Reviewing the top 10 political speeches in recent US history

Over the last three years, I’ve gone across the country listening to voters as they tell me the kind of language they want to hear from their elected officials, unifying language language that brings people together. So we went back into our vaults and brought out the best language from the politicians. And we took over 100 hours of political speeches from across the spectrum, and show them to Americans from across the country. Thanks to a technology called instant response, we were able to choose the best words, the best phrases, the best lines, over the last few decades, the higher the lines climb, the more favorable the reaction, the green line represents Democrats, the red line represents Republicans, if the lines go to a 70. That’s a good speech. If they go to 80. That’s a great speech. And for the lines should cross that 90. That’s truly exceptional. It’s one of the top 1% of all political communications. And what you’re going to see right now are the top 10 measurements of great speeches by great politicians over the last few decades starting off. At number 10, Marco Rubio’s convention speech, Rubio speaks about how he in one generation, how his family went from the back of the room, to the front of the room.
Let’s take a look. My dad used to tell us and yet to buy EES who tell you that logra toda la cosa que nosotros Nopalitos. In this country. In this country, you’re going to be able to accomplish all the things we never could. A few years ago, during a speech, I noticed the bartender behind the portable bar on the back of the ballroom. I remembered my father who worked for many years as a banquet bartender. He was grateful for the work he had. But that’s not the life he wanted for us. You see, he stood behind the bar and in the back of the room all those years. So one day, I could stand behind a podium in the front of a room. That journey from behind that bar to behind this podium goes to the essence of the American miracle that we’re exceptional, not because we have more rich people here. We’re special. Because dreams that are impossible anywhere else, they come true here.
You’ll notice the video for Marco Rubio was smaller. Unfortunately, we’re stuck with whatever we can get at the time, it was impossible to get the full screen. But it’s still scored so well, because Americans love the story of success. They love a story of intergenerational improvement. And Rubio delivered that presentation. So well. Now number nine, is a First Lady Michelle Obama speaking to America’s youth, you’ll get an idea from her first words, why she is still so popular today.
So the young people here, and the young people out there do not ever let anyone make you feel like you don’t matter. Or like you don’t have a place in our American story, because you do. And you have a right to be exactly who you are. But I also want to be very clear. This right isn’t just handed to you know, this right has to be earned every single day. You cannot take your freedoms for granted. Just like generations who’ve come before you have to do your part to preserve and protect those freedoms. And that starts right now when you’re young. Right now, you need to be preparing yourself to add your voice to our national conversation. You need to prepare yourself to be informed and engaged as a citizen to serve and to lead to stand up for proud American values and to honor them in your daily lives. And that means getting the best education possible. So you can think critically. So you can express yourself clearly. So you can get a good job and support yourself and your family. So you can be a positive force in your communities. And when
not all great words are delivered in a speech. Some of them can be delivered in a TV studio. This conversation by Mitch Landrieu and ABC News was our eighth most powerful, most impactful language because of what he said and how he said it.
And I would say this to the people of America, we shouldn’t just wait on whoever the President is to fix our problems. If 320 million Americans said something really cared for each other every day, and just kind of pushed back on all the nastiness we could pretty much we can move the country fairly quickly in a whole lot of different ways. And there’s tons of stuff going on in the local areas. But it is clear to me that we have to get back to be Being respectful, being civil to seeing each other and judging each other based on our behavior, not race, not creed, not class, not sexual orientation, not necessarily what country we come from, and it would be in to loose with that right now we have to be more disciplined, and focus on civility because this is the greatest country that ever was. And it will be the greatest country, incoming
not all great language is delivered by an American, Tony Blair spoke to US Congress in 2003. And the reaction was incredibly favorable, because he talks about an attribute that all Americans hold dear liberty,
anywhere, anytime, ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same freedom, not tyranny, democracy, not dictatorship, the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police. The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defense, and our first line of attack. And just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify it around an idea. And that idea is liberty. We must find the strength to fight for this idea, and the compassion to make it universal. Abraham Lincoln said, Those that deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. And it is this sense of justice that makes moral the love of liberty.
Many Americans forget that John McCain was actually beating Barack Obama. And one reason why was this convention acceptance speech from 2008.
If you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you’re disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them in list. Enlist in our armed forces become a teacher, enter the ministry, run for public office, feed a hungry child, teach an adult an illiterate adult to read, comfort the afflicted, defend the rights of the oppressed our country will be the better, and you will be the happier because nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.
Arguably, the best nomination speech of any presidential candidate in any convention was delivered by Congresswoman Barbara Jordan from Texas in 1976. On behalf of Jimmy Carter, let’s listen.
