Customer Reviews

Speeches of Carter, Jimmy [VHS]

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In terms of letting you see what the speaker was really like as a speaker, this is one of the very best Speeches Collection tapes. If you're a student of rhetoric or public speaking, it's fascinating because Carter was both a terrific and a terrible speaker simultaneously. You certainly can see how Ronald Reagan was able to clobber him.

Specifically, what you can see in this is Carter's tight logic and clear reasoning (from premises that he should have established, not assumed, as every rhetoric teacher from Aristotle to Toulmin would have told him) and his dour, over-serious delivery. His case is often good, sometimes brilliant, but his failure to connect to the audience, either in delivery or in establishing common ground, is a deep and constant problem.

Nice long uninterrupted cuts from many speeches, most of it drawn from network feed, so you're looking at what the country (or the crowd around Carter) saw, not at what the film editor thought was sexy. Speeches of historic importance, all well-represented by clips long enough to permit some real study, include the Inaugural, the human rights address (at the ceremony marking the 30th anniversary of the UDHR), the last part of the Panama Canal treaty speech, the "Energy Malaise" speech (compare it with Reagan's inaugural if you want to see why Carter wasn't re-elected), and the Farewell. Possibly Carter's best speech, ever -- the speech given just before departing to sign the Camp David Accords -- is represented in full.

Several interesting oddities round out the tape; Carter liked to do policy-wonking out in public, and there are some interesting samples.

Excellent for study; the only reason I give it four stars is that the speaker himself sets a bad example. Study him to learn how to construct a tight case -- and how NOT to present it!