I have to amend my previous assessment about John Kerry’s speech. I had missed a lot of the build up beginning of his speech, and thanks to the youtube video of the speech over on Andrew Sullivan’s site I saw the whole thing. And there’s some really good stuff in there. He still sounds like a bit of a tool, but the words are there, and a lot of Biden’s more convincing rhetoric echoes this speech, though Biden’s delivery was better. But I was overly flippant about John Kerry’s speech which, when heard in its entirety, is really good and stands up to the others of the night.

Through a random Wikipedia journey I came across the Wikipedia page for Raul Castro. I came across a section where they quoted from one of his speeches talking about him taking over for Fidel Castro: “Fidel is irreplaceable, unless we all replace him together.”

That line is more than just a cute sound bite, but also a fascinating socio-anthropological cue. It emphasizes the communal aspect of a communist government (well, the ideal one anyways) which is not something seen in most American speeches. It made me suddenly realize that great speeches do not necessarily use the same vocabulary. There might have been a time and place where the words of Kennedy wouldn’t have inspired the masses. A whole new vocabulary of persuasion has to be invented based on what the people of your country want.

This semi-revelation also opened my eyes a little about the current presidential race: Barack Obama’s speeches bring hope and inspiration to millions, but there are many out there who wouldn’t be inspired if only because he’s using the wrong words, or he’s accentuating the wrong things. Obama is obviously aware of the power of targeted language since he often injects phrases evangelicals would recognize when he speaks of his religion.

But it goes beyond that. Using certain words to affect is a subset of this larger idea. This is more than selecting the right words, it’s about selecting the right concepts and the right words. This may have seemed to obvious to many, and indeed it’s obvious to me now, but that doesn’t dull the impact it had on me. The depth of effort a speech-writer must go through to perfect the image of the speech-giver was so much more abstract until I read that understated phrase.