Arnold Schwarzenegger: The Greatest Political Orator of Our Day
May 28, 2007 · By Tom Cerber
With lines like this one he gave at the Council of Foreign Relations, it’s easy to see why Governor Schwarzenegger is such a successful politician:
“If you are against taking actions against greenhouse gases and carbon emissions your political base will melt away as sure as the polar ice caps.
You will become a political penguin on a smaller and smaller ice floe drifting out to sea. Goodbye my little friend.”
He also dresses extremely well, as Nicholas Antongiavanni has noted.
Goodbye my little friends.
I won’t comment on his wardrobe, but I do note that your post and its headline seem to blur the distinction between an “orator” and a “politician”. I will concede the “successful politician” - he did get re-elected, after all, which is the measure of a politician’s success. But an “orator”? I fear not.
As one would expect of an actor, he has the knack of delivering scripted sound bites that have been written for him, and of improvising modestly amusing one liners. That that should pass for “oratory” in these sads days is a dismal commentary on the wretched state of what was once a real art. Roosevelt was an orator. Churchill was an orator. Diefenbaker and Trudeau and were orators. Arnold’s an actor playing an orator.
Bab: Fair comment, though you’ll notice I included “in our day” in the title of the post. I make no comment on the general quality of oration in our day. That AS is the highest of our day does not preclude your comparison with those other greats.
Winston Churchill was a fantastic orator. So was Brian Mulroney, although sometimes his voice seemed to baritone below the threshold of human hearing.
R. Alexander, I wouldn’t characterize Mulroney as a great orator. He was like Chretien (albeit with better diction) - a good after dinner speaker, like someone who had put in many years at Toastmasters. Either was preferable to Martin, who sounded like a CEO addressing his Board.
I’m not sure what all characterizes an orator…something of substance to say, a sense of poetry, drama and humour, a deep well of knowledge to draw from, and an effortless command of the tools of rhetoric. But the biggest thing, I think, is the capacity to develop an idea in a coherent, sustained way that with the force of logic, the lyricism of language and the passion of real conviction.
[...] Arnold Schwarzenegger: The Greatest Political Orator of Our Day - Tom Cerber, The Politic [...]
Unfortunately I could not find an audio version, and as I recall it was very good, but here is a transcript of Mulroney’s eulogy of Ronald Reagan. Make of it what you will, and the toastmaster assessment is quite true, but I think Mulroney is at his best here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3799881.stm
Brian Mulroney was well known at Law School in his moot court competitions as a tremendously gifted orator. He did tend to get carried away, but when he was firing on all cylinders he was a formidable debater.
His leveling of John Turner in their 1984 debates was clear evidence of that skill.
George,
That closing line by Yeats shows a definite flair for the poetic resonance.