I can list the problems which cause people to feel cynical, angry, frustrated, problems which include lack of integrity and government, the feeling that the individual no longer counts the reality of material and spiritual poverty. The feeling that the Grand American experiment is failing or has failed. I could recite these problems. And then I could sit down and offer no solutions. But I don’t choose to do that either. The citizens of America expect more. They deserve and they want more than a recital of problems. We are a people in a quandary about the present. We are a people in search of our future. We are a people in search of a national community. We are a people trying not only to solve the problems of the present, unemployment, inflation. But we are attempting on a larger scale. To fulfill the promise of America. We are attempting to fulfill our national purpose to create and sustain a society in which all of us
are equal. Unfortunately, we don’t have the tape of Martin Luther King actually delivering the lettuce March speech from 1965. But we do have his sound. We do have his voice. And we do have the words. Let’s listen because this is the fourth best political communication of modern times.
Let us continue our compromise to the realization of the American dream. us march on segregated housing until ever get towards social and economic depression dissolved and liberals and whites live side by side, in decent, safe and sanitary. Let us march on segregated students until every vestige of segregated and inferior education becomes a thing of the past. negros and whites satisfied by far in the socially healing context of the classroom that has marked on poverty until no American parent has to skip a meal for that children made the march on poverty, envelopes god man wants to speak to our citizens in such a jobs that do not exist, let us march on poverty until rebuild standards in Mississippi and fill in the realize everybody to live and live in sweltering temperatures. On Monday, and remote.
Ronald Reagan changed in America when he was elected. It was a new definition, a new voice and a new ideology. And that ideology was presented perfectly in his 1981 inaugural address, listening
now so there will be no misunderstanding. It’s not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work. Work with us, not over us to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it, foster productivity, not stifle it. If we look to the answer, as to why for so many years, we achieved so much prospered is no other people on Earth. It was because here in this land, we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity the individual had been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth.
I believe this was the best speech ever delivered by President of the United States was Barack Obama 2015 on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, but this show is not about my point of view, it’s about Americans. No speech we tested did better than what Obama did on that special day, listening.
But what has not changed is the imperative of citizenship. That willingness of a 26 year old Deacon, or a Unitarian minister, or a young mother of five, to decide they love this country so much, that they’d risked everything, to realize its promise. That’s what it means to love America. That’s what it means to believe in America. That’s what it means when we say America is exceptional. For we were born of change, we broke the old aristocracy declaring ourselves entitled not by bloodline, but endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. We secure our rights and responsibilities through a system of self government of and by and for the people. That’s why we argue and fight with so much passion and conviction, because we know our efforts matter. We know America is what we make of it.
Arguably the most powerful political words ever delivered in America. Were not a political speech. It was the announcement of the assassination of Martin Luther King, delivered by Robert F. Kennedy in the middle of his presidential campaign. This speech was conducted at night, no notes, no preparations, Bobby Kennedy standing on the back of a truck lit only by a television camera, as he speaks to a crowd of several 1000 people. The rest of America burn that night. But not Indianapolis, because of the power of His words, the magic of his delivery. And to the American people. This is the most powerful political language of all time.
What we need in the United States is not division. But we need in the United States is not hatred. What we need in the United States is not violence, and lawlessness, but his love and wisdom and compassion toward one another feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country but they’d be white, or whether they’d be black.
We’ve been doing a countdown to the best political language. This is not that. But it’s brilliant. And it’s powerful. And it sent a message to the entire world that America was not down and out, but would soon get back on his feet. Once again, the visual of it is small, because the original footage is hard to find. But this is the entire statement of George W. Bush, at the 911 site, just four days after the events. Let’s watch.
I want you all to know.
I want you all to know that a man today, American a day is on bended knee in prayer for the people whose lives are last year for the workers who work here. For the families, the Lord. This nation stands with the good people of New York City, and New Jersey and Connecticut. As we mourn the loss of 1000s of our students. I can hear
I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you and the people. And the people who knocked these buildings down, well here all of us.
The nation, the nation says it’s love
and compassion. God bless.
Everybody was here. Thank you for your hard work. Thank you for making the nation proud. And may God bless America.
And one other bonus clip for you all. This did not test the best. It’s not in the top 10. But arguably for Democrats. This is the most powerful evaluation of the two Americas of the shining city on the hill. And the alternative that most people don’t see Mario Cuomo 1988 Democratic Convention, keynote speech, let’s watch.
But there’s another city. There’s another part of the shining city, the pot where some people can’t pay their mortgages, and most young people can’t afford one where students can’t afford the education they need. And middle class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate. In this part of the city, there are more poor than ever. More families in trouble more and more people who need help but can’t find it. Even worse, there are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city’s streets in the gutter where the glitter doesn’t show. There are ghettos where 1000s of young people without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don’t see in the places that you don’t visit in your shining city. In fact, Mr. President, this is a nation.
Mr. President, you ought to know that this nation is more a tale of two cities than it is just a shining city on a hill.
You’ll notice that none of that language has been delivered in the last few years, you’d probably acknowledge that we’re more divided country than ever before, and that our politicians seem to enhance those divisions rather than address them. Let us hope this as we approach election 2024, which, as of this earring is only a year away. Let’s hope that one or two of these elected officials can make it onto next year’s list of the 10 most unifying political statements of modern times. The country needs it, and the country deserves it. On behalf of America speaks on straight arrow News, I’m Frank Luntz. We’ll see you again soon