Picture this: a crowd of people have just finished hearing a lung-busting, long-winded two-hour oration from a well-known speaker. They wait for their president, the man they sent to the Washington to fix a nation that had literally fallen apart, to give the dedicatory remarks for the many men who died at Gettysburg. Perhaps some are figuring out how to stay awake through another overly long speech. Then, in less than two minutes, it's all over. The place is silent, and President Lincoln is not yet aware of how significant his words will be.
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, of course, is now deemed immortal and regarded among the greatest examples of public oration. He wrote everything in his speech, and did not need the help of a speechwriter. In the end, the word count came out to only 269 words.
Just 269 words.
Depending on the size of your handwriting, or the font on your word processor, the length could not be more than a page or a page and a half. Yet that is all Lincoln needed to sum up the occasion and the grave task ahead for the United States.
His example should be brought up now that the country is preparing to face one of the most heated election seasons in a long time.
Politicians are an interesting breed. They constantly make compromises that undercut their own authority, while retaining an egotism that allows them to keep on speaking 'til the cows the come home. Both parties' leading men, in recent days, have made long speeches outlining their worldview or how they plan to address the nation's problems.
President Obama turned a memorial speech for the five slain Dallas Policemen into a credo on race relations and sprinkled in his political agendas from time to time. As a result, a speech that should have been about 20 minutes stretched out to 45 minutes and lost a much-needed tight focus.
Not long later, Donald Trump accepted the GOP nomination with a harsh attack on the state of American and world affairs that lasted well over an hour. In that time slot, he repeated his points many times over and would have been better served by charging forward and stay focused on his platform's goals.
When Hillary Clinton accepts the Democratic nomination, one can only expect her to deliver something of similar length. She will, undoubtedly, spend much of her time attacking her highly divisive opponent.
That will not be the last speech. The election is still three months off.
The candidates would do well to remember the man we, without qualification, now call the greatest president in American history and the 269 words he needed to grasp the heart of the occasion. Brevity will go much further than beating the proverbial dead horse.
