Last week’s Sunday Discussion Group went pretty well, so here’s another.
This week’s topic: Best Political Speech of the TV era.
I’m thinking that would include any speech delivered since, say, 1960. This, of course, can include speeches short and long, from Dems and Republicans, partisan and non-partisan. (If you have a link to the speech — or speeches — you’re thinking of, feel free to include it, but it’s certainly not mandatory.)
I’ll weigh in shortly with a few picks of my own.
The “I Have a Dream” speech by MLK. No question about it.
I have 2, both from the past year:
Barak Obama’s 2004 keynote address to the 2004 DNC.
Normally mild mannered Bill Moyers’ May 15th asswhoopin at the National Conference for Media Reform.
Hands down the most sucessful political speech of the TV era was Nixon’s Checkers Speech. It saved Nixon’s career, caused more favorable phone calls to the networks than any other such speech to date, and pioneered many of the rhetorical strategies used by politicians, particularly those in trouble, in the following decades: — the dog, the “Republican cloth coat,” the wife as stage prop, the conspiracy of my detractors meme, and much, much more.
I am no Nixon fan by any means, but the speech was brilliant. Modern readers will no doubt be taken aback by the central scandal of the speech: $18,000 in contributions to Nion to a fund that would now be called a “Leadership Funds” and which would be taken completely for granted.
Oops. . . that’s “successful” not “sucessful” in my previous post.
I would agree with the Checkers choice as far as getting individual results, i.e., saving Nixon’s political career. And I agree with the two previous choices for sheer emotional impact and oratorical skill. My own pick is Lyndon Johnson’s Let us continue address to the Congress, Nov 27, 1963.
In spite of LBJ’s lack of oratorical skill, the speech was immediately effective in comforting and calming a bereaved nation, no small task as decades of conspiracy theories and “where were you when” would later reveal. More importantly, it foreshadowed the last significant wave of liberal legislation in this country. At its heart was his call for rapid passage of the Civil Rights bill which, as he later noted, gave the south (and the northern bigots too) to the Republicans. We have yet to recover from that aspect of this most important speech since 1960.
JFK’s Commencement Address, American University (June 10, 1960):
I’m going with I Have a Dream too. Sometimes the most obvious answer is the best answer. If you ever ask what political action of the twentieth century was the most effective, I’ll vote for that weekend march on Washington. King’s speech crystallized the peaceful, just and determined message of that march and dispelled the propaganda coming from the other side that racism was a regional problem and that AfAms were rabble rousers who didn’t deserve civil rights.
Runner Up – whatever speech Kennedy called for us to ask not … That inspired a generation.
My choices are probably rooted in the bone-deep conviction that we need another MLK Jr. and JFK right now to save us from the direction we’re being dragged. We need an August march (anniversary of the MLK march and the signing of SocSec into law) on Washington.
“…peace is a process — a way of solving problems….if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this same small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
I’m a bit of a speechwriting geek (when I interned at the Clinton White House, I immediately went for the Office of Speechwriting), so I couldn’t possibly pick just one. In addition to the ones mentioned above, all of which are excellent, here are a “handful” of my very favorites, in no particular order:
* Mario Cuomo’s 1984 “Tale of Two Cities” DNC speech
* Ted Kennedy’s “Truth and Tolerance in America” in 1983, at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Baptist College
* Barbara Jordan’s statement on Articles of Impeachment and her 1976 DNC address
* Robert Kennedy on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
* Bill Clinton’s Memorial Prayer Service address in 1995 after the Oklahoma City bombing and his speech in Normandy on the 50th Anniversary of D-Day
* Ann Richards’ 1988 “Silver foot in his mouth” DNC speech
I have more; maybe I’ll create another list for later.
Most memorable final nine words of a political speech:
“Now it’s on to Chicago, and let’s win there.”
No one who followed RFK in 1968 will forget that line, because it is so often played in news footage shown on TV documentaries.
Lyndon Johnson’s March 1965 address, made in the wake of the televised police attack on civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, calling on Congress to pass a comprehensive federal voting rights act. The closing words of the address — “And we *shall* overcome” — made it clear that Johnson and his administration had finally embraced the goals of the civil rights movement, effectively bringing its first phase to a close. The address also made it clear that the Democratic Party would no longer be the party of white supremacy, thus destroying it in the South for the next one hundred years.
Well it’s hard to imagine any one, Republican or Demo, speaking the words that RFK spoke in the hours after MLK’s assassination.
No doubt he himself penned his words. Even colonels in the Air Force use speechwriters these days.
