Democratic National Convention '08

[innerSpaceman]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

I find that reading what someone has to say in a speech takes the magic of personality and charm or whatever the individual possesses out of the equation so I can focus on what they've actually said.

All well and good, but don't pretend to know whether a speech was effective or not. It goes way beyond the mere words.


Not that the words aren't important. Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural remains perhaps the best political speech of all time, and I never got to hear it. So I have NO IDEA whether it was effective in its day. Perhaps the speech was ruined by Lincoln's poor delivery, I have no idea.

But I can't claim to know all about the 2nd Inaugural just because I read it in letters four feet high carved in marble on the walls of the Lincoln Memorial and it made me weep. Or just because it's rightly famous and well-studied. I didn't live in Lincoln's times and so I can never know.


Not to equate Obama or Gore or anyone alive today with Lincoln, but what a shame to have the opportunity to hear a speech, to see it delivered, and not take advantage of it. If I'd have been in D.C. to hear Lincoln give that address, but decided to just read it in the Gazette ... I would have jumped in front of that bullet at Ford's Theater.