Why is political oratory dead?

[David]

Everything must now be said briefly enough to fit a thirty second sound bite.

Are you aware that the great orator Edward Everett spoke for an hour at Gettysburg before Abraham Lincom made his brief Address? Who is remembered today? As Shakespeare said, "Brevity is the soul of wit."

My own experience as a public speaker over the last forty years is that I have three minutes to get my point across. In the first thirty seconds I must engage the audience's interest and then I must sell my issue in the next one hudred and fifty seconds. Abything logner and I lose them.

Why? Television. Video games. Social media. Everything today is done in sound bites, and there are alternatives to the entertainment the great speakers used to provide. That is also why it is harder to get a crowd out to a meeting, too. Times change. Oratory must change with it.

[wombatfreaks]

There is no longer any audience for it. Political speakers, even if they themselves are educated, can not speak to the public in big words or complex ideas

[Leo]

I disagree. There are plenty of people who can give good speeches today. They use technology to help them do it that would have been used by people in the past had it been available to them. What I miss is meaningful political debate. When Kerry ran for president I remember watching an old Dick Cavett show where Kerry debated another vet about the Vietnam war. It was a reasonable, intelligent conversation representing two different points of view. Cavett rarely interjected and when he did it was just to keep the conversation on point. Now we have multiple people in boxes on the TV screen like the Brady Bunch, all yelling at each other while the host tries to make sure that he or she gets most of the attention. And what's worse is that we usually see the same faces and they are referring to the same talking points. I would like to see one of the networks do a Sunday debate show, one that gives the participants ample time to prepare beyond just a page of talking points. Have, for instance, the best person the Dems have on the ACA vs the best person the GOP has and let them discuss the issue intelligently and factually. One of the rules would be that if one side makes an assertion, he or she has to be able to back it up.