Overall I liked the speech. I definitely noticed that he was heavy on the pathos. It was a pretty emotional and inspiring speech. He definitely jerked some tears with lines like
"For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.
For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.
For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn. "
I don't want to sound pessimistic or critical, but even though the rhetoric of his speech was very good, I thought it was kind of empty. I didn't really hear or read any specific actions that were going to take place. It was a lot of "we will move on" and "America rocks," but not a lot of why. I like Obama and I have nothing against him, but I felt like the hope that he seemed to radiate during his speech was kind of fluffy and insubstantial. It was like eating cotton candy for dinner. It's sweet and seems to be filling, but a few minutes later, you realized that it did you no good. But that's the way all inauguration speeches have to be. If they gave too many details, then our enemies would know what our plans were and would know how to counteract them. But you get an "A" on your rhetoric Barack!
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6 comments:
I agree with you Steve. Unfortunately to many Americans issues don't seem that big of a deal because many people don't understand them. But we can't deny the fact that Obama's rhetoric is quite amazing and he does a good job of grasping people's emotions.
Obama was very vague in his inauguration speech, but I think he did this for a reason. He did not want to promise to early something he has no ability to go through with. He didn’t want to set the bar too high.
I agree, during the entire presidential campaign I kept noticing that Obama never really gave a plan for changing everything he wanted to change. His speech sounded great but it had no backup for it.
There is no doubt that Obama's rhetoric was top notch...but then again, how many of these politicians write their own stuff anyway? I guess the main point of an inagurational speech is to inspire hope and get people excited about the future. Obama definitely did that without question.
I totally agree with you about Obama's speech being like "eating cotton candy for dinner." He has always been a really effective speaker and that is probably why so many people, especially young people, like him. In the end, I don't thinks words are enough alone--He needs to put his words into action.
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