Ranking Obama’s Best Speeches: Part 2 of 2

In case you missed the first part of this series, you can click here to catch up with the list.

I started Part 1 of the blog by mentioning the hype surrounding Obama’s inaugural address. If I was to give Obama one piece of advice for that speech, I would suggest going back and watching all the available video of first presidential inaugural addresses and making sure yours doesn’t sound like theirs. Last week I went to the newly opened Newseum for the first time and watched their video exhibit on inauguration speeches, and they were all remarkably similar — and not in a good way. They all had “change” as the central theme of their addresses, and when they were run back-to-back they sounded prosaic and disingenuous (especially Nixon’s proclamation that he was called upon to be a peacemaker).

Everyone knows Obama’s inauguration represents a significant change for the country. He should skip that obvious fact and focus on some of the specifics he plans for addressing the financial crisis. Using the inaugural address to lay out specific policy goals will allow him to further cement his hold on the agenda.

Whatever approach he takes, President-elect Obama faces sky-high expectations to deliver yet another memorable speech on par with the speeches on this list.

5. Iraq war Opposition Speech (Oct. 2, 2002)

Best Line: I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al Qaeda.
I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

It’s been called the speech that kept giving. It gave him the true and substantive policy difference between himself and the rest of the Democratic Primary field. What surprised me the first time I read the speech was how substantive and serious it was. It’s obvious from this speech — a speech he gave long before he could have foreseen his meteoric rise — that Obama isn’t the wide- and wild-eyed secret lefty that conservative pundits argue. The speech might have had an even greater impact had video of the full speech survived. What do you think the campaign would have paid to swap that video for the Jeremiah Wright video?

4. The Acceptance Speech (Nov. 4, 2008)

Best Line: America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves — if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?
This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.

One of Obama’s strongest skills as an orator is his ability to judge the appropriate tone for a given speech. Obama captured the gravity of the moment with a suitably restrained speech. He also reportedly canceled the planned fireworks because he wanted to communicate the seriousness of the challenges facing the country. On the other hand, I doubt Obama really needed pyrotechnics to make that night interesting.

3. Keynote Convention Speech in Boston (July 27, 2004)

Best Line: 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 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.

It seems preposterous even today, but Barack Obama went from a state senator to a presidential contender in less than 20 minutes. The hype over Obama was simmering in Democratic activists before the speech, but it combusted when he delivered the line about red and blue states.

Most convention speeches tend to be partisan red meat offerings to the party faithful on the convention floor. Obama’s speech was all about unity. Obama cast the United States of America as a place where anything could happen, where a “skinny kid with a funny name” could accomplish so much. Compare that to John Edwards’s “Two Americas” speech that same week, which was necessarily divisive. Obama understood from the beginning that the electorate was looking for an inclusive and hopeful president. In short, they were looking for a president who matched their own image of America.

2. Iowa Caucus Night Speech (Jan. 3, 2008)

Best Line: They said this day would never come.

I’m not sure anything will beat the excitement of this night. The nomination had gone on for so long without any actual elections that the tension was bubbling over in anticipation. When the results were finally announced, Obama’s team must have realized that now, anything was possible: “This was the moment when the improbable beat what Washington always said was inevitable.”

More than is the case in any other speech on this list, Obama seems slightly unconstrained and taken with the moment. If we know anything about Obama it’s that he is almost always in perfect control. The road to the nomination for Obama would take a lot longer than he probably imagined after this speech, but for one night in Iowa he was able to verbalize perfectly the joy his supporters were feeling.

1. Race Speech in Philadelphia (March 18, 2008)

Best Line: The profound mistake of Rev. Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country — a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen — is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope — the audacity to hope — for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

The Rev. Wright controversy was undoubtedly the greatest threat to Obama’s candidacy. In a matter of days, the whole spirit and character of the campaign was thrown into jeopardy. The controversy acted like an electric prod that shocked everyone back into their old defensive positions. The campaign had painstakingly avoided talking about race until then and was now confronted with the “race issue” in the worst possible circumstances.

The campaign may have said very little about race, but when Obama began delivering the speech it was obvious he’d spent almost his whole life thinking about what race meant in American life. The words came out with a determined clarity. He had everyone in the auditorium completely focused on what he was saying (the first applause doesn’t happen for 15 minutes).

His reasoned and thoughtful description of the origins of the Wright controversy reassured voters that he could grasp the fears and anxieties of both sides of the racial divide. In the end, he was able to talk everyone down off the ledge and continue on with the business of trying to win the Democratic nomination.

Some people believe the speech has now lost a bit of its luster, because Obama eventually did have to further distance himself from the Rev. Wright, but the message of the speech never depended on one person. It was a speech that attempted to provide a measure of healing to the country’s still grappling with its “original sin.” Under that standard, it was an unequivocal success, and as a bonus it might have won him the presidency. Not a bad day on the campaign trail.

The views expressed in this blog do not represent the views or opinions of Generations United.