US President-elect Barack Obama's rhetorical skills, his ability to captivate and inspire audiences with his powerful speeches has led many writers to describe him as "the greatest orator of his generation".
What is the secret of his success - the words themselves, the way he delivers them, or the historical change he represents? "I believe Barack Obama embodies, more than any other politician, the ideals of American eloquence," says Ekaterina Haskins, professor of rhetoric at the University of Iowa. His speeches, she argues, are shaded with subtle echoes of great speeches past, consciously creating a sense of history, purpose and continuity. Past ghosts "He has certainly studied all of his predecessors, he is quite aware of the rhetorical heritage that he draws on," Ms Haskins explains. "He clearly sees himself as a descendant of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King." "He is summoning the ghosts of previous leaders and presidents who Americans have learnt to revere."On winning the election, his Chicago address echoed two of the most famous speeches in US history - Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg address and the words spoken by assassinated civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King the day before his death. Philip Collins, a speech-writer for former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, is in no doubt that Mr Obama owes his success to his oratorical gifts. "He has shown the power of brilliant rhetorical force," says Mr Collins, a leader writer for the UK's Times newspaper. Initially, Mr Obama's speeches, peppered with references to lofty ideals like "change", "promise" and "belief" prompted criticism that they were devoid of content and policy. He began to add policy detail as the campaign progressed. His speech at the Democratic Convention was regarded as low-key by some observers - despite the stage being grandly dressed with Greek columns - because of the amount of concrete proposals it contained. Peopled by personalities Ms Haskins argues that Mr Obama has other techniques for avoiding the charge of pure rhetoric, adding weight and depth to the abstract with solid illustrations. Barack Obama's rousing victory speech
"Rhetoric always has the connotations of being about appearances rather than reality but he doesn't sound false. He plays with the patriotic abstractions that allow for a certain kind of rhetorical manoeuvring and fills them with specific concrete examples," she says. His victory speech, delivered in Chicago, channelled broad ideas of the struggle of a generation through the eyes of 106-year-old Ann Nixon Cooper, who has become a celebrity in her own right. But does the poetry of his campaign risk stumbling when it faces the more prosaic role of holding office?Many commentators pinpoint the "A More Perfect Union" speech, made in March 2008 in the aftermath of a scandal about his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, as one of Mr Obama's finest. Evidence of Rev Wright's inflammatory sermons risked irrevocably damaging Mr Obama's candidacy but his response managed to tackle the question of race in US society with delicacy. It was a speech which wrapped the experience of different races together, expressing understanding for the deep-seated, lingering resentments of each and presenting himself as the embodiment of unity.
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