Feb 14, 2008 9:30 am US/Eastern
Obama's Speeches Grabbing Spotlight
Often Draws Huge Crowds On Campaign Trail
NEW YORK (CBS News) ―
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Sen. Barack Obama speaks to a crowd of autoworkers at the Janesville, Wis., GM plant on Feb. 13.
CBS
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Barack Obama (D-IL) addresses a rally at the World Trade Center Boston on the last full day of campaigning before Super Tuesday Feburary 4, 2008 in Boston, Massachusetts.
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US Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Senator Barack Obama addresses a town hall meeting at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
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Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) speaks during a campaign rally in the Bender Arena at American University January 28, 2008 in Washington, DC. Obama recieved the endorsement of Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) and Caroline Kennedy
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Democratic presidential hopeful U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) greets supporters before speaking at a rally at the 1st Mariner Arena Feb. 11, 2007 in Baltimore, Md.
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Barack Obama
is often treated like a rock star on the campaign trail. People wait hours to
hear him speak. He draws huge crowds.
And, pundits say, his powerful speech-making style plays no small part in his
appeal.
People "come in droves -- by the tens of thousands at times" to hear
Obama speak, observes Early Show national correspondent Tracy Smith.
His "soaring rhetoric," she said, "is moving his audiences not
just politically, but emotionally," even moving audience members to tears
on occasion.
Even some political commentators who've seen it all can't help but gush.
Chris Matthews, host of CNBC's "Hardball," recently remarked about
"the feeling most people get when they hear a Barack Obama speech. I felt
this thrill going up my leg. I mean -- I don't have that too often."
Longtime Republican strategist and pollster Frank Luntz, author of the book
"Words That Work," told Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith on Thursday he's "more than impressed" with
Obama's oratory.
"I've
been mesmerized," he said.
Tracy Smith said Obama's "stoic eloquence, "with lines like, "We are
the ones we've been waiting for," conjures up images of President Kennedy.
"Ask not what your country can do for you," Kennedy said in his
inaugural address. "Ask what you can do for your country."
Obama says something similar in his stump speeches: "We will invest in you;
you invest in your country."
JFK speechwriter Ted Sorensen supports Obama and speaks regularly with the
campaign's speechwriting team, Tracy Smith points out.
"Kennedy had this wonderful, wry, ironic sense, just as Obama does…,"
said Time magazine columnist Joe Klein. "Both of them are cool customers,
which works well on television."
Obama's mantra, "Yes we can!" has even gone hip-hop, in a music video
viewed more than three million times on YouTube.
But, Tracy Smith said, "inspirational rhetoric comes with political
risks."
"The biggest political danger that Obama faces with this style of rhetoric
is that he's just not going to connect with the working class voters of the
Democratic party," Klein comments.
Likely GOP presidential nominee John McCain already has an answer for Obama's
oratory, should the two square off in November, telling supporters, "To
encourage a country with only rhetoric, rather than sound and proven ideas that
trust in the strength and courage of free people, is not a promise of hope.
It's a platitude."
Luntz agreed with Harry Smith's assessment that McCain and Hillary Clinton are
"very concerned" about Obama's words.
"They are," Luntz said, "but what they don't understand is that,
for a whole lot of Americans, the candidates' attributes and character traits
are even more important than where they stand. If they trust them, if they
believe them. If this is someone who's a visionary.
"Here's the key attribute Americans want in 2008: Somebody who says what
they mean and means what they say. If Obama were to ever be shown as a
hypocrite, to say one thing and then say something completely different, then
he's in trouble. But if he maintains that visionary, in essence, that hope and uplifting
rhetoric, he survives and thrives."
Noting that the word "hope" was superimposed in large letters at the
end of the Divedom.com music video, Luntz remarked that he's "never seen a
candidate whose slogan and language is bigger than his own name in the buttons
and the bumper stickers.
"It's interesting that people compare him to John Kennedy. It's Bobby
Kennedy that he's channeling," Luntz said.
Luntz read from "Words That Work," saying, "It was the last
thing I added to the book, because I thought this was the best language I'd
ever heard: 'Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years
ago, to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.'
That was Bobby Kennedy the night Martin Luther King was killed.
The impact of Obama's oratory on the youth vote is inescapable, Luntz stresses:
"When you go to an event and you see so many thousands of 18, 19,
20-year-olds -- the only time they ever cared until this point was that they
couldn't get their latte at Starbucks."
But will young voters -- vote?
"Young people make up 12, 14, in some states as much as 18 percent of the
primary electorate. Not only will they drop their lattes, they'll take their iPods
out and listen to him. How great is it that, for the first time in my lifetime,
the youth of America
are energized, emboldened and they can't wait to vote," Luntz said.
When Smith made an aside that such glowing words were coming from a Republican
pollster, Luntz said, "I would argue that I've kind of left that time
behind me."
At only 26-years-old, John Favreau, from Massachusetts, is the Illinois Senator's chief speechwriter.
"I
get a few odd looks from people when I first meet people and they find
out I'm his speechwriter, because I guess I'm a little young," says
Favreau.
While a staffer for Sen. John Kerry, Favreau met Obama at the 2004
Democratic National Convention in Boston. Later, he joined Obama in the
Senate and began to "learn Obama's voice."
"He gives me lines he
wants to use, phrases, ideas, emails with chunks of outlines, so it's a
real collaborative effort. It really works out well," says Favreau.
"It's a little like being Tom Brady's quarterback coach."
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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