Absence of Eloquence: From Lincoln to Trump and the Decline of Political Speech

Two of the speakers at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering at Davos in January took about 20 minutes each to make a profound impact.

A third took 72 minutes to make a fool of himself and his country.

But to start with the first two, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, one of the finest minds on the world stage, concisely summarised why his country is turning its back on its historic neighbour, the United States, and forming new economic partnerships and enduring friendships around the world in what he described as a “rupture” rather than a transition. And he said all this without once mentioning America!

In another thought-provoking speech, EU president Ursula van der Leyen happily described how Europe is taking a similar course in partnerships in defence, commerce and politics, also avoiding any but the briefest reference to the culprit.

Predictably, the 72 minutes of intellectual nullity came from Donald Trump as he rambled on about America’s intentions to seize Greenland while occasionally mixing the country up with Iceland. The speech, if that’s what it can be called, was bereft of meaningful content but full of boastfulness about how great America is, despite evidence to the contrary. He finished with this immortal observation: “The United States is back, bigger, stronger, better than ever before, and I'll see you around.”

(Hope not.)

Meanwhile we are entitled to ask ourselves what’s happened to political speech-making in America?

When American Political Speech Meant Something

It was infinitely better nearly 180 years ago when Abraham Lincoln gave his famous address at Gettysburg during the civil war. He didn’t take 73 minutes or even 13 minutes. The speech is only 238 words in length but has been remembered ever since as “a monumental act”. Lincoln always prepared his speeches carefully, writing them out in longhand and then editing them.

And then there’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s stirring inaugural address in the middle of the Great Depression when he assured a nation on its knees that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". Perhaps only the barely suppressed fury of his Day of Infamy speech after Japan’s invasion of Hawaii is quoted more often.

Nor has anybody forgotten John F. Kennedy appealing to fellow-Americans in his own inaugural speech in 1961 “to ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country".

Martin Luther King’s spell-binding I Have A Dream speech in 1963 that called for racial equality has been ranked at the top of America’s top 100 public addresses of the twentieth century. Every word rang with conviction and purpose.

Not all of the ranking speeches were stirring appeals to idealism. Radical activist Malcolm X’s The Ballot or the Bullet delivered in the Cory Methodist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1964 made the top ten. Despite its blunt headline, it was a beautifully measured speech that sought to unite black people against white oppression. “Whether we are Christians or Muslims or nationalists or agnostics or atheists, we must first learn to forget our differences. If we have differences, let us differ in the closet; when we come out in front, let us not have anything to argue about until we get finished arguing with the [white] man.”

Eloquence Across Genders — and Across Eras

It’s interesting that nearly a quarter of a list of the top 100 compiled just before the millennium were made by women, including Hilary Clinton’s 1995 address to the United Nations World Conference on Women. This ranked her way ahead of husband Bill’s only

speech to make the list. And while Barbara Bush’s commencement speech at Wellesley College in 1990 made about half-way, husband George doesn’t feature at all.

Although the compilers of the list argued the quality of these addresses showed it was a mistake to “bemoan the death of eloquence”, Donald Trump’s certainly doing his best to prove them wrong.

Selwyn Parker is a widely published writer, journalist and speaker with a particular interest in history (and how it often repeats).