He is not and never will be a master orator; the notion that people in their fifties and sixties can dramatically "grow" and "change" in a period of a few days — a staple of political commentary — just isn't true.
But can the master orator's eloquence deliver the kind of change in American attitudes and foreign policy needed?
This, to a master orator, a lord of the stump (as seen in an impromptu season two speech to the residents of a condemned, Wire-recalling housing project), a straight-talking, can-do sort of politician, is death foretold, and foreshadows all that follows as he secretly tries to beat the clock and fix Chicago in his image.
Their man is going up against a candidate viewed as a superstar by many of the Muslims who make up 38% of the constituency: George Galloway, a master orator and political prizefighter who has become one of the most divisive figures in British politics since his expulsion from the Labour party in 2003.
Abe Lincoln, a master orator, once told an interviewer that he could "write a 20-minute speech in about 2 weeks," but that he would only need 1 week to write a good 40-minute speech.
But on the subject of land ownership a few days later he took a leaf out of the master orator's book.
While he is a master orator who can stir a stadium of 80,000 people with soaring words of national purpose, he is also a man of natural reserve who has not always connected as intimately with audiences during national grief.
There is no question that Sen. Obama is a master orator.
Enter Hitler, another master orator, by the way.
What's worse, this alleged master orator is actually guilty of motto misquoting.
