Friday, September 23, 2011

How to Give a Good Speech

Giving a good speech is tough. You have to grab the audience’s attention, set up the problem, provide a convincing solution and inspire the audience to do something with a call to action.

Just ask Obama. He gives hundreds of speeches a year to all kinds of different people and has to personally connect to each individual in a compelling way.        

The latest talk in the pundit world is about the effectiveness of the Obama’s jobs speech. Most Democrats think the speech was well done while most Republicans decided it was a failure before he uttered his first word. It’s interesting to look at the contrasting commentary to understand the ideology behind these views.

Political commentators Dave Helfert and Bob Lehrman agree that the Obama delivered a good speech. He sent exactly the right message, “I care and they don’t,” and used exactly the right rhetoric: “Made in America,” and “We are Americans.”

On the other side of the political spectrum, Republican political commentators Noam Neusner and Hal Gordon agree the Obama’s speech was bad. He was predictable, unconvincing and used familiar logic. He said what everyone expected him to say, “Mere words.”

If a Republican spoke instead, Neusner and Gordon may have been more receptive, but a couple of fundamental disagreements among Democrats and Republicans like increasing taxes to the wealthy, weighed heavily on conservative minds from the start.

Giving a motivating speech is difficult, ESPECIALLY in a crowd of partisans. Evaluating a speech is even harder. Some of the most brilliant pundits disagree on whether a speech is good or bad because of predispositions. People will always have mixed opinions no matter the argument, the key is figuring out how to connect with the majority.



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