“Some
princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the
imagination, out of scraps of history and hope....Barack Hussein Obama did not
win because of the color of his skin. Nor did he win in spite of it. He won
because at a very dangerous moment in the life of a still young country, more
people than have ever spoken before came together to try to save it. And that
was a victory all its own.”
—
Time’s Nancy Gibbs, Nov. 17 cover story. [65 points]
Runners-up:
“In
many ways, it was less a speech than a symphony. It moved quickly, it
had high tempo, at times inspiring, then it became more intimate,
slower, all along sort of interweaving a main theme about America’s
promise, echoes of Lincoln, of King, even of Reagan and of Kennedy....It
was a masterpiece.” —
CNN’s David Gergen during live coverage following Obama’s convention
speech, August 28. [49]
|
“There
is no getting around it, this man who emerged triumphant from the Iowa
caucuses is something unusual in American politics. He has that
close-cropped hair and the high-school-smooth face with that deep
saxophone of a voice. His borrowings, rhetorical and intellectual, are
dizzying. One minute he recalls the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in
his pacing and aching, staccato repetitions. The next minute he is
updating John F. Kennedy with his ‘Ask not what America can do for you’
riff on idealism and hope....Such words mine a vein of American history
that leaves more than a few listeners misty-eyed.”
— New York Times reporter Michael Powell in a January 5 news
story about Barack Obama campaigning in New Hampshire. [35]
“You’ve seen those videotapes of Walter Cronkite the night that man
landed on the moon for the first time, when Neil Armstrong stepped out
and he could just barely get out monosyllables. Politically, that’s what
this is. This is man on the moon.”
— MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann during live election night coverage, November
4. [33]
|
“When
was the last time our nation cheered this much?... ‘We the people of the
United States, in order to form a more perfect union’ — that’s what the
Constitution says. Last night, all across America, for so many people,
that’s how it felt. A more perfect union.”
— Correspondent Byron Pitts on the November 5 CBS Evening News.
[26]
Winner
