Spoken Gems

If you haven’t had enough, here is the list of speeches I promised earlier this week. If you don’t know with which to start, I would recommend the speeches from Joe Biden, Dick Durbin, Martin Luther King III, John Lewis, Claire McCaskill, Ted Kennedy, Maya Soetoro-Ng and Mark Warner.

• Madeleine Albright
• Tammy Baldwin
• Evan Bayh
• Joe Biden
  Joe Biden’s acceptance speech as VP candidate (see also the introduction by his son Beau)
• Tom Daschle
• Howard Dean
• Dick Durbin
  This is the introduction speech for Barack Obama.
• Susan Eisenhower
• Rahm Emanuel
• Martin Luther King III
  He gave this speech at the 45th anniversary of his father’s "I have a dream" speech.
• Ted Kennedy
  Terry Gault describes this speech as feisty and warm. The first part is an introduction by Caroline Kennedy, following a tribute to Edward M. Kennedy and finally the speech by Ted Kennedy himself.
• Tim Kaine
• John Kerry
• Jim Leach
• Patrick Leahy
• John Lewis
• Claire McCaskill
• Janet Napolitano
• Deval Patrick
• Nancy Pelosi
• Jack Reed
• Harry Reid
• Ed Rendell
  It’s clear: the only thing green in John McCain’s energy plan is the billions of dollars he’s promising in tax cuts for oil companies.
• Bill Richardson
  I have a question for you: Is anybody here going to miss Dick Cheney?
• Brian Schweitzer
• Kathleen Sebelius
• Maya Soetoro-Ng
  Maya Soetoro-Ng is the half-sister of Barack Obama. She talks about how she grew up with her older brother.
• Ted Strickland
• Mark Warner

Imagine standing in front of the Democratic National Convention, in front of thousands of people…

Barney Smith is definitely not a professional speaker or a Toastmaster. But he stood in front of all those people and got standing ovations (including from Joe Biden).

If I’d have to choose my favourite speech regarding style, this would be the one. Jesse Jackson Jr.’s speech definitely has a powerful and unique style.

This speech delivered by Dennis Kucinich was definitely the one that got the most attention at Reddit. Last Tuesday you couldn’t open a single page there without reading "Wake up, America" over and over again.

Oliver Burkeman from the Guardian commented before the speech:

A Bill Clinton speech is always fun to watch in any event, but the mixed feelings of the audience towards the speaker and the speaker towards his audience should make this one particularly fascinating.

Bill Clinton’s speech at the DNC was fascinating and fun to watch.