Great oratory, it seems, relies on great timing as well as
the right words. In his book “Words Like
Loaded Pistols: Rhetoric from Aristotle to Obama,” Sam Leith observes, for
instance:
On Winston Churchill:
“Of course, there are times when
powerful fixed artillery is just what you need. The thing about Churchill was
that, like the stopped clock that’s right twice a day, he occupied one position
and waited for the world to come to him. He spent much of his political career
predicting the imminent end of Western civilization—and it was only by the
damnedest good luck that it happened to be on his watch that it suddenly
appeared to be coming about. If not, he might have been remembered as a
self-aggrandizing windbag with an old-fashioned speaking style and a love of
the sound of his own voice.”
On Adolf Hitler:
“He preferred to speak in the
evening, believing that ‘in the morning and during the day it seems that the
power of the human will rebels with its strongest energy against any attempt to
impose upon it the will or opinion of another. On the other hand, in the evening
it easily succumbs to the domination of a stronger will.’ Thus speaks a man who
got his start launching his Putsches from beer halls.”
—In Sam Leith’s “Words Like Loaded Pistols: Rhetoric From
Aristotle to Obama”, Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group,
Philadelphia, PA, 2012.
So, for the ambitious orator, remember: historic
circumstance, not a crisis in your own career, will decide when you can make
that historic speech.
For those of us just sitting in the audience, it appears
to be a good thing that the men or women up there on the big stage are also
able to mix it up on the morning shows.
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