Pundit king Halperin gives The Speech an A+:
He is not a perfect candidate, but once again proved that he can, in the face of daunting expectations, deliver a simply breathtaking speech at an absolutely pivotal moment....In the process, Obama appeared to achieve every goal the pundits and political backseat drivers had set out for him in advance: he showed his heart, emphasized the economy, and, most of all, looked like a president. Worlds better than the revelatory 2004 convention speech that set him on the course to the nomination.
Halperin also waxes on something I didn't mention but might have: Obama's extraordinary poise and technical control, on this massive occasion. Like a great singer, he varied the tone and timbre of his voice with amazing precision, and paced his delivery to perfection.
Talking of singing, here's linguist John McWhorter on the musical roots of speech and speeches:
The intonations of casual speech are a kind of
music; and, when wielded effectively, they can satisfy in the same way
as a good song. Steven Mithen at Reading University has even proposed
that language began as strings of musical syllables, gradually
reinterpreted as nouns and verbs. Thus, euphonious intonation has a way
of sounding like grammar--i.e., logic. In fact, researchers at the Max
Planck Institute in Leipzig have discovered that the part of the brain
that processes musical sequences is the same one that generates
grammatical syntax.If our expectation that a
subject will be followed by a predicate is founded in the same process
that leads us to hear the sequence of notes of "Twinkle, twinkle,
little star / How I wonder what you are" as a proper tune, it's no
wonder Obama can get so much out of the sheer melody of his delivery.
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