I have a hard time listening to any political speeches these days to be honest.  Too much rhetoric, not enough honesty.  I had a discussion with my sister Sarah about this a few months ago.  She was looking forward to seeing the movie Bobby because she wanted to be reminded of a time when we had great public speakers.  We talked about her believe that there aren't any good orators around anymore.  While I can't necessarily say that RFK was a great speaker, both Kennedy's had a way of speaking that inspired, whether you agreed with their politics or not.

Is that a quality that's missing today?  I'm not so sure.  What I do think is that the current state of our media, and maybe our society as a whole, discourages that kind of speaker.  We break everything up into sound bites.  Great speeches can rarely be broken down into 15 second clips.  What would the "I Have a Dream" speech be like if all you ever heard was "I Have a Dream", and then never found out what it was?

I'd hate to be a public figure these days.  There is no way I could stand up in front of large crowd, and then speak at some length on a topic knowing that most people would only hear of what I said through someone else's paraphrasing of my words (which I hate), or by cherry picking little bits and pieces that destroy the original intent of my words.

Anyway, here is the full speech if you're interested.