Now That's a Speech

President Clinton just finished giving his speech at the Democratic National Convention, and I have to say that I was moved. Now, that's not to say that I haven't been outraged at the former President for putting his pleasure ahead of the party or for trying to play king-maker with Wes Clark. But no matter what you may think of the man or his politics, credit has to go where credit is due.

The man is a truly gifted orator, perhaps the best of our age.

It's sad, because that's a lost art in America. We don't give extemporaneous speeches anymore, and we don't celebrate the ability to get up in front of a crowd and say something meaningful or even just coherent. Interestingly, oration as a tradition seems to be alive and well in parts of the South -- of the speakers who I listened to this evening, I was most impressed by Clinton, Kerry's swift-boat gunner (Rev. Alston, I think his name was) and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Technically, she's an outlier, since she was raised in Chicago, but she did spend a number of years speechifying as a political spouse in Arkansas, so maybe she picked some of the Southern Baptist preacher style up by osmosis or immersion. But anyway, the person I was least impressed with was Senator Barbara Mikulski, who sounded wooden, and who is from only a nominally Southern state, Maryland. Similarly, although the Congresswoman from Ohio who co-chaired the platform committee (didn't get her name, and am too tired to look her up) spoke well, she didn't fire up the audience in the same way that Gore and the Clintons did. And finally, although President Carter spoke well, he never struck me as being of the same tradition as Clinton and Rev. Alston.

All in all, I thought that the first night of the Convention went well, and avoided the trap of incessantly criticizing the Bush Administration to the exclusion of articulating a positive message. Both are needed, but the latter is more desperately needed than the former; if the latter is compelling, the former will take care of itself.