Critique of a Political Speech - Essay Example

As I analyzed his delivery, I noticed a disconnect between the words that were on the page and the way he was delivering them. Although a gifted orator, he lack the emotional connection that would make one believe that he not only wrote his own speech, which he probably did not, but that he actually believed in what he was asking the people and congress to believe in. President Obama came to the White House with very little known about his work experience by the public. He was only a fresh senator with only 2 years of legislative work under his belt at the time he began his presidential campaign.

Even with all his political shortcomings in terms of work experience and the like, those who covered him during the campaign were all wowed by his most remarkable asset. They all agreed that he was a gifted orator who knew how to truly engage his audience and sway them towards his beliefs by the time that he came to the end of his speech. Sadly, serving as our president did not seem to cultivate that aspect of his oratorical talent. His previous American Job Act speech left many wanting, for his speech was full of words but short in substance.

He began his speech with what I believe to be the most self serving opening in the history of speeches: Tonight we meet at an urgent time for our country. We continue to face an economic crisis that has left millions of our neighbors jobless, and a political crisis that has made things worse. This past week, reporters have been asking "What will this speech mean for the President? What will it mean for Congress? How will it affect their polls, and the next election?" His ethos in the previous paragraph was supposed to show us his authority over Congress and make us believe that he is in the best position to help the public interests because he understands the social situation and knows how to solve it.

He is after all, the president of the country. Its penultimate leader and father to all those residing in this great land. Instead, his opening paragraph shows us that he was thinking more about political survival more than anything else. The ethos of his speech veers more on the intrinsic side as we all know that he is not, and will never be one of those common-folk who shall be extremely affected by high gas prices, mortgage problems, or even, loss of jobs, he won't even have a dwindling 401k portfolio.

He is obviously conscious of that fact as he never mentions those pressing problems faced by normal people. He chose to open his speech talking about his re-election instead. An opening which, in my honest opinion, weakened the ethos of his whole speech. His speech however, offers a strong argument in terms of pathos that the listeners and others affected by our current socio-political climate can get behind and support. He presented the following argument in support of his American Job Act Bill towards the middle part of his speech: The next election is fourteen months away.

And the people who sent us here – the people who hired us to work for them – they don't have the luxury of waiting fourteen months. Some of them are living week to week; paycheck to paycheck; even day to day. They need help, and they need it now. The people who helped draft Pres. Obama's speech were very conscious of the fact that the American public is now very restless and clamoring for change and action from the government. From those who are in power right now. The speech, at