Thanks, Michael, Todd and Andrei, for your perceptive and thoughtful posts. Let me pick up on a theme running through our conversation--ie...why do we consider some campaign oratory "great"? While I think the larger context (as I said in my earlier post) is crucial to understanding any piece of political speechmaking, I also believe that great oratory must also inspire and mobilize (as Todd pointed out), provide an affirmative vision, laden with ideas, of America's future (as Michael and Andrei say) -- and that great speeches frame issues and controversies in new ways that show us who we are as a country and redefine prorgressivism at particular moments in time.

Let me offer an imperfect, but hopefully useful, analogy: When I was in college, I had a terrific art history teacher who often devoted the entire lecture to a single painting. He would use a single piece of art as a vehichle to highlight such issues as gender relations, class conflict, political power, architectural history, and issues of identity and philosophy in Renaissance-era Florence. So I learned a lot about numerous subjects about that society not simply because the brushstrokes were superior and the artists were technically skilled, but also because the paintings revealed differing aspects of the issues and divisions in 16th-century Florence.

So, too, with great American speeches. Like these works of art, the best American speeches, especially progressive speeches, shed light on the larger issues of Ameircan life. They redefine American politics and the idea of progressivism in a given moment in time.

One reason I liked Obama's speech on the night of the North Carolina/Indiana primaries was that it partly fused his own biograhy with the larger question of what patriotism means in America today. Rejecting McCain's and Bush's single-minded definition (patriotism equals militarism), Obama eloquently used his own life story to assert that he was as patriotic as any flag-waving, chest-thumping, pro-war GOP super-hawk. He asserted that his own search for identity and his own success in law and politics could only be possible in America. His speech said something about a progressive definition of patriotism very different from the conservative definition -- and it shed light on a much larger debate in America about what it means to love one's country and how "Americanism" should be defined. Obama valued tolerance, inclusiveness, and opportunity, in contrast to Bush and McCain, who invariably emphasize support for the Iraq war and impugn progressives as dovish, soft on national security, and vaguely French and un-American. Obama's entire speech wasn't "great" per se, but his ringing defense of a progressive brand of patriotism was important because it framed and drove a bigger debate we're having right now.

And this raises another interesting question -- what are the best progressive speeches in Michael's Live from the Campaign Trail? And, what is it about these speeches that make them "great"?

For the most part, the greatest speeches were technically brillant but they were something more: they succeeded in redefining politics in America and showed Americans who they were as a people--the values they had -- and where they were going as a country. FDR's 1936 "Rendevous with Destiny" address forcefully framed "the royalists of the economic order" as freedom's enemies and argued that political equality in America was worthless without "equal opportunity in the market place."

JFK's 1960 acceptance address at the Democratic National Convention eloquently stated his belief that the decade of the sixties demanded "new invention, innovation, imagination, decision" -- qualities that would define not only his New Frontier but also shape liberalism in the second-half of the 20th century. Bill Clinton's 1992 speech, "A Place Called Hope," evoked the progressive creed that now was "time for a change in America" to provide opportunity to "tens of millions" of hard-working Americans who were struggling to earn a living and build a better life for their children after the reign of Reagan and Bush I.

Like Obama's North Carolina victory speech, Clinton managed to fuse his own biography with the struggles and hopes of millions of Americans -- vowing that his brand of progressivism would address the plight of the forgotten middle-class and "fight to create high-paying jobs so that parents can afford to raise their children today." As Obama re-defined patriotism in America to include values such as tolerance and equal opportunity, so, too, did Clinton successfully update and redefine liberalism as a moderate, common sense philosophy that venerated both individual responsibility and government action to advance economic opportunity.

The best pieces of progressive campaign oratory, then, have moblized, inspired and rallied. They have provided a larger, positive vision for the country's future. They have had forceful ideas to counter conservatism. Perhaps most of all, in my view, like great works of art, they have offered us a window onto our society -- showing us something about ourselves as a country, the values we hold dear, and the direction in which we need to go to meet the demands of the times. These are the speeches that we will be talking about years from now -- and I think they are one reason that Michael opted to include certain speeches and not others in his intelligent and very useful book.