Thanks to C-Span, I've been able to watch the stump speeches of all the presidential candidates, multiple times in some cases. In the broader sense, the one I've liked best is Dean's, because I like so many of the things he says (which is why I supported him). But as one who has been in the performing arts, and who loves any art form based on the beauty of the human voice and language, I sometimes like to appreciate the stump speeches just for the oratory. In that sense Dean, though much improved since even just a month ago, is still the least impressive of the final three.

I suppose I should back up and explain what I mean. When I mentioned this on RMO a while back, G/P Dave suggested Reagan as a great orator, which to me makes little sense. In the 1980s, I wasn't as politically aware as I am now, but my recollection of Reagan is that his success as a speaker was mostly due to his quick wit and ability to turn a pithy phrase. That's a nice skill for a politician, to be sure, but it's not what I think of as "oratory".

Perhaps it's just because we didn't have C-Span back then, but I don't recall Reagan ever speaking for longer than about five minutes at once. His skill was in one-liners. (Come to think of it, there surely must have been State of the Union speeches. Did they have a whole which was larger than their parts, or were they just a consecutive string of bullet points?) And his voice was a wispy little thing. To me, the measure of an orator is a voice which has strength and beauty, combined with the skill to use it in an artful way that showcases both -- pretty much the same qualities I'd use to judge an opera singer or a player of any musical instrument.

In recent years, I've seen little of this in any prominent white politician. Most lack the voice, and the few who have it lack the style. The late Sen Paul Simon, for instance, had a magnificent bass voice. With even a little bit of style he might have been captivating in a mesmeric way, like Kurt Moll singing Wagner. Instead, alas, he was monotonous as heck, and his gorgeous voice was never more than soporific. Al Gore also had a fairly impressive vocal instrument, though not quite in the vocal league of Simon. As late as 2000 Gore still was a subpar speaker, and even that was an improvement for him. In early 1987 he was literally the worst speaker I have ever heard among presidential candidates. Recently I caught a short clip of him stumping this year in which he seemed to show some passion (as well as longer hair). The clip was on Fox News, "humorously" juxtaposing what I assume was Gore's oratorical climax with the similarly red-faced "scream" of Howard Dean. I'd like to have seen Gore's entire speech. I'm curious to see what this new long-haired Gore is doing with his voice these days.

John Kerry, as I said last fall on RMO, is the closest I've seen to a real orator in a white presidential candidate in recent memory, though admittedly that's not saying much.

Curiously, there are plenty of fine orators among black candidates. In this election cycle, Braun and Sharpton were both quite good, as were Keyes and Jackson before them, though none are in the league of Willie Brown or Dr Martin Luther King. I assume that there must be something in the black American culture which emphasizes artistic use of the voice in spoken language. Blacks dominate rap music and poetry recitations as well. If you ever get a chance to hear Maya Angelou read poetry -- or read anything at all, for that matter -- don't pass it up. She is a national treasure. She once did a bit of rap on the Arsenio Hall show, and she was masterful at that as well.

Kerry's voice has shown some wear over the past few months. It doesn't have quite the boom that it had in November, but it's still respectable. But where Kerry really excels is in his delivery. He makes great use of dynamics, which none of the other candidates do. Even Sharpton and Braun have limited dynamic ranges, holding steady at their rabble-rousing f to ff and dignified p to mp, respectively. Kerry also has an excellent sense of rhythm. Edwards and even Dean are good with their basic timing, but where Kerry outclasses them is in his ability to be effective at a slow tempo. Edwards and Dean are more conversational. They can make a point and then stop for a breather, but they aren't able to drag out every word for sentences at a time to create the feeling of an inevitable force of nature like Kerry can. Edwards doesn't even try. Dean used to have a pattern where he'd emphasize each individual word with a small gap between each one. He did this a lot last fall, but not so much this past month. Presumably someone pointed out to him that it wasn't working for him and he just sounded silly.

But what really sets Kerry apart is how he makes use of his range of tempos, dynamics and colors to create a whole work that has a purpose not just within each talking point, but across the whole length of his speech. Kerry's speeches are more about form than content. Of course he has his messages, just as a symphony has themes, but the real artistry is how those themes are weaved, repeated, and varied to create a larger work. His speech has a flow and a purpose. It gathers the audience together, draws them in, builds up the anticipation, and then delivers each point for maximal effect.

