Stories about "inauguration speech"
Speech of a lifetime

Sunday, January 25, 2009 12:49 pm

Tom Whalen '86 was part of a CNN panel that discussed President Obama's inauguration speech. Whalen, author of A Higher Purpose: Profiles in Presidential Courage, said the speech "overall [was] not a speech for the ages, but a speech for our times and the concerns people have. In many ways, it reminds me of a coach giving a halftime locker room speech to his team that's behind in the game. What Obama saying is that we have to make improvements or adjustment in order to prevail."

The Speech: Have inaugural addresses been getting worse?

Monday, January 12, 2009 3:20 pm

In a New Yorker essay about presidential rhetoric, Jill Lepore highlighted the book Rhetorical Presidency by Jeff Tulis '72, who suggests that the founding fathers didn't expect or even want the president to communicate directly with the masses.