of a lot of the prominent Democratic speakers. This was my first time hearing some of them, and they may be great elected officials, but their speaking ability leaves much to be desired. I hate to say it, the GOP does not have much of substance to say, but they do deliver the crap well overall. Fred Thompson, Rudy G., and Mike Huckabee can deliver a good speech, which makes me wonder how McCain got the nod. Perhaps because McCain was this year's establishment candidate.

As for Obama, I agree that he is one of most gifted speakers the Democratic party has had, as well as a great speechwriter. I mean even when I listened to the best the GOP offered, Rudy and Fred, you just ended up feeling snarky due to the one-liners, which were well-delivered, but at the end you did feel like you were part of a movement. With Obama, there is some content and context in the speech, and the delivery seals it.

So, beyond this election, I do hope some of the Democrats' bright young stars work on their speech skills. Its a lost art. Hopefully, just as the GOP were inspired by Reagan, perhaps a future generation of Democrats will be inspired by Obama to go retro, and work on good old-fashioned speaking and speech-writing that does not depend on artificial applause breaks for effectiveness.

[dailykoff]

15. It helps that he has actually something to say

and not just the lastest spokesbimbo for Big Oil and CorpAmerica, the entire platform of which can be summed as "No regulations, no taxes, and more wars." The rest is gimmickry and unless they're professional fakes like Reagan, it shows.

[eshfemme]

16. This has to do with the fact that our society's attention span has grown shorter and shorter.

When soundbites have increasingly shortened in time and even our very conversations have grown shorter (ex: LOL, ROFL, c u l8er, tmi, fyi, etc), it makes it far too easy to make what was an overall crappy speech all about the one good zinger they managed to come up with. Barack comes from a solid academic experience that is reflected in his speeches, which is also tempered by a strong sense of his own identity and thus, avoids the feeling of a normal written speech. Bill Clinton had that same ability of making a speech in his own style. That's what makes them good orators. But the media is now so fixated on "slicing and dicing" (in Obama's words) that they will go crazy for something that is obviously bad.

So, yes, I agree. Barack IS old-fashioned, which also suits me because despite my age, I'm also rather old-fashioned too. :)

[tpi10d]

18. he's good.

I heard Kennedy as a 10 year old, and some of his speeches are on youtube. I thought Kennedy had a bet sharper style, a bit more aggressive-such as comparing Nixon to a circus elephant. But Obama's speeches seem to soar, with pretty cool climaxes. Obama is damn good and a thrill to listen to. I thought Hillary's speech at the convention was her best ever-breathtaking at times.

Dukakis gave a poor acceptance speech-it is on youtube as I recall. A real sendoff into the chasm.

I don't remember Mondale or Carter's speeches. I didn't like Reagan at the time, and never saw him as supposed "great communicator." I can still do a pretty good Nixon impersonation, but he was average or less as a public speaker.

So yes I think Obama is a great speaker in historical context back to the '50s.

[Median Democrat]

23. Agree, Hillary's Convention Speech Was The Best I Heard

I think Hillary's speeches were densely packed with facts, but it seemed like delivery was an afterthought. There was no variation in tone, and the material was so dense, that it was hard to follow. However, her convention speech was the best effort I heard her make, since you could see the emphasis on delivery, as well as content.

[Captain Hilts]

29. Dukakis gave talks, not speeches. There you go. nt

[FrenchieCat]

20. He's good.

As a Black Baptist Minister's wife......I will say that he has borrowed a little bit of that, but really not that much.

It's his diction, the content, and the control that he has in modulating and controlling his voice. Many ministers lack both the diction and the control.....

[blogslut]

22. He is exceedingly good

Granted, you are correct in that he is a bit of a throwback to the days before the soundbite.

That said, Senator Obama is a brilliant speaker. His timing. His inflection. His beautiful voice. His ability to convince the listener that the emotions behind his words are sincere. He's even good at improvising when the need arises. As a public speaker, he's a total package.

Clinton is truly gifted as well but his style is more conversational than Obama's.

One of my favorite speakers these days is Jim McDermott. I love hearing that man.

[Kelly J]

26. He's a great speaker, but

I think MLK and JFK may have been the two best.

[Captain Hilts]

30. Having spent many years in the south -

I have to admit I've had enough of listening to male southern preachers and others who speak that way.

No offense to Dr. King, but as someone said elsewhere, speaking style is a function of the era you're in. I think appreciating speaking styles is also that way and I've heard too many trying to be the next Dr. King.

I also associate preacher-speak with yet another male hierarchy that controls women. The "debate on faith" was three christian penis-Americans talking about religion.

[Median Democrat]

37. Are You Saying That Women Can't Be Good Speakers?

I think Oprah Winfrey is a wonderful speaker. Margaret Thatcher was also a great speaker who had a wonderful ear, ability to control the pace of a speech, and sense of timing.