The funny thing is that Kerry isn't even all that good at it. It's nothing like we read about in histories of Lincoln or Bryan or Churchill ... or for that matter even Hitler. It's just that no one else today is doing it at all.

Speeches from both Dean and Edwards lack this integrate quality. Like most modern politicians, they speak in the style of word-processor newspaper journalism. There is a standard formula opening and a standard formula closing. In between there are about a dozen paragraphs, each with its basic point. These basic points are all about the same size and shape, and they are completely independent. The points are generally delivered in decreasing order of importance, but they can be rearranged freely, and any combination of points can be omitted or included with no damage to the speech as a whole. It's a reasonably effective method of communication, and it has the advantages of flexibility and ease of use, but it lacks the éclat of the traditional style of oratory that Kerry practices.

Edwards has a different skill. His voice is lighter, but it's got a nice tone and he uses it well. He's the only candidate I've heard who is still as vocally fresh as he was last fall, which proves to me that he knows how to take care of his voice. He's like the successful light lyric tenor who sticks to the Mozart and Rossini roles in which he thrives, resisting the urge to blow out his voice attempting Verdi and Puccini.

What Edwards excels at is hand and arm gestures. Anyone in stage performance or public speaking who needs work on that (me, for example) could learn a lot from watching John Edwards.

The fundamental problem of gesturing is posed by the combination of two truths of the stage. On the one hand, big gestures look better than small gestures, because they read better from a distance. On the other hand, any gesture which isn't natural looks bad. Since most of us don't ordinarily wave our arms around when we talk, big and natural are contradictory. Thus, on stage we have the choice of looking weak or looking phony.

The solution to the conundrum is to become sufficiently practiced at large gestures that they feel natural. Edwards has done this, and from the look of it, he has years and years of practice at it. His gestures are beautiful -- large but gentle, smooth and fluid, and seemingly effortless. In his stump speech, Edwards never makes a point that isn't punctuated by a gesture, but they're so well done that you're barely even conscious of them.

The one thing which looks a little awkward is what he does between points, when waiting for audience applause. Then, while he beams his pretty-boy smile, he brings his hands together in front and rubs them together as if warming them up. It's a curious move, reminiscent of a baseball pitcher rubbing the ball before his pitch.

That suggests a tempting metaphor, though Edwards almost busts it with his variety. Feeble-armed Howard Dean is like a pitcher with only one pitch. His only significant gesture is a basic right-handed karate chop, which he does tightly in front of him on almost every point. On its own, it's an OK gesture, comparable to a solid fastball with no motion, but without anything else to back it up it's not effective for very long. Edwards, in contrast, has a huge array with which to mix it up.

Edwards' signature pitch is a basic arms-outspread. Nothing remarkable about this gesture except that he isn't afraid to use it in a variety of counts. It's his standard move for opening a speech or introducing a point, but he'll also sometimes use it as a symbol of inclusiveness or to conclude an argument instead. His bread-and-butter gesture for emphasizing a point is a little hammer motion, but unlike Dean he never uses an open hand. Instead he hammers with a fist, and it's often turned slightly upward, in a way which feels unnatural to me but works well for him. Like many of Edwards' one-handed gestures, the fist chop has a variety of locations and can be done with either hand.

Also ambidextrous and even more varied in location is his one-handed point, which can go forward, out, or up. He likes to combine the point with a peculiar gesture I've seen a lot in opera but not so much in oratory. That's his sweep-back move, in which his arm comes forward and then sweeps out to the side, as if clearing all the junk off his desk or doing half a breaststroke. Edwards almost always does the sweep-back with his left hand. It's his standard illustration of the "two Americas" theme: a sweep-back with the left hand for the privileged Americans, followed by a right-handed point slightly upward for the regular Americans he wants to represent.

Edwards also has several nice two-handed gestures. There is one where his two hands come forward to form a bowl, as if to say "here it is". He has three different two-handed point gestures. These typically flow out of one of the other gestures and are used to punctuate when he answers his own question. One of them points gently back at himself. ("Who speaks for you? I do.") Another points firmly to the ground in front of him. ("Where's it going to happen? Right here.") The last points back at the audience, but not in an aggressive, forward way. Instead he starts out with arms outstretched, and then the points stay outside and flip over the top. He doesn't do this one often, but it's very cute when he does. The basic motion is the same as that of a rap singer doing call-and-response with the audience.

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