“Great­ness is never given. It must be earned.” — Barack Obama

As some one who has had the occa­sion to do a lot of pub­lic speak­ing, I pay par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to speeches, speak­ers and gen­eral speech­mak­ing of any sort whether it be impromptu, the­atri­cal, extem­per­a­ne­ous or for­mal. The time for great for­mal speeches and states­man­ship seemed to be in the past until the admit­tedly astound­ing rise of Barack Obama, and it is good to see such renewed inter­est in speeches from the Joe Six-Pack crowd. Yes­ter­day, in the midst of a national moment of cele­breation and rejoic­ing, we heard freshly sworn-in Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s first speech to the nation he now leads. More than just the typ­i­cal qua­dren­nial refresh­ing of exec­u­tive author­ity and dust­ing off of pomp and cir­cum­stance, this event was widely antic­i­pated to be a uni­fy­ing touch­stone and a lamp­light­ing of his­toric proportion.

And it was.

Ok, yeah but how was the speech?

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