Best orator - American president?

[luckyeight]

Which American president do you think was the best orator? I think we can all safely assume that the current president is not in the running for this title ;)

[tictactoe]

JFK

Also delivered the fastest ever speech by a President of USA...

[annavc]

I think Lincoln was pretty good - the Emancipation Proclamation.

Kennedy probably was the best though. Certainly had a streak of an inspirational style.

[jno]

Reagan wasn't bad, being a trained actor. (Of course, actors are best at talking fiction.) Franklin Roosevelt was famous for his broadcast 'fireside chats' but these probably count as the opposite of oratory.

[Simeon]

Not so much the best orator but the best "orated on" would be Bill Clinton

[suffragette]

Kennedy is often considered one of the best, but a lot of that is because we can see and hear his speeches on film. I would love to have heard Abraham Lincoln give the Gettysburg address.

http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincol n/speeches/gettysburg.htm

Apparently, politicians of the time were known to waffle and many people were stunned at the brevity of the speech. It is now considered one of the great speeches of all time, but when it was given some of Lincoln's supporters believed they had been short changed.

[shammydodger]

Suffregette

Indeed. A reporter for the Chicago Times called it "silly, flat and dishwatery" and intimated that Americans ought to have been ashamed of their President.

Berk.

[suffragette]

shammydodger, does that mean the garbled utterances of President Bush may be viewed as meaningful and inspirational by future generations? God help us!!!

[shammydodger]

What a nightmarish thought.

[emandvee]

I don�t think any of them wrote their own speeches, I know Ted Sorrenson was the writer for JFK, nevertheless in my book JFK was a great orator.

[shammydodger]

Abraham Lincoln certainly wrote the Gettysburg Address. Several drafts still exist, all in his handwriting.