Convention Speechifyin’

For your reading and listening pleasure.

Sure to be considered one of the finest political speeches in history, Senator Obama blew us all away last night. Didn’t get enough? Watch it here. Read it here.

Chatting with friends last night I was reminded of some other Democratic Convention high points. 1984 was a good year for Democratic Convention speeches. There was Jesse Jackson’s American Quilt Speech preceeded by Mario Cuomo’s remarkable response to Ronald Reagan’s “Shining City on the Hill” rhetoric.

But the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this city’s splendor and glory. A shining city is perhaps all the President sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there’s another city; there’s another part to the shining the city; the part where some people can’t pay their mortgages, and most young people can’t afford one; where students can’t afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.

In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can’t find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn’t show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don’t see, in the places that you don’t visit in your shining city.

In fact, Mr. President, this is a nation — Mr. President you ought to know that this nation is more a “Tale of Two Cities” than it is just a “Shining City on a Hill.”

Of course, who can forget Jesse Jackson’s 1988 Keep Hope Alive speech delivered from Atlanta?

What’s your favorite convention speech? Check out this site to search for text and video.