Barack Obama shows that oratory, historically an Irish forte, can be a potent force in modern political life, writes Elaine Byrne
IF THE pen is mightier than the sword, then the power of the spoken word is greater than an entire army.
Oratory is not just mere speaking, but a crafted speech peppered with passion which stirs our souls and arouses altruistic action. Ordinary speeches inform us; great speeches inspire, motivate and convince us. Oratory transforms political rhetoric into eloquent poetry. Orators are musicians who construct and permeate their prose with rhythm and harmony.
This art of public speaking has had an American revival of late, which Irish political discourse can learn from. Eight years ago Barack Obama watched Al Gore accept the party's nomination on television screens outside the convention centre because he was unable to secure a delegate ticket.
Obama's oratory changed all that.
Last night in Denver, Obama accepted the Democratic nomination as the party's presidential candidate. His keynote address at the 2004 Democratic national convention in Boston is regarded as a defining moment of his political career. Some 200,000 people came to hear him speak in Berlin in July. On Wednesday night former US president Bill Clinton's stunning speech to Democratic delegates was interrupted by spontaneous outbursts of the Obama catch-cry: "Yes We Can."
It is a fitting coincidence that Obama will accept his nomination on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Great speeches live forever. We still remember the words of Bobby Kennedy in 1968, borrowed from George Bernard Shaw: "Some men see things as they are and ask 'Why?' I dream things that never were and ask 'Why not?'" The power of American oratory was at its peak in the 1960s.
Obama has reintroduced oratory to modern politics. He has tapped into a hunger among citizens, particularly young people, for substantive, passionate political rhetoric that they can genuinely believe in.
Ministers Mary Hanafin and Noel Dempsey and Opposition leaders Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore were at the Democratic convention in Denver. The new Dáil term begins in a month. The magnificence or otherwise of Dáil proceedings will be available for all to see if proposals for an all-day Dáil television channel come to pass. So, perhaps now would be a good time to resurrect the proud Irish practice of oratory.
The tradition of great speeches did not originate from the ballpoint pens of Martin Luther King, John F Kennedy or Barack Obama, the feather quills of George Berkeley, Jonathan Swift, Edmund Burke, Theobald Wolfe Tone, Henry Grattan, Robert Emmet, Daniel O'Connell and Charles Stewart Parnell played their part in its long history.
Irish oratory has the distinction of pioneering wit into political discourse, even on the most solemn of occasions. Charged with treason for his part in the 1798 rebellion, Wolfe Tone told the court: "I mean not to give you the trouble of bringing judicial proof to convict me legally of having acted in hostility to the government of his Britannic Majesty in Ireland. I admit the fact."
And then there was Henry Grattan, who considered oratory an art form and studied the ancient speeches of antiquity intensely. His brusque, lyrical sentence structures were rich in profound maxims on political philosophy.
Take his defining 1800 anti-Act of Union speech to the Irish House of Commons; fewer than 400 words, it insists on being said out loud: "Yet I do not give up the country. I see her in a swoon, but she is not dead. Though in her tomb she lies helpless and motionless, still there is on her lips a spirit of life and on her cheek a glow of beauty." (Why are the transcripts of distinguished Irish historical speeches not accessible on the Oireachtas website?)
Irish oratory was introduced to a wider American audience as a consequence of Washington Irving's romantic short story The Broken Heart in his acclaimed 1820 Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon. After the disastrous 1803 rebellion, condemned leader Robert Emmet challenged future generations with the words: "When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then and only then let my epitaph be written."
The Times of London reported that one million people came to hear Daniel O'Connell at his 1843 Hill of Tara monster meeting. Charles Stewart Parnell's speech before the joint houses of the US Congress in 1880 is credited with securing American support for the Irish land question.
Ireland in the past produced politicians who combined style and substance to articulate and advance a sense of nation and a politics of vision. The struggle for Irish independence demanded as much. In times of crisis we dare to hope to have the opportunity to believe in the politics of possibility. Oratory is not dead and gone here, simply forgotten.
It now appears that the Taoiseach will not make a state of the nation address after all. Why not?