Joe Biden may not be renowned as an orator. His lifelong stutter is one factor. I discussed some other reasons here, including the reality that he is most effective as a messenger when his language calls least attention to itself. But time and again, when the stakes are high, he has come through on big speeches as president. He has done so again.
His State of the Union address two months ago, soon after Robert Hur’s Comey-esque “elderly man with poor memory” pot-shot, was clear in writing and strong in delivery. His four-speech series of addresses on the fundamentals of democracy has been as good an example of sustained discussion of a single topic as we have seen from a modern president.
His commencement address yesterday to the graduating class of “Morehouse Men”—students at the all-male HBCU Morehouse College in Atlanta, brother institution to all-female Spelman College—was another example that deserves study. It showed care in craftsmanship and construction. Its phrasing matched Biden’s own style and diction. It navigated the political difficulties of the moment. And it represented Biden’s attempt to place those difficulties in a larger perspective. (The “as delivered” White House transcript here; a YouTube video from the White House is here.)
Like nearly all commencement speeches, this one was longer—27 minutes—than a warm-day crowd might have wished. The golden rule for commencement speakers is: The shorter, the better, with haiku as the ideal. But everyone cuts sitting presidents extra slack. Their appearances in commencement ceremonies are rarer than you might think. By tradition, a president speaks once each year at a service-academy graduation—the academies take turns on a four-year basis. But beyond that, a president typically makes only one or two additional commencement addresses per year.1 So when a university gets a president to speak, he is expected to offer more than mere bromides, and no one objects if he runs long.
The most interesting structural aspect of Biden’s address was its Saturday theme. Nine years ago, Barack Obama gave what I consider the most accomplished address of his public life. This was his “Amazing Grace” speech at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in remembrance of the many parishioners shot to death there by a young white racist. Obama is remembered for bravely and unexpectedly ending that speech by singing the Amazing Grace song. He built up to that riveting moment with preacher-like but non-preachy recurring references to grace.
Biden’s hold on an audience will never be like Obama’s. But I admired the thread of Saturday that stitched together the parts of his political, personal, and spiritual appeal.
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