Thread: Great orators
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Old 09-30-2007, 11:36 PM
Josem Josem is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Victoria, Australia
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Default Re: Great orators

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Jesus,

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What makes you think he was a good orator?




In Australian public life, there are very few great speeches in the US sense - person standing up at a podium (or whever) and delivering an address. I think it's a feature of our political system which features a lot more questions and responses rather than monologues.

So, in that sense, if you're interested in someone who is truly great at the cut and thrust of interviews/questions/etc., current Australian PM John Howard is exceptionally good at that. Much of the material is available online at www.pm.gov.au. Of course, it's not stuff you could listen to in the same sense as a MLK or Reagan speech, but on a technical level, he is simply very good at it.

He has made it into a key part of his political campaigning, and what seems like every day takes live-to-air, public, radio talkback callers as part of his regular schedule. I think it is pretty special to have a national leader so incredibly accessible to the public.

In his role as PM, I think he has only given one totally scripted speech - an ANZAC Day address in Turkey a few years ago. The guy refuses to use teleprompters and other devices like that, and although he'll sometimes have notes, he never reads scripts.
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