Great Speeches

A propos of nothing, I was reading a book review on Arts & Literature Daily [link] about great speeches in American history [link]. As the book review makes clear, there has been a noticeable decline in the quality of oratory in the United States over the years.

Which got me to thinking. I don't know exactly which speeches are included in the volumes being reviewed, but a Google search of "great speeches" yielded several websites purporting to collect great speeches, including a site known as "History Place" [link].

As I read through some of the more recent ones, I was struck by the power of a good speech. Two stuck out, however. The first was President Reagan's speech in Berlin in 1987, the speech in which he said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." The speech is lucid, well written and powerful. [link] But even this speech, as powerful as it was, pales in comparison to the 1962 speech by President Kennedy on why we chose to go to the Moon.

That speech, fittingly entitled "We Choose to go to the Moon...", is a powerhouse of persuasive oratory that elevates, motivates and elucidates noble ideals, but never departs from simple imagery or clear phrasing.

For example, in order to explain the magnitude of our achievement as humans, and the duty that that imposes on us to reach further, President Kennedy captures, in one paragraph, how exciting it is to live at the edge of such amazing scientific progress. And he does so without bogging down in soporific detail or getting lost in gauzy abstractions:

No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50,000 years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.

It almost makes you want to jump up and shout, "Who are we to stand in the way of such incredible progress?"

The speech is also notable for making some of the science involved accessible (not an easy task -- after all, it is rocket science). For example, rather than talk about the complexities of calculating trajectories and launch windows, he gives a (if you'll pardon the pun) down to Earth example that neatly sums up the degre of difficulty:

The Mariner spacecraft now on its way to Venus is the most intricate instrument in the history of space science. The accuracy of that shot is comparable to firing a missile from Cape Canaveral and dropping it in this stadium [Rice University in Houston] between the 40-yard lines.

Note also the subtle sports imagery, which taps into the America's image of itself as the winner who does the undoable, and makes it look easy to boot.

Kennedy's penchant for plain talk continues when he is talking about a most difficult subject -- how much it will all cost. Note how he deftly defuses the question of cost by putting it into terms we can all understand (and does so with a touch of pointed humor):

To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year's space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year.

His rhetoric doesn't skirt the hard issue, either -- as much as it's cost so far, it will cost more in the future -- but he contrasts this with an appeal to our nobler ambitions -- to be bold:

Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United States, for we have given this program a high national priority...But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.

[I should note here that management consultants love this last part of the speech as an excellent example of true leadership that inspires us by setting out a vision statement (to paraphrase, "invent a machine and a process to go to the Moon and come back safely") that focuses the collective effort.]

All in all, I found the speech to be uplifting, honest and a fine example of what rhetoric can be in the hands of a skilled orator.