The Truth: Obama's Speech Was Not Great

I guess it's to be expected that the same lib media that have been fawning over Barack Obama, their chosen one, for months now would consider the speech to be among the greatest ever given since human beings began speaking.

Eugene Kane writes:

Some people are calling it the greatest political speech in history; others think it was the greatest speech they ever heard, period.

When Obama spoke on the topic of race and politics in Philadelphia on Tuesday, the expectations were he had to deliver in a grand way in order to defuse growing controversy over the incendiary remarks by Wright, his former pastor in Chicago.

The verdict from most: He knocked it out of the park.

With all due respect, I think the people calling it the greatest political speech in history or the greatest speech ever are out of their minds.

Obama's speech does not deserve that sort of praise, not even close.

Personally, I don't think he knocked it out of the park. In fact, I was surprised by how poor it was. I was expecting more, given that this was such a make-or-break speech for him.

I wonder if the people declaring Obama's address to be the greatest speech of all time have ever heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.



Of course, they've heard it. Chris Matthews has heard it. Eugene Kane has heard it. Still, Obama's is ranked as greater.

My God, King's speech and Obama's speech aren't in the same league.

I've had enough. Don't tell me Obama's remarks even came close to King's speech.

It's nuts to put Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address behind Obama's clumsy attempt to undo the damage his relationship with his spiritual mentor Rev. Wright has done to his campaign.

It's an insult.

President Lincoln delivered the 272 word Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863 on the battlefield near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

I don't understand how anyone could grant Obama's speech equal or greater status.

It's mind-boggling.

President John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address is another speech that makes it seem absolutely ludicrous to assert that Obama's was "the greatest political speech in history" or "the greatest speech... ever heard, period."

Kane concludes:

Obama's Philadelphia speech likely will be taught in future classrooms and studied by historians, but the real question is whether it will be a deciding factor in getting him elected as president or just a captivating sidebar to the 2008 campaign.

If folks are honest, they will acknowledge at the very least that Obama showed why he won Wisconsin and that he delivered on the potential many have seen in his candidacy to look at America in a new and exciting way. From his refusal to throw Wright under the bus to his revelation about hurtful comments from his maternal grandmother, it was a tour-de-force performance by Obama that had less to do with politics than it did with humanity.

I disagree with Kane's assessment, and I am being completely honest.

I believe Obama's speech had everything to do with salvaging his presidential hopes and far less to do with humanity.

I think it is a stunning injustice to deem Obama's speech as superior to the powerful, stirring, inspiring speeches of Lincoln and Kennedy and King.