Then Obama stood alone on the podium, mute for nearly 30 seconds, basking in his prime-time moment. He opened the speech with a CliffsNotes version of his memoir Dreams from My Father , recounting his multicultural upbringing, a story that moves from Kenya to Kansas to Hawaii.
By then, he had related it probably thousands of times before, and it came across as earnest but slightly lackluster. His hand gestures were stiff and methodical, like a news anchor's; his delivery, a bit tentative.
Valerie Jarrett recalls the nervousness in the room as she sat in a skybox, watching the speech with about two dozen of Obama's other closest friends and supporters: "I was digging my nails into my hands when he started.
Then something clicked inside Obama's head. He found his pitch and cadence. He projected effortlessly. His gestures became more theatrical, yet still natural. As Rideout watched from the side of the stage, she noticed the striking change.
You could just see him gain this confidence and go with the moment. That's when the speech took on a life of its own. Before he was finished, he would have been interrupted by applause 33 times. After talking about his background, Obama focused on the concerns of everyday Americans: the Maytag plant workers in downstate Galesburg, whose jobs were going overseas; the woman from East St.
Louis who couldn't afford college; the idealistic young marine from East Moline who went off to fight in Iraq. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.
The crowd was rapt; some even wept. The momentum built when Obama proclaimed: "Tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there is the United States of America. Even Obama was caught up in the moment. His feet were moving to the rhythm of the speech. When it was over, Obama strode away from the dais and embraced his beaming, if visibly relieved, wife.
The Obamas left the stage together, serenaded by the strains of "Keep On Pushing. On a sunny but bitterly cold morning on the second Saturday in February of this year, Obama stood in front of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, where Abraham Lincoln rose to prominence, to officially launch his campaign for president. A crowd of more than 15, shivering supporters were on hand to hear Obama's minute address-a speech that Obama had finished and sent to Axelrod at 4 a.
Wrapped in a black wool overcoat, his breath visible in the freezing air, Obama delivered a Lincolnesque speech that, though very good, did not garner the same accolades as his keynote address. Not every symphony Beethoven wrote was the Ninth. But I had no idea that he was a magician, rhetorically. Obama did deliver a riveting speech at the convention. But there was no magic to it. Interviews with linguists and historians make it clear that Obama combined, simply and masterfully, the tried-and-true rhetorical techniques of effective speechmaking with an instinct for making a political message sing.
While his speech was original in terms of its content and phrasing, he dipped into the same rhetorical well as other great orators who preceded him. Thematically, he borrowed heavily from the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy and, more recently, Ronald Reagan, using similar aspirational and optimistic language, flag-waving themes, and rich imagery and references to dreams, particularly the American dream.
Though his speech bore similarities to those given by great orators who preceded him, the experts I interviewed pointed out how Obama made it his own through his deft use of language. He relied on casual, comfortable words, not lofty rhetoric. He often used the first-person plural, which makes an audience feel like confidants: "We have more work to do. He also employed traditional rhetorical techniques, such as metaphor, imagery, anecdote, contrast, and "claptrap," or language designed to catch applause.
One common device that Obama used was what linguistics experts refer to as "contrasting pairs," constructions of "not A but B," or "not A or B, but C. Take Shakespeare's "To be, or not to be," or John F. Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. One example: "Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation-not because of the height of our skyscrapers [not A], or the power of our military [or B], or the size of our economy [or C]; our pride is based on a very simple premise.
Another classic rhetorical tool that Obama drew on was the "rule of three"-packaging words or phrases in lists of three. It's a device that dates back centuries-"Veni, vidi, vici," as Julius Caesar said. Similarly, Obama began his convention speech, "On behalf of the great state of Illinois [1], crossroads of a nation [2], Land of Lincoln [3]. Repetition has long been a favorite tool of the orator, and Obama used the device effectively: "It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs," he declared.
The hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta. The hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds.
The hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Here the speaker presents a problem to his audience and then solves it. At the end of Obama's speech, after he rattled off a litany of problems-the economic squeeze on the middle class, joblessness, homelessness, and urban violence-Obama offered up his solution: "America! Tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do.
Says Atkinson: "I don't have any simple reason why things like saying things in threes or contrasting things actually have the effect that they have-they just do. Here, too, Atkinson, Sheehan, and others agree, Obama's performance at the convention, after his nervous start, stands out as nearly flawless.
His pitch was husky and baritone, not squeaky or shrill. He spoke naturally, not as if he were reading from a teleprompter, and he avoided clumsy pauses and verbal tics such as "uh" and "ah. Obama also surfed the applause masterfully. In several instances, Atkinson notes, Obama repeated the first few words of a sentence or raised his voice to make himself heard over the cheering, in effect rebuffing the applause. It creates a favorable impression that, somehow, the speaker is more passionate and committed than your average speaker.
Although Obama didn't develop his style of speaking from a church pulpit, at times during the convention speech he resembled a preacher, speeding up and slowing down his pace, raising and lowering his voice, and subtly changing his inflection. At one point, he even threw in a sermonlike rhetorical question: "Do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope?
They roared back: "Hope! Obama comes out of a mixed tradition, and he is known to adjust his speaking style when addressing black audiences and white audiences.
But he doesn't try to be somebody he's not: a progeny of the civil rights movement and Baptist church traditions. King," says Garry Wills, the Pulitzer Prize—winning author, who has studied the speeches and writings of Lincoln and Jefferson, among others.
If anything stands out as negative in Obama's convention-night delivery, says Atkinson, it's that his few stabs at humor fell flat. At one point, toward the beginning of his speech, he said: "The true genius of America" is ". The line got tepid applause. Atkinson says it would have worked much better had Obama not mixed seriousness with humor so quickly in succession. John Kerry knows this. And just as Lieutenant Kerry did not hesitate to risk his life to protect the men who served with him in Vietnam, President Kerry will not hesitate one moment to use our military might to keep America safe and secure.
John Kerry believes in America. And he knows that it's not enough for just some of us to prosper. For alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga: a belief that we're all connected as one people. If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription drugs, and [has] to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandparent.
If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties. It is that fundamental belief, it is that fundamental belief, I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper that makes this country work.
It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family. Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of 'anything goes.
The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into red states and blue states; red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states and yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.
There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope? I'm not talking about blind optimism here - the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it.
That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs. The hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores. The hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta. The hope of a mill worker's son who dares to defy the odds. The hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him too. Hope in the face of difficulty.
Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope. In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead. Nor did Obama conclude his speech with the uplifting peroration that has been his trademark. He summoned the legacy of Lewis and the civil-rights movement, but he withheld his typical reassurance that despite everything, the best of America would win out.
And he was never as effective at getting people to vote when he was not on the ballot as he was during his two presidential campaigns: Democrats stayed home in both midterm elections during his tenure, and the coalition that elected him was unable to lift Hillary Clinton over Trump in So it would not be a surprise if Obama thought he needed to up the ante to help rally the Democratic base for Biden.
His first appearance was in , when he delivered the keynote address in Boston, during his bid for the US Senate. That address marked the beginning of his national rise as an Illinois state senator. Four years later, he accepted the party's presidential nomination at Mile High Stadium in Denver.
0コメント