Yes We Can! The Lost Art of Oratory [Part 1 of 4]

[0:03]On this cold January morning, people are gathering in anticipation. Obama! He's becoming our president. Woohoo! Yay! They've come from all over the world, and they're walking in the dark across the frozen river. They've come to hear one man speak. And the way he speaks is very articulate, it's very inspiring and it's nice to have a president which we feel probably not since maybe JFK spoke this way. He's truly a transformational leader. He transcends difference when he speaks. He just, he brings us together. They said this day would never come.

[1:05]The sun hasn't come up yet. History will be marked by a speech, just as it was in ancient Greece, the Roman Republic, and Imperial Rome. So look ahead of me. There's the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument and Capitol Hill, and you sense that this really was designed as an Imperial city. Washington is like a stage set, closed down, cordoned off, for one of the rituals of power in the most powerful nation on Earth. This morning, the city feels like a glittering prize to be won by the power of words. And all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright, tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideas, democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.

[2:15]What Obama has done, he's done lots of amazing things, but he's restored oratory to one of the tools of 21st century politics. That's a remarkable thing. This is the year when eloquence returned to political discourse in this country. This was the year in which his opponents tried to dismiss all that as just words, just rhetoric, just words. Words are what are the instruments that a President of the United States uses to govern the country and wins the support of the world. Looking forward to the speech. Once again. We are excited. We're on fire, we're ready. Good morning, we're wearing the Super Obama Cape as you see.

[3:09]Hope can find its way back into the darkest of corners. And when we are told that we cannot bring about the change that we seek, we answer with one voice. Yes, we can.

[3:22]Many politicians, uh, try by speech to give people to have confidence in them. Obama gave people confidence in themselves. We can do it he said, not I can do it. And it's an abiding lesson for all politicians, you know, we're not there to be talked down to. We are not stupid. Then after Obama's speech, it's the most powerful post-address coverage on TV. It's been real ugly at the airport. But some might ask, how is there room for oratory in the world of spin masters, sound bites and the 24-hour news cycle? Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we. For the last eight years, there's been a president, who though he's been able to stage a color-coordinated press call, has had trouble with words. It sent the wrong message. We were trying to say something differently, but nevertheless, it conveyed a different message. Obviously some of my rhetoric has been a mistake. Do you think? Rhetoric is the art of using language as the means to persuade. Oratory is the public speaking part of that. And a great deal of our notion of how it should be done goes back to the Romans and beyond them, the ancient Greeks. In a world without media, no newspapers or television, let alone blogs and YouTube, speaking in public was the essence of politics, and it is this art that Obama seems to have revived. For me, it's all about the speeches, the rhythm, the construction of the sentences, certain rhetorical tropes that Barack Obama uses just screams Ciceronian. Who was Cicero? Well, Cicero was, um, a man not from the senatorial class of Rome. So he wasn't from the traditional ruling class, not having the background of family or of a great military career. Rhetoric was the thing at his disposal to make his career, and his aim was to become consul, which was the highest political office in Rome, and he did it by the power of the spoken word. Cicero is probably the single most quoted authority on the art of oratory. His career as advocate, consul and writer generated so many words that his slave had to invent his own kind of shorthand to keep up with him. He argued that oratory matters because states are established and maintained through the leadership of eloquent men. And what has Obama learned from the Greeks and Romans in terms of oratory? A lot of times these great models of antique speechmaking aren't actually consciously referred to, but form part of an inheritance, a general inheritance in the bloodstream of American rhetoric. Barack Obama, like most politicians, most rhetoricians down the years, uses devices that are a feature of classical oratory. And if you look at his acceptance speech at the Iowa caucuses, he begins with what we call a classic, uh, ascending tricolon. Tricolon abundans with with anaphora, uh, which I think he goes something like, they said this day, they swear, they said this day would never come. They said this country was going to be too divided. They said we would never have the unity to do blah blah blah. Anaphora, that's using the same phrase at the beginning of a sentence. I saw them do this, I saw them do that, I saw them do the other. Again, it creates a nice rhythm. 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. Captatio benevolentiae is that means a sort of, um, appeal to the goodwill of his audience often by undermining oneself, um, or a kind of self-conscious humbleness or humility. I realize that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office. I don't fit the typical pedigree, and I haven't spent my career in the halls of Washington. And it's not just the use of anaphora and ascending tricolon, he'll also use a classic ancient rhetorical device such as praeteritio. That means talking about something by pretending that you're not going to talk about it. An example might be, he says, I'm not going to talk about the wealth of America or the size of her skyscrapers or the greatness of her army. We gather to affirm the greatness of our nation, not because of the height of our skyscrapers or the power of our military or the size of our economy. Of course, in doing so, he's reminded us that America is immensely wealthy and has great skyscrapers and an enormous military history.

