Obama’s Top 10 Speeches, Part 1 of 2

As Jan. 20 approaches and the anticipation for Obama’s inaugural address rises, it’s easy to lose sight of all the notable speeches Obama has given that led him to the presidency. In a recent New Yorker column, an Obama aide reportedly told Obama that he was a better clutch performer than Michael Jordan, to which Obama is said to have replied, “Just give me the ball.” Over and over again, when his campaign was in danger, he took the ball and delivered some of the great moments in presidential politics. I don’t particularly believe in “clutchness” as a repeatable skill, but it’s obvious that, like Jordan, Obama is simply better at his trade than anyone of his generation.

Which got me thinking: Wouldn’t it be interesting to rank Obama’s top 10 speeches, much like we rank Jordan’s best hard-court performances? Sure, there’s always the risk that the fawning over his speeches will sound like a piece of campaign literature, or an hour of MSNBC, but honestly, who doesn’t love lists? I think it’s worth the risk.

There are plenty of different criteria you could use in ranking his speeches. A political scientist might be tempted to rank them by the value each speech had in contributing to Obama’s victory; a media guru might want to rank them by the number of hits each speech got on YouTube. But I’m going with something a lot less empirical, something that tries to capture what a genuine political speech should contain: courage, veracity and judgment.

Let me add a brief aside. There is the pressing question of whether all of Obama’s skilled oration will lead to a successful presidency. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) repeatedly criticized Obama in the primaries for being nothing more than a collection of speeches and a rhetorician with a flimsy record. George Will also splashes some cold water on the president-elect’s talent this week in Newsweek by arguing that the Framers sought to keep smooth-talking candidates away from the suasible public. Will may be factually accurate, but let us be thankful our Revolutionaries (as distinct from the authors of the Federalist Papers) didn’t want to keep Patrick Henry and Tom Paine away from the public, or we might not live in a republic. There are plenty of charismatic speakers with poor intentions and worse ideas (as Will points out), but political speech can also reveal all the qualities of excellence needed in a president.

On to the speeches … and please feel free to offer your own comments or substitute list.

Honorable Mention: Berlin Speech in Front of the Victory Column (July 24, 2008)

Best Line: The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

This was a speech that offered few opportunities for rhetorical flourishes. He was doing everything he could to tamp down the excitement of his summer visit abroad lest he look like he was prematurely assuming the presidency. He was also speaking to two audiences; the first was the enormous crowd at Tiergarten Park that might not have been able to understand everything he was saying, but was eager for lots of pro-European anti-war talk, and the other audience was a new domestic general-election electorate that had plenty of doubts about Obama. Despite all the possible land mines, he was able to deliver a speech that laid the foundation for a renewed trans-Atlantic relationship. Amazing how European leaders, spurred on by their own electorate, are now falling over each other trying to get to the front of the line for his next visit abroad.

10. Announcing His Candidacy in Springfield, Illinois (Feb. 10, 2007)

Best Line: Now listen, I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness — a certain audacity — to this announcement. I know I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.

On a bitterly cold February afternoon in Springflield, Obama launched his campaign steeped in Lincolnian symbolism. I went back and watched some news broadcasts of the event, and most of them were pretty skeptical of Obama’s chances to win the nomination. It’s easy to forget how much of an underdog he was for the nomination early on in the process. In the speech he clearly staked himself as the change candidate against Sen. Clinton (it would take the rest of the Democratic and Republican candidates almost a full year to switch gears and take up the change mantle).

9. Democratic Nomination Acceptance in Denver (Aug. 28, 2008)

Best Line: America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend. America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone. At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise — that American promise — and in the words of Scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

This speech definitely had the wow factor, with 84,000 people crowded into Mile High Stadium. The visuals were simply stunning, and while it was a terrific speech it was also a very functional bit of oration. It had a very narrow purpose — namely, winning over skeptical blue-collar voters. It’s not that that type of speech can’t be good, but it does make it lot less likely that the audience will be challenged with hard truths. Bruce Springsteen at Giants Stadium is going to be a great concert, but it’s a lot different than Dylan going electric in Newport.

8. Speaking at Dr. King’s Church in Atlanta (Jan. 20, 2008)

Best Line: Because if Dr. King could love his jailor; if he could call on the faithful who once sat where you do to forgive those who set dogs and fire hoses upon them, then surely we can look past what divides us in our time, and bind up our wounds, and erase the empathy deficit that exists in our hearts.

Obama’s speech delivered on Martin Luther King Jr. Day from Ebenezer Baptist Church offered him a few hours of respite from the intensely contested and increasingly nasty primary campaign and allowed him the opportunity to deliver a sermon on the past, present and future of African-American life. His speech called for the walls that divided America to finally come down through unity, forgiveness, empathy and hope, just as the walls of Jericho came down for Joshua and the Israelites. It was one of the moments during the bitter primary campaign where everything slowed down for a bit and people could remember what was truly important.

7. Night of the New Hampshire Primary (Jan. 9, 2008)

Best Line: It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation: Yes, we can. … It was the call of workers who organized, women who reached for the ballot, a president who chose the moon as our new frontier, and a king who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the promised land: Yes, we can, to justice and equality.

This speech might actually be the most famous speech on the list, mainly because it was turned into will.i.am’s addictive video that received nine hundred trillion hits on YouTube. Obama was able to ride out the loss in New Hampshire, in part by the fact that this video was such a massive hit on the Internet and on TV. At the beginning of the video from the rally you can see just how crushed everyone looks. The first few applause lines get only a mild response (the kind response where everyone lifts their signs out of habit), but as the speech moves on, the mood in the room clearly changes. In the end, I can’t believe anyone walked out the room thinking that the nomination was lost.

6. Jefferson Jackson Dinner Speech before the Iowa Caucus (Nov. 10, 2007)

Best Line: We were promised compassionate conservatism, and all we got was Katrina and wiretaps. We were promised a uniter, and we got a president who could not even lead the half of the country that voted for him. We were promised a more ethical and more efficient government, and instead we have a town called Washington that is more corrupt and more wasteful than it was before. And the only mission that was ever accomplished is to use fear and falsehood to take this country to a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged.

If Obama didn’t nail this speech, he likely would not have won the nomination. He was behind in the polls to Sen. Clinton, and without a victory in Iowa he would have likely been unable to build the momentum necessary to tackle the establishment figure. Candidates were prevented from having a teleprompter and notes for the speech. Those restrictions actually made the gap between Obama and Clinton and Edwards even larger. Obama unveiled a new speech for the event that hit all the right chords with the crowd. Luckily for him, the crowd happened to contain every important Democrat in the state of Iowa, which meant that word of the speech spread over the state like a conflagration over Hawkeye prairie.

Coming up soon: Part 2

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