Great Orators of Our Time: Sarah Palin

Abraham Lincoln. Winston Churchill. John F. Kennedy. Martin Luther King.

Those of us who were not alive to hear these great leaders' speeches can draw inspiration from another master of rhetoric, someone newly arrived on the national stage. And by master of rhetoric, of course, I mean mistress.

Patrick Healy, writing in The New York Times, puts it so well…

As the Republican vice-presidential nominee for six and a half weeks now, Ms. Palin has emerged as the most electrifying speechmaker among the four politicians on the major party tickets.

Here's a taste of what's electrifying the crowds who hang on Sarah Palin's every word. Read it slowly, to savor her craft.

"For a campaign that says it's all about the future," Ms. Palin said to a mix of applause (for her) and boos (for you-know-who) in Richmond, "do you notice that our opponents sure have spent a heck of a lot of time looking to the past and pointing fingers? You look to the past because that's where you find blame, but we're joining you and looking to the future, because that's where you find solutions."

"America, doggone it, unfortunately we're deep in debt, and Barack Obama would put us even deeper in debt," she added a few minutes later.

You know, someday your grandchildren will look back, from their moneyless desert society of 2078, and wonder why they don't make speakers like that any more. I cannot help but be reminded Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous words from his first inaugural address…

"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly, doggone it. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing the gosh-darn conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is a heck of a lot of fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which, unfortunately, paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. U.S.A.!"