[8:31]The ideal orator is a great performer, like a great actor. You know, you hold the audience absolutely on the edge of their chairs, you make them laugh, you make them cry. You hold them in the palm of your hand, and that that's part of it. The art that went into oratory was the same that you would if you're a Lawrence Olivier about to play Hamlet. You'd do a lot of rehearsing before you step out on stage, and they'd work out all their effects that they wanted to do and moves they wanted to make. And the Senators, they were drama critics really. Well, you know, I thought Cataline was not at his best today, a little, little thin. Well, that's the Greek style, oh, that's the Greek style again. Since the first settlers, America's had a love-hate affair with oratory. Proud of its plain-speaking preachers. This is Billy Sunday, who drew huge crowds of the 1920s. He was an ex-baseball player, which might explain the body language. He's trying to say we will openly salute in the United States of America. But America is also suspicious of eloquence. As long as I got a foot, I'll kick it. As long as I got a fist, I'll punch it. As long as I got a tooth, I'll bite it. Burt Lancaster's character, Elmer Gantry, is a phony evangelist. The power of words is the power of the con man. So here is the salesman. I will send you one $10 supply of Royal Bee. Do you think a man should have the same privileges as a sponge? Of course. And then there's the lawyer, who can be a bit of both. He wishes to be accorded the same privileges as a sponge. He wishes to think. Unless it's Spencer Tracy, who's always on the side of the angels. Barack Obama, of course, known for being cool as a cucumber, but there was a funny aside where, uh, and he told CNN that his daughter Malia, as they were standing outside of the Lincoln Memorial, said the first African American President, huh, this speech better be good. One occasion where oratory is expected, demanded even, is Inauguration Day. It has produced some truly memorable speeches. Let the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

[11:14]Dedicated to one of the most revered presidents, the Lincoln Memorial is a temple to oratory.

[11:28]Its walls are inscribed with the words of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, and the speech which has mattered more than any other in American history. His remarks at Gettysburg, which helped heal a nation after the carnage and catastrophe of the Civil War. Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now, we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. That speech which contains the best definition of democracy ever made, government of, by, and for the people. I think that speech helped raise Lincoln to the summit of our best presidents, maybe the very best. That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth.

[12:47]Lincoln's words, it took him less than two minutes to make this speech, and yet these words have helped to to shape and create a nation. And in fact, he wasn't even top of the bill. Someone else was making a speech which took two hours to deliver. And who remembers any of that? Well, Lincoln is effective because he's brief. He's really a lawyer making a case for the Union. It's perfectly obvious that Gettysburg Address has been stolen from Pericles. Pericles' great speech to the the dead of Athens. Remember, Gettysburg is a cemetery. And they went on to say that, you know, the whole earth is a tomb for brave men. They need no celebration. You see people reading it and puzzling over it, and absorbing this message. And it's a long time afterward, and they still stand back with the shock of the power of what he was trying to say. Look, most political rhetoric is soggy because most politicians are trying to avoid saying anything. What makes political rhetoric powerful is when you have something important to say.

[14:10]Sometimes it takes years for that important thing to be heard. On the subject of the emancipation of all slaves, Lincoln left a great deal unsaid. And it was a Baptist minister from Atlanta, Georgia, called Martin Luther King, who delivered a speech reminding the world of how much remained to be done.

[14:33]Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Dr. King's speech in Washington, August 28, 1963. The speech really was about the broken promise.

[14:59]Mr. Lincoln, in your majestic shadows we stand, you promised Emancipation Proclamation. We got the proclamation but we still don't have emancipation. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream. King, I thought, was the best in my lifetime. Because he had a perfect voice and perfect diction, but he could both tell a story and make an argument at the same time and then rise to some metaphorical or rhetorical height.

[15:54]With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. Words paint pictures. Words stride imagination. Words make us conceive and believe and achieve out of the out of words.

[16:24]And often times speakers gain their power, power from their pain, power from their predicament and to speak of it with pathos and passion, and it elevates people to resist and to fight back. I am somebody. I may be poor, those who are down at the bottom of the hill have to speak loudly and clearly to get through. But I am somebody. I may be hungry, but I am somebody.