When Barack Obama spoke on a damp, breezy night in Chicago’s Grant Park in November 2008, having just won the election to be American President, his speech that evening seemed to confirm one thing: that whatever people in America or the rest of the world thought of his policies, here was a man who could talk brilliantly - better, certainly, than any of his political opponents; better, probably that any president since Roosevelt even, some have said, since Abraham Lincoln. The speech in Grant Park proved - if proof were needed - hat Obama’s eloquence was one of his key election weapons. It persuaded his supporters to feel hopeful and his opponents to feel generous. If encouraged them all to believe in the same thing that he believed in - and, perhaps, in the process, to heal some of the rifts that had opened up across America during the campaign. Like all the most powerful speeches, it was full of ‘ringing truths and vital declarations’. It also reverberated with echoes from the past, of emancipation and conciliation. Obama was the first African American to be president, yes. But here was someone who transcended race. Through his speech, he seemed to suggest that his victory embodied something bigger than place in American society. He was inviting his audience to see that history was being made there and then - by them, as well as by him.

It’s been said tht Barack Obama’s knack is that whenever he speaks he evokes, all at once the spirit of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther king, Woody Gurthrie and Sam Cooke. It is partly a matter of what he says, and partly a matter of how he says it - of cadence as well as content. And the effect has been to conjure up for his audience, ‘a live connection to American history’. Yet there’s another tradition that Obama’s speeches have always invoked: the oratory of ancient Greece and Rome, where the art of public speaking was right at the heart of daily politics. It wasn’t about crafting fine words for mere aesthetic pleasure. ……….when someone recites a story out loud, its success - indeed its very worth - depends on the reaction of those gathered around listening. So political oratory is about the art of persuasion, there is also the art of auditioning. Understanding its origins takes us well beyond Greece and Rome -eastwards, to the first Buddhists and the beginnings of Islam. ~ Page 61/62 Book Title “Noise” Author: David Hendy (Professor of Media and Communications, University of Sussex U.K)