The political speech, against all expectation in a networked world, still counts. The essence of the speech remains the event that Aristotle described in his Rhetoric 5,000 years ago. This volume brings the genre right up to date. John Shosky, a speechwriter for three presidential administrations, has collected the best of political rhetoric from the first decade of the 21st century.

For professionals in the trade, this is a heart-warming but only partially successful exercise. The overall impression is that there has not been enough wonderful rhetoric to warrant a book of several hundred pages. When the anthology of the first 50 years of the century is written I would not imagine many of these extracts will survive the cut. When you find yourself reading, as you do in a speech by Nick Clegg, ‘first, the culture of regulation’, you know you are in the company of an issue that is not going to last.

Most of the problem, sadly, is to be found in this country. The section on UK governance is, with the exception of the incomprehensibly included section on the Occupy movement, the least satisfying in the book. There is a sense that the issues are too small and written in too partisan a spirit to amount to rhetoric of the highest standing.

It is notable too that the Greek crisis has not produced any Greek rhetoric. The economic speeches collected here are dull and uninspiring. There are two problems with the economic crisis as a subject for rhetoric: it is too technical for easy summary and no single person can promise to fix it. There is no doubting the scale of the problem but nobody has yet put it into vivid words. The same is true of climate change, which is not mentioned in the book at all.

The best speeches are still on the great questions of liberty and oppression. Aung San Suu Kyi, Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela have a big subject on their hands and it is the pathos of the injustice that allows the rhetoric to take wing. By comparison, Daniel Hannan’s discourteous rant at Gordon Brown seems more than a little tawdry.

But my main complaint is also my main compliment. Shosky’s introduction is so full of insight and great tips that I wanted more. He knows what he is talking about and I was left feeling that this book would have benefitted from more John Shosky and less George Osborne.

—————————————————————————————

Phil Collins is a former speechwriter to Tony Blair and author of The Art of Speeches and Presentations

—————————————————————————————

The Words of Our Time: Speeches that made a difference 2001–2011

John Shosky

Biteback Publishing | 320pp | £20