I agree with Douglas Scott, # 8 above. The commencement speech at American Univ in June, ’63. Kennedy had clearly spent the first two and a half years of his presidency as a cold warrior to the bone. And the close calls, the near misses had shaken him. This speech signaled his intention to use the presidency to reverse the direction, to end the cold war. What a different world it would have been had been able to use his talents to pursue that end. His eloquence and passion would have moved the march toward peace in a way that no one else in a position of power in 1963 could have.
Five months later he was dead.
Not political as such.
RFK’s speech in Indianapolis in 1968, the night Martin Luther King was killed.
Audio & text: Link
Since it’s come up, I thought I’d add that RFK’s speech after Dr. King’s assassination was spoken extemporaneously, without notes. He learned of the killing in the air while on route to Indianapolis, and was offered the chance to turn the plane around because some feared violence may break out and Kennedy might be in danger.
RFK went anyway. Indeed, when he arrived, many in the Indianapolis crowd didn’t know that MLK had been killed and were hearing it for the first time from RFK directly.
Also note: Indianapolis was the only major urban city in the United States not to have rioting the night of April 4, 1968.
Kennedy’s speech is remarkable in its own right, but the context makes it all the more powerful, don’t you think?
gotta agree with Carpetbagger re Barbara Jordon and the Clinton 95 speeches.
Here’s one which was never aired or televized, so it doesn’t qualify. In September of 1962 the University of San Francisco held a huge gala banquet for the dedication of its brand new School of Law. Everyone who was anyone in the city’s legal establishment was there (over half the town’s judges and many of its lawyers were themselves USF graduates). Attorney General Robert Kennedy was to make the dedicatory after dinner speech. I was in attendance as a lowly waiter (actually, a substitute one).
Kennedy was unable to appear because at that moment he was sending U.S. marshals and troops to Oxford, Mississippi to enforce a federal court order admitting James Meredith to “Ole Miss” (his attempt at registration had left two dead and hundreds injured during intense rioting). RFK did deliver his speech via telephone hookup, however. In it, talking about how little help he had had from the legal profession during this crisis, he asked Where are the Clarence Darrows among today’s lawyers? and similar questions. In response the banquet hall emptied, amid snorting and grumbling. Less than a quarter of the guests remained at the end, and they left in silence.
I am amazed and pleased to learn that others remember RFK’s April 4, 1968 speech. During the summer of 1966 I had many opportunities to hear Dr. King speak in person in all sorts of different venues and consider myself something of a student of the spoken word. What I recall about Kennedy’s speech that night was that while some of the words did not make much sense, “My brother was also killed by a white man.�, the speech was so honest and so from the core of the man that it deserves to rank among the great speeches of our time.
As someone who heard the original comments by RFK after the California primary, I agree with eReader; we will never forget those lines. eReader’s recollection brought tears to my eyes. Where, oh where, are those kind of leaders today???
Interesting. Last week’s discussion skipped older stuff and stuck to newer. This week seems to do the opposite. Not sure what that tells us.
Phil asked where the RFK leaders are now. It’s a good question, but Kennedy was reviled by almost half the country before his death. Maybe 30 years from now, people will look back and wonder why there aren’t enough Bill Clintons and John Kerrys for their time?
No one’s mentioned him but Al Gore had some damn good speeches. Remeber “It’s time for them to go”? http://www.al-gore-2004.org/gorespeeches/1992convention.htm Or maybe even “It’s time for me to go”>? http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/transcripts/121300/t651213.html
Zell Miller’s Kerry-bashing rant at the August 2004 GOP convention. Now that was a stem-winder! Whether or not the viewer agreed… I’d wager that few viewers turned off the tube til that thing was over!
I agree that “I Have a Dream” should be far, far ahead of any other speech in terms of both its rhetorical excellence and its far-reaching consequences. No contest.
But it’s also great to read through some of the other speeches listed hear. Thank you especially to those who posted links – I’m definitely going to be re-reading a lot of these tonight.
I’d like to add one that deserves to be in company with these: Mario Cuomo’s Speech at the 1992 Democratic Convention, in which he officially nominated Bill Clinton. It was given at a time when Democrats had been out of the presidency for 12 years – 20 of the past 24 years. But there was a sense that – FINALLY – a change was coming. It was electrifying, and Cuomo was absolutely brilliant.
Sorry about that – here’s the link to Cuomo’s speech: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/political-science/speeches/demo-conv/mario.txt
I’m a bit younger, born in the 70s, but I remember Ronald Reagan’s V-E day speech in 85 and it looked like it came from a movie. Good or bad, I remember it.
The other one I really remember, and this is in no way an attempt to put it on the list, but rather to put it on a differnt list – that being one that changed the speaker’s career. That would be Clinton’s 88 speech at the Democratic convention. The speech that went on, and on, and on, and on, and…well, you remember. I think the cameras were showing sleeping people at one point. For his first place on the national stage, he sure botched it. But maybe learned from it.
Comments are closed.