My high school days were filled with stories of ancient Rome and Greece, written in the language of those civilizations by the likes of Caesar and Horace and Homer and Xenophon. And the writings of Cicero, said to be the greatest orator of all time. Cicero left nothing on YouTube, so we can’t judge for ourselves, but I’ll take the words of his contemporaries. His Greek model was Demosthenes, who practiced his oratory by talking with pebbles in his mouth and shouting over the roar of the waves while running along the beach.
Oratory is largely a lost art, although historians credit Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill and John Kennedy with the ability to match the challenges of their times with the power of their rhetoric. I have heard Churchill and Kennedy, and I think their reputations owe more to their writing (or that of their speechwriters) than to their speaking ability. From what I have read, Lincoln was both a great writer and a great speaker.
Last night Barack Obama, speaking in Chicago, reminded me of the enormous power of political oratory. To grasp the effect of that 17-minute speech, one must watch the audience as well as the President-Elect. Tears on cheeks, rapture on faces, hushed reverence at inspirational moments – the speaker connected with over 100,000 celebrants in Grant Park in a way that no other politician has in my lifetime. Not Kennedy, not Clinton, not Reagan. It was electric.
Politics is not just about issues. It is also about emotions, about the capacity of a good person to project that goodness to an audience by sound and sight. Barack Obama has that capacity in spades, and either he is either exactly the leader this country needs at this moment or we have all been duped by his oratorical skill. I am by nature an optimist, so I lean to the positive view.
He is the Cicero of our time. It will be fascinating to watch and listen to this truly remarkable man as he embarks on his historic journey.
