INAUGURATION 2009: Voice of a new era

Obama’s own words

“There is not a liberal America and a conservative America —- there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.”

July 27, 2004, Boston

“Given the increasing diversity of America’s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.”

June 28, 2006, Washington

“Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”

June 28, 2006 Washington

“It’s time to turn the page on the diplomacy of tough talk and no action. It’s time to turn the page on Washington’s conventional wisdom that agreement must be reached before you meet, that talking to other countries is some kind of reward, and that presidents can only meet with people who will tell them what they want to hear.

Aug. 1, 2007, Washington

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

Feb. 5, 2008, Chicago

“This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected.”

March 18, 2008, Philadelphia

“I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. … I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners —- an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on earth is my story even possible.”

March 18, 2008, Philadelphia

“One voice can change a room. And if a voice can change a room, it can change a city. And if it can change a city, it can change a state. And if it can change a state, it can change a nation. And if it can change a nation, it can change the world. … I just got one question for you, Virginia. Are your fired up? Are you ready to go? Fired up! Ready to go!”

Nov. 3, 2008, Manassas, Va.

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”

Nov. 4, 2008, Chicago

Source: Barackobama.com

What he might say

“He’ll have to respect the tradition [of the inaugural address]. You know, you better say something about binding up the wounds of the body politic after the campaign. He will issue his principles for domestic affairs and foreign policy, and then make a call to citizens to aid the government in achieving its goals. And he will finish talking about the people of destiny: We Americans must seize the opportunity, reforge our spirit and hope, and plunge forward. I really expect that kind of finish from him. He’s so good at it, and he obviously loves it.”

BRUCE GRONBECK

“He must maintain his connection with the people, while at the same time asserting the dignity of the office. Obama has shown a capacity for eloquence, but eloquence on the campaign trail —- as in his wonderful riff on “fired up” —- and inaugural eloquence are different. Inaugurals are formal, where campaigns, in this era at least, are informal and conversational.”

MARY STUCKEY

“My guess is that we’ll hear some of Obama’s key metaphors and ideas, ones that borrow from the classic rhetoric of Lincoln and the biblical, almost cosmological rhetoric of [Martin Luther] King and recast that high rhetoric in more policy-oriented terms.”

ERIC J. SUNDQUIST

How he says it

“Especially in his big speeches, Obama seems to speak in what would be considered a very conservative rhetorical form found mostly in the Puritan preachers in the 17th and 18th centuries. In every one of his big speeches, you find the people-of-destiny conclusions. He ends many speeches reviewing the course of history, showing progressive development with a theme, [such as] people of color moving progressively to a bigger and better place in the American community. That’s how he finished his powerful “Yes We Can” speech after the New Hampshire primary.

BRUCE GRONBECK

“Obama has a strong sense of being the direct heir of both political and rhetorical history. Sometimes he uses King’s themes and ideas overtly. At other times he simply echoes a phrase or a cadence, intertwining his lines with those of Lincoln and Kennedy.

ERIC J. SUNDQUIST

Chief speechwriters

Jon Favreau: Director of speechwriting, age 27. Formerly of Sen. John Kerry’s staff. Facebook photos of him with a cutout of Hillary Clinton caused a minor controversy. (Not related to the actor-director of the same name.)

“What I do is to sit with him for half an hour,” Favreau told Newsweek last year. “He talks and I type everything he says. I reshape it, I write. He writes, he reshapes it. That’s how we get a finished product.”

On writing the inaugural address: “If you start thinking about what’s at stake, it can get paralyzing,” Favreau said in The Washington Post last month.

Adam Frankel: 27, worked with John F. Kennedy adviser Theodore C. Sorenson on his memoirs.

Ben Rhodes: 31, helped write the 9/11 Commission report as assistant to Lee H. Hamilton.

Channeling MLK

“There is some echo of King. Obviously, many of the great African-American speakers are preachers, so there’s some expectation that he will be like that. But Obama is much less excitable. His style is inspiring but measured. There’s less exultation. He keeps it kind of even. The excitement comes not from delivery and soaring cadences but the content of the speech and the fact that people are invited to participate. His oratory makes the audience feel like they are joining him in the making of history.”

EKATERINA HASKINS

“He resembles King but with a more pragmatic twist. He speaks of the necessity of pairing individual responsibility with community responsibility. One thing Obama returns to again and again, is the idea of more perfect union, going back to the preamble of the Constitution for his metaphor. Like King, Obama uses that idea not only to suggest that the nation has the opportunity to perfect itself politically, but almost always to suggest that we must also perfect ourselves morally, that we take individual responsibility.”

ERIC J. SUNDQUIST

Burden of expectations

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard him give a bad speech: That’s pretty impressive given the high-stakes and high-profile speeches he has made. He turned his speech after the Iowa caucuses into a springboard. His ability to speak so effectively is also important since he has on a couple of occasions raised the stakes for himself in these speeches. In Denver [for the acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention], he decides, let’s do it at Invesco Field —- with columns behind the stage. All that said, an inaugural address is a special creature and can be a tough nut. It’s not just the speaker and the speech, but also the moment. It’s a great opportunity, but we have to see how he takes advantage.”

Rehearsal time

“Obama’s speeches are so polished that you get the impression he must rehearse. This is one secret of effective public speaking —- even the best people rehearse. Even the best, Reagan, practice. It isn’t enough to be simply good.”

No ad-libbing

“Presidents don’t ad-lib the inaugural address in big chunks. They will make a change here or there as they are talking, but 98 percent of it at least will be what’s on the speaking text, that will one day be in the Obama library.”

ROBERT SCHLESINGER

“The really great inaugurals stick in our minds as watershed moments. They not only speak to a specific moment in history but they transcend that moment and speak to something deeper in the American psyche. They strike chords of memory; as Lincoln put it, the ‘mystic chords of memory.’ They become winged words of American mythology, an opportunity to make history and shape public memory of this era. There is a tremendous burden on Obama to excel in something that is a very constraining and institutional kind of genre. It will be interesting to see what winged words come out of Obama.”

EKATERINA HASKINS

Top presidential addresses

The best inaugural addresses of the 20th century, according to “Words of a Century: The Top 100 American Speeches, 1900-1990”:

1. John Kennedy, 1961. “The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it —- and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you —- ask what you can do for your country.”

2. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933. “The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth.”

3. Ronald Reagan, 1981. “Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors.”

“Of course, both of Lincoln’s [addresses] would, in my view, rank ahead of all of these,” says author Martin Medhurst of Baylor University, who co-wrote the book. “Jefferson’s first [address] is also highly ranked by most scholars.”

19: Number of index cards Ronald Reagan used to hold his first inaugural address. He made at least 33 last-minute changes to the cards.

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Our experts

Bruce Gronbeck is director of the Center for Media Studies and Political Culture at the University of Iowa.

Ekaterina Haskins teaches rhetoric and commu-nication at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Martin Medhurst is professor of rhetoric and communications at Baylor University. He has written numerous books on political rhetoric and co-founded www.presidentialrhetoric.com.

Robert Schlesinger is the author of “White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters” and is the son of historian and presidential speechwriter Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Mary Stuckey is the author of “Defining Americans: The Presidency and National Identity” and professor of communication and political science at Georgia State University.

Eric J. Sundquist is the author of “King’s Dream” and is the UCLA Foundation Professor of Literature.