Different delivery, but same audience

Huckabee oratory deemed 'low-key,' Obama's classic

Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama addressed a rally at the Pan Am Flight Services hanger yesterday in Portsmouth, N.H. Obama arrived in New Hampshire ahead of the state's primary after winning the Iowa caucuses. (chip somodevilla/Getty Images)

Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee, the two big winners in Thursday's Iowa presidential caucuses, both talk a lot about hope. For all their political differences, they also share something else: the ability to deliver their hopeful messages in a way that sounds inspiring, heartfelt, and real.

What's clear from their victory speeches in Iowa, however, is that they reach the same end in two nearly opposite styles. Obama seems most at ease with high, polished oratory, while Huckabee sounds most eloquent when he's folksy and relaxed.

"Barack Obama is very much an orator in the classic, eloquent style," said LeeAundra Temescu, a Los Angeles-based, nonpartisan communications coach who studies political rhetoric. "Huckabee is also a great speaker, but he does it on a level that is so folksy, low-key, and colloquial that you don't recognize him as a great speaker even though he is."

Both candidates, she noted, "are playing to their strengths. Both of them are very, very smart, and both of those styles are extremely effective."

Both styles, which help them win over voters, come out of long but divergent traditions in American public speaking. In Democrat Obama's oratory, Kathleen Hall Jamieson hears echoes of Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and even that old populist preacher, William Jennings Bryan. Republican Huckabee, meanwhile, follows the homespun path of GOP icon Ronald Reagan.

"They're coming from opposite ends of the rhetorical spectrum," said Jamieson, professor of communications at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.

Wayne Fields, who teaches rhetoric at Washington University in St. Louis, also notes the preacherly foundations of Obama's style. "Clearly there were echoes of King; there were echoes of Kennedy," he said in a telephone interview yesterday. "It wasn't a black sermon in the stereotypical sense; it did not sound like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. But at the same time it acknowledged that influence."

And that, apparently, is what resonated in Iowa, said J. Gregory Payne, a professor of political communications at Emerson College in Boston. "It's a rhetorical style we haven't seen in a long time," he said yesterday. "But especially at a time when there's so much uncertainty, we really need somebody who is going to be a very strong leader and show the way. It's like, 'There is a promised land, and I'm the one who's going to get you there.' "

The religious references are hardly coincidental. Huckabee is a former Baptist minister, and Obama, though trained as a lawyer, is familiar with the rich preaching tradition of African-American churches. So maybe it's not surprising that the only really effective public speaker among the other candidates also took lessons in church, Temescu said.

"The only one who even approaches them in terms of rhetorical effectiveness is Mitt Romney," Temescu said, in part because Mormons "are taught from a very early age to do public speaking." But Romney's style sometimes sounds more corporate than evangelical, and that might hurt his effectiveness, she said in a telephone interview yesterday.

It's more than a candidate's speaking style, however, that influences how a speech comes across. Jamieson points to the very different messages sent by the background staging of Thursday night's speeches: a young, energetic, diverse crowd behind Obama that reflected his theme of change and a fresh beginning, as opposed to the older lineup chosen by Hillary Clinton - a strategy designed to communicate her experience, but one that might have sent the unintended message that she is "going to take you back" to the partisan battles of Bill Clinton.

But the most poorly staged speech, Jamieson said, was Huckabee's, with actor Chuck Norris and the actor's wife chatting behind the candidate as he spoke.

"Obama gives a rallying speech; Hillary's backdrop says, 'I'm experienced,' " said Jamieson. "And then Huckabee delivers a speech with a backdrop of a grinning actor and a blond woman who is not his wife."

Even so, Huckabee's charm as an off-the-cuff speaker may have offset those distracting visuals. And no one, it's clear, made a misstep in an Iowa speech this year to rival the unforgettable one of 2004. "The last time we were in Iowa, we saw someone torpedo his campaign," Temescu noted, recalling Howard Dean and his fatally frightening scream.

"And this time - I'm going to go out on a limb here - but I really think Obama's speech could take him to the nomination. He took the victory and he built on it."

Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com.