There’s been a lot of praise for Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic Convention, with commentators like Andrew Sullivan calling it “a deeply substantive speech,” and celebrities like Oprah describing the night as “something that was transcendent.”

UPDATE: Gallup Poll of Aug. 30: “Fifty-eight percent of Americans give Barack Obama’s speech a positive review, including 35% who describe it as ‘excellent.’ Both marks surpass those given to the 2000 and 2004 presidential candidates, with the excellent ratings for Obama’s speech 10 percentage points higher than any other recent candidate has received”.

My concern here is not with the content of the speech or its political impact, but with the technical aspects of the writing and the delivery.

As you can see from the report card, I think Obama is an excellent speaker. He connects well with the audience, he has a good speaking voice, makes judicious use of his hand movements, and he has a fairly good tonal range.

From a delivery standpoint, the area I would work on the most is an aspect of his pacing: he could speed up more in the details of a phrase so we get to the punchline faster. But, in some cases, I think it’s the writing that could have been tighter, making for much shorter phrases that wouldn’t require the same breaking up through pacing.

In terms of the writing, let me start with a couple of clarity issues. The first concerns the focus on the “promise of America.” Now this may be more of an actual content issue – an uncertainty about the message itself – but it’s not clear to me what the promise of America was meant to be. Not that there has to be a single element to that promise, but simply that we’re never given a clear outline of the promise that we could hold on to throughout the speech.

The second clarity issue concerns the drawing of contrasts when we’re not always sure what is being contrasted:

You see, we Democrats have a very different measure of what constitutes progress in this country.

To talk about “a very different measure” assumes we have been told the Republican measure of progress. There is a hint about that measure in the preceding paragraph, when Obama says the trickle-down economics of the Republicans has failed. I think the writers meant for us to take from that paragraph something like ‘the measure of success for Republicans is how much money we allow people at the top to keep.’ Well, say that! Use the word “measure” and tell us clearly what that measure is. Then you can follow it with the contrast “we Democrats have a very different measure.”

Moving on to other aspects of the writing, it was a speech that came close to great writing but never got there because of some very simple wording problems. Here’s an example:

For eighteen long months, you have stood up, one by one, and said enough to the politics of the past. You understand that in this election, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result. You have shown what history teaches us – that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. Change happens because the American people demand it – because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.

America, this is one of those moments.

The catch-phrase “the change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington.” should have come at the conclusion – the clear, memorable summary of Obama’s point about change coming from the people. By ending with “America, this is one of those moments” you don’t reference the actual point of the paragraph – plus you’ve already made the point that this is the moment in the middle of the paragraph.

Also, you have to know the “change comes to washington” line is the one people are going to clap for – or at least it’s the one you want them to clap for – which means it needs to be at the end of a thought. And don’t clutter it with “You have shown what history teaches us – that at defining moments like this one.” Here’s one simple re-arrangement:

For eighteen long months, you have stood up, one by one, and said enough to the politics of the past. You understand that in this election, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result. You have shown what history teaches us: that, at defining moments like this one, change happens because the American people demand it; because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.

The change we need doesn’t come from Washington – change comes to Washington.

I have to give Obama points for some last minute or on-the-spot changes he made to improve the writing of the speech. Take this example from the prepared text:

John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell – but he won’t even go to the cave where he lives.

In his delivery, Obama said “he won’t even follow him to the cave where he lives,” making this sentence the parallelism it should have been from the very beginning.

Here’s another example – Obama’s changes are in brackets:

In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is – you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck [You're on your own]. No health care? The market will fix it. [You're on your own] Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps – even if you don’t have boots. You’re on your own.

The phrase “you’re on your own” is a powerful one and he rightly added it to each point. I think it would have packed even more punch if he’d simply replaced “Tough luck” and “The market will fix it,” but at least he got the phrase in there.

All of this goes to show that even a speech which, by all accounts, was highly successful in accomplishing its goals can always benefit from more polishing and I hope the examples I’ve given are useful in polishing your speech-writing.

For additional comments on Obama’s speech, see my post about his use of storytelling.

Because in the faces of those young veterans who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan, I see my grandfather, who signed up after Pearl Harbor, marched in Patton’s Army, and was rewarded by a grateful nation with the chance to go to college on the GI Bill.

In the face of that young student who sleeps just three hours before working the night shift, I think about my mom, who raised my sister and me on her own while she worked and earned her degree; who once turned to food stamps but was still able to send us to the best schools in the country with the help of student loans and scholarships…

And when I hear a woman talk about the difficulties of starting her own business, I think about my grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle-management, despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman. She’s the one who taught me about hard work. She’s the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me. And although she can no longer travel, I know that she’s watching tonight, and that tonight is her night as well.

By tying in the lives of others with those of people close to him, Obama gives us better reason to think he can empathize with their stories.

This focus on story-telling has been a big part of Obama’s campaign and it goes way back to his address to the 2004 Democratic Convention:

I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.