December 9, 2008, 07:11 AM ET

Why Is Political Oratory So Bad?

At what point in recent history did political speeches turn into cheerleading sessions? Take a look at this speech by Ronald Reagan at the 1964 Republican Convention. He sounds many themes that would characterize conservative thinking for the subsequent 36 years, especially small government, private property rights, and anti-Soviet stances — even a shot at Harvard. It’s a feast for the audience, but observe how the attendees react. Applause moments are few, hurrahs rare. Reagan proceeds from one beloved point to another, and the audience listens and takes it in. In other words, it’s a lecture, not a call-and-response, or rather, prompt-and-applaud ritual.

Linguist John McWhorter had a nice essay in The New Republic last September on precisely the shift from former to latter. He cites first a remarkable statistic from Wesleyan political scientist Elvin Lim, who examined presidential addresses by every chief executive since FDR and calculated that 97 percent of the applause lines fall in speech by Nixon and after. “If Abraham Lincoln were brought back to life, one thing that would throw him,” McWhorter muses, “other than electric power and the Internet, would be that audiences disrupted his speeches by clapping after every three or four lines.” Imagine the greatest speeches in U.S. history punctuated by cries of “Yeah!” and hands snapping together every four sentences. It’s almost impossible to speak substantively and soberly in such a setting. (Obama manages the second but not the first — not because he can’t do the first, but because the ritual expectations won’t let him.) As McWhorter says, “it is more often a love-in, more about the speaker ‘connecting’ with the audience than teaching it anything new.”

His contrast explains much of the public appeal of Bill Clinton. Clinton has the politician’s gift, the capacity, precisely, to connect. I think it was Maureen Dowd who said after Clinton’s rousing speech at the 2000 Democratic Convention that Clinton could address an audience of thousands and make each member feel like he or she was sitting on a couch in a living room with three others while Bill stood before them chatting (while Al Gore could talk to three people in a living room and make each one feel like he or she was in an auditorium with thousands, far distant from the speaker).

Look at the text of Clinton’s speech and you can see how it is largely designed to evoke.

“Now, at the moment of unprecedented good fortune, our people face a fundamental choice,” he says at one point, “are we going to keep this progress and prosperity going?”

Not much room for thought on that one, but lot’s of room for sound, and Clinton provides the easy stimulus: “There’s only one anser: yes, we are.”

However empty the content, though, the event was fun. When he cited Harry Truman — “If you want to live like a Republican, you should vote for the Democrats” — it was a hoot, and you could almost hear Republican strategists frowning in dismay, eager to get Clinton off the stage and bring Gore forward. (And Gore’s entrance with that long smooch with Tipper certainly helped them.)

But the entertainment has a cost, the decline of the great tradition of American oratory, and it would be nice if Obama were to take an occasion or two to essay a serious and lengthy policy speech, a thoughtful rumination upon troubling matters that won’t be resolved. He has already raised the standard for demeanor, deliberation, and diction. Let’s hope he can raise the standard of audience behavior.