As a foreigner , I have watched with interest some the high flowing and often empty rhetoric at the Republican and Democratic conventions, Without taking sides politically, I think that the one outstanding speech in amongst all this political verbosity was Bill Clinton’s speech, a masterpiece of oratory.
I am sure the text and audio can be found, and even a video. I wonder if any of our members are interested in loading it into our Library and earning the points of course.
I agree, it was a good speech. But loading it into the library brings me to a question - Of all of the speeches at the two conventions, I believe Bill Clinton went off on more tangents and diverged from his planned speech more than any other speaker. I’m guessing that the text you could find online to the speech would be the “official” version without the extra stuff he threw in. Would anyone who uploads the text and audio be expected to add in all the extra parts to the text? I’ve never uploaded anything to the library so I’m not sure what is all involved.
Here is a transcript:
It is 5352 words long.
Here is a youtube video of the full speech:
So here we have it)
Thanks a lot!!
Awesome. Thanks for jonny and eugrus. I wonder if there is interest in having a number of these speeches collected in a Playlist or Course to be called 2012 Republican and Democratic Party Conventions. After all there were a number of well spoken speeches by both male and female speakers.
I never thought of political speeches as a source of transcripted audio before. i just found lots of new Swedish material.
Finally, a use for political speechifying. Thanks, LingQ! 
And here is the speech I like from the lady I appreciate.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice addresses the 2012 Republican National Convention: Login - LingQ
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice addresses the 2012 Republican National Convention: Login - LingQ
if I open this lesson, and click on “View Course”
http://www.lingq.com/en/en/library/item/231929/
it says “Oops! It looks like you don’t have access to that page.”
The real link is on the page bottom:
What’s Next?
Open course
So, it’s Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice addresses the 2012 RNC - LingQ Language Library
Thank you guys for sharing them.
No matter where one stands politically, there are surely only two words that need to be known about William Clinton: “Monica” and “Lewinsky”.
This is a man who crudely abused his position of authority with a young employee, and then demeaned his high office still further by vehement public denials, followed by a cringeworthy forced retraction. (Yet he still refused to resign - the one thing which could have saved some vestige of his personal dignity and honour.)
I am amazed that the Democrats would allow this sleazy proven liar on stage. Do they think people forget so quickly?
While all of this may be true, he is a truly wonderful orator.
I guess you’re right that he is an above-average speaker, Steve.
As regards his personal flaws, I would even have been ready to forgive those if he had resigned. But I just don’t see how he could have thought it possible to continue in office after being exposed crudely telling lies to the American people? For me this indicates a massive lack of respect for the people he asked to believe in him (many of whom actually did so.)
History will be far kinder to Nixon, IMO. (Of course their two respective cases are not at all the same, but still…)
"History will be far kinder to Nixon, IMO. "
wow
Let’s give credit where credit is due. To the ghostwriter(s),
No doubt they all have speech writers helping them, and even party strategists controlling they say. However, Bill’s delivery, his ability as an orator is simply outstanding. I also suspect that he had a large hand in what he said, although no doubt he was directed to say many things, some things that he may not have believed in, by party officials.
At the very least, Nixon comprehended when the game was up and acted accordingly.
Being a ghostwriter myself, my experience is you do not get much creative help from the speakers.