Presidents' Speeches Assignent - Brad Bourne

Presidents' Speeches

Obama's Acceptance Speech

Obama's inspirational speech is one that will be remembered for years to come. His speech is one that will be cherished by many Americans as the speech appealed to so many people about how great it is to be an American. Right from the beginning of his speech, when he opened with an important moment in American history, to when he said thing like "it is not what can be done for us, its about what can be done by us" (16:34) which made his speech so effective. I think his referencing to how America is like a giant family contributed greatly to how appealing his speech was to Americans such as when he said "some of you are new this time around, and some of you have been at my side since the beginning, but all of you are family" (8:00) or when he talks about Americans coming together in a time of need (18:06), as well as America's diversity (17:06). Another thing which made his speech so effective was his eye contact (he did not look down at the podium even once and scanned the audience as if he were trying to make eye contact with as many people as possible) as well as his hand gestures which made it seem like he really believed in what he was saying. I really liked how he used some sarcasm in his speech such as when he was only going to allow his daughters to have one dog (7:24) and how he thanked his family and party members and acknowledged the opposition, which shows he is a thoughtful person. All in all I think Obama's Speech was more effective, better prepared, better written, more convincing, and all around better then Romney's.

Romney's Concession Speech

After watching Obama's speech I can see that Romney's speech was not quite at the same level, though I have heard that Romney wrote his speech last minute as he was not expecting to lose the election. I thought it was nice that he gave his thanks and congratulations to everyone who was in and contributed to the election but I also thought he looked a bit uneasy, uncomfortable and unconfident (which is understandable since he just lost the election). I also felt that due to his absence of hand gestures made his speech seem a bit hollow as I felt he did not really believe in what he was saying and was merely doing his political duty. I also found it sort of weird that his speech was only about five minutes long and over half of those five minutes was him thanking and congratulating people, which leads me to believe that he may have written his speech in a very short amount of time. In my opinion Romney's speech was not as good as Obama's.

Version of Obama's speech I watched: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv9NwKAjmt0
Version of Romney's speech I watched: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQruYgVP2SY
Where I heard rumors about Romney's Speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2awZUsj3o6Q