The point of my post is decry modern political speech. I think Obama is a good speaker, but that this is due in part to the fact that most modern speakers stink. They rely on the applause line, clap style of speaking that I just find grating. Disagree?

These speeches just designed to create loud applause at appropriate moments, yet are devoid of communicative value. This is why I say most modern speakers simply stink, because they are not even trying to communicate. Rather, they are pandering to pundits, by trying to get the crowd to applaud loudly. So, as a listener, I end up with a very choppy speech that has pundits swooming due to crowd response, but me scatching my head at the lack of content.

Put another way, modern political speech is very ritualistic. Designed to promote applause, rather than communicate. And THIS is what I think has been lost, the need for Presidents to directly communicate to their constituents. Bill Clinton was very good at this, as was Reagan. McCain and Palin, not so much.

[Captain Hilts]

41. Absolutely women can be good speakers!!

When people mention great speeches and orators, they rarely mention women. Odd.

We all remember Barbara Jordan as keynote speaker. How bracing it was.

Yes, most modern speakers are lousy. I heartily agree. I think part of it might be too much coaching and the fact that television has homogenized speech patterns. I mean, Churchill was a stutterer who had his own way of doing things. FDR had his own, though now he reminds my generation of Thurston Howell III on "Gilligan's Island."

[MyNameGoesHere]

31. I think it has to do with your prospective.

Obama gives likable enough speeches. I just cannot sit through one start to finish. But for some reason when Big Dog speaks i cannot stop watching. So who knows for sure?

[karynnj]

32. Kerry's convention speech was excellent and think he is completely underrated

I really think that overall Kerry's best speeches are at least as good as Bill Clinton's because they are more visionary and better written. This is most true for the ones he wrote himself like the Faneuil Hall series of speeches in 2006/2007 (on johnkerry,com) I loved Clinton's speeches, but after they were over there was no coherent central idea in most cases. Here on DU, there have been scores of Kerry speeches in the last 4 years, where people here have cheered and lamented that he "didn't sound like this in 2004". The fact is that other than the convention speech - all his speeches were filtered out of the media. You had to be in a swing state or watching CSPAN.

[MarjorieG]

42. I know. I loved Dissent, but there are so many.

[Serial Mom]

33. Yes

you answered your own question in the question. Yes he is good and Yes most modern speakers are bad.

nuff said

[BumRushDaShow]

34. Agree.

And I really really agree about your critique of the cadence of Palin's speech - it was awkwardly slow, with the result being that the speech went beyond the time alloted. And I also agree that it was crafted for the media lackeys to do their usual over-analyzing of sound-bites from said speech. This essentially brings the level of discourse down to the level of merely providing fodder for propaganda purposes. The overuse of nonsensical 1-line "zingers", reduced the content down to what amounts to unsupervised, junior high school-aged campaigning.

With respect to Obama's speeches, I think the beauty is not only in listening to him give them, but actually reading the text of them, which reveals the elegance of the written word.

[No Elephants]

35. Is Obama running for orator? Or speechwriter? I'm counting on his brain, not his vocal cords.

[Median Democrat]

36. I Think We All Tend To Overlook Communication Skills - Essential To Democracy

Ideally, in a Democracy, the people are informed as to the positions and proposals of their elected officials. Unfortunately, in today's democracy, we have come to expect that Presidents like George Bush will not take the time to explain their positions or reasoning. Instead, we have come to expect that government will operate in a Dick Cheney sort of way where they don't both to give press conferences, let alone speeches, yet we are stuck with the results.

I personally think that it a desirable trait, and an old fashioned trait, to have a President who was an effective communicator. Today, I think there is over-reliances on pundits and surrogates who give the President plausible deniability and limit the President's accountability. I don't think this is a good thing.

In answer to your question, Ovama is running for President, and I think Presidents SHOULD be good speakers. In a Democracy, communications skills are essential, yet under Bush, the need for government communicate to its constituent has been deemed optional.

[TheKentuckian]

38. The most immediately effective power a President

has is the bully pulpit.

Oratory skill is underrated to a great extreme. It's the difference in how Reagan and Bush are perceived because their world view and policies are the same.

[donco6]

39. Well, there IS the message to consider.

Jeez folks, there's delivery - which he does well - but there's also the message itself. And I believe it's a message that truly resounds with people. You're all buying into the "Obama's a good speaker" bullshit. It ignores the fact that People Like What They're Hearing. We're fortunate to have both.

[LeftyMom]

40. I would argue that both are true.

I think one of the problems with modern political speakers is that they invariably do not write their own speeches, or at least edit them heavily and make them their own. It's very difficult to give an inspired delivery of material with which you are not very familiar. A teleprompter may allow you to read a speech without looking like you're reading it, but it doesn't allow you to deliver it from the heart without knowing, feeling and believing the material.

Also, the applause-line driven cadence and emphasis on soundbites divide a speech up into such small, digestible chunks that very little can be said. It's hard to build tension or say anything of meaning when you have to stop at the end of every short paragraph for thirty seconds of applause.