The Great Orator.

Last night, after making Andrea watch an admittedly boring movie for non-Russian specialists, we decided to do something exciting for a change and read online news articles about Obama's landslide victory in South Carolina, including a 16 minute clip of his victory speech on the BBC's website.

It reminded me of a conversation Liz and I had a few years back. We were talking about how formulaic public speeches have become. I noted that up through the early 20th Century, we had a number of great orators amongst us. In this country there were great speech-givers like William Jennings Bryan, Franklin Roosevelt, and quite possibly the greatest American orator ever, Martin Luther King. Of course, beyond our borders there were great speech givers like Lenin, Castro, Churchill, Kurt Eisner (leader of the short-lived Socialist Republic of Bavaria in 1918), and those are just the ones from the 20th Century. I think all these individuals had the ability to take individuals and masses and inspire them through words and the inflection of their voices. I think oration is an amazing skill and one that, as I remarked to Liz, has not only declined in prevalence, but is now looked down upon. Remember Howard Dean? He lost the presidential nomination because he was too emotional, apparently. Liz and I lamented that perhaps the fall into formulaic political and social speeches is the result of increased literacy or something else we weren't sure of. Anyway, I have often wondered since that the days of the great speeches were over.

Then I saw Barack Obama. The first time I had seen him was when he was campaigning in Iowa in the summer and, while I was impressed with him, I didn't think much of his public speaking skills. The video of the speech he gave last night was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. I mean, you could feel the swell of the crowd as he spoke. It was a bit like watching a southern baptist minister, with people shouting "Yeah" and "No" in between relevant phrases. People say Bill Clinton gave speeches in the same style, but I don't ever remember being blown away by a Clinton speech as much as I was by Obama's. I mean, regardless of what you think of the guy politically, you have to admit that he has an amazing skill that it is VERY hard to find in modern politics, and that is the ability to get a mass of people to rise above themselves. Andrea remarked that, if he wins the Democratic nomination (which I hope he does), there is no way that any of the Republican nominees will be able to defeat him. He has such a hold over everyone who he comes into contact with (except Hillary Clinton, I guess). It was nice to see that someone can still give a stump speech that makes you feel ten feet tall when it's over. It's nice to see a lost art revived.