Tracy Lee Simmons mourns the death of oratory

ALL AGLOW IN January 1961 after President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, the editors of the The New Yorker rhapsodized about the success of his inaugural address. Perhaps Mr. Kennedy’s political prowess and eloquence, they speculated, would “revive a taste for good oratory—a taste that has been alternately frustrated by inarticulateness and dulled by bombast.” They found it “hard to believe that an Athenian or Roman citizen could have listened to it unmoved, or that Cicero, however jealous of his own reputation, would have found reason to object to it.” Leaving aside the absurdly effusive praise, we may also say that those same devout citizens would look askance at the quality of utterance emitted by the current crop of politicians, and especially at that of Kennedy’s selfproclaimed political offspring, Bill Clinton.

The political speech has seen better days. The editors’ invocation of Greek and Roman ideals would have been approved by the Founding Fathers, who themselves looked to the ancient past for blueprints for the building and preservation of republics. They also harkened to those republican traditions whenever they rose to speak; to be a statesman was to be an orator, a meticulously trained master of words and logic. A speech was an occasion for clarifying ideas, not merely one for emotive manipulation. Patrick Henry’s ringing phrase “Give me liberty or give me death” was intended to be incendiary, but there’s a solid thought behind those words that has been whittled down to its essence. And the artful matching of liberty and death—one a soaring abstraction, the other an irreducible fact—sings to high- and lowbrows alike. It also carries the advantage of being memorable.

About the Author

Tracy Lee Simmons

Tracy Lee Simmons is the author of Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin.

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ALL AGLOW IN January 1961 after President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, the editors of the The New Yorker rhapsodized about the success of his inaugural address. Perhaps Mr. Kennedy’s political prowess and eloquence, they speculated, would “revive a taste for good oratory—a taste that has been alternately frustrated by inarticulateness and dulled by bombast.” They found it “hard to believe that an Athenian or Roman citizen could have listened to it unmoved, or that Cicero, however jealous of his own reputation, would have found reason to object to it.” Leaving aside the absurdly effusive praise, we may also say that those same devout citizens would look askance at the quality of utterance emitted by the current crop of politicians, and especially at that of Kennedy’s selfproclaimed political offspring, Bill Clinton.

The political speech has seen better days. The editors’ invocation of Greek and Roman ideals would have been approved by the Founding Fathers, who themselves looked to the ancient past for blueprints for the building and preservation of republics. They also harkened to those republican traditions whenever they rose to speak; to be a statesman was to be an orator, a meticulously trained master of words and logic. A speech was an occasion for clarifying ideas, not merely one for emotive manipulation. Patrick Henry’s ringing phrase “Give me liberty or give me death” was intended to be incendiary, but there’s a solid thought behind those words that has been whittled down to its essence. And the artful matching of liberty and death—one a soaring abstraction, the other an irreducible fact—sings to high- and lowbrows alike. It also carries the advantage of being memorable.