[KC Burke]

One of the best insights into the power of Churchill's rhetoric includes these items following. It is from a defense of his rhetoric written by Isaiah Berlin:

Mr. Churchill's dominant category, the single, central, organizing principle of his moral and intellectual universe, is an historical imagination so strong, so comprehensive, as to encase the whole of the present and the whole of the future in a framework of a rich and multicolored past. Such an approach is dominated by a desire—and a capacity—to find fixed moral and intellectual bearings to give shape and character, color and direction and coherence, to the stream of events.

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[He follows...}
The Prime Minister was able to impose his imagination and his will upon his countrymen, and enjoy a Periclean reign, precisely because he appeared to them larger and nobler than life and lifted them to an abnormal height in a moment of crisis. It was a climate in which men do not usually like living; it demands a violent tension which, if it lasts, destroys all sense of normal perspective, overdramatizes personal relationships, and falsifies normal values to an intolerable extent. But, in the event, it did turn a large number of inhabitants of the British Isles out of their normal selves and, by dramatizing their lives and making them seem to themselves and to each other clad in the fabulous garments appropriate to a great historic moment, transformed cowards into brave men, and so fulfilled the purpose of shining armor.

This great article is still available in full.

See:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1949/09/mr-churchill/303546/

[flaglady47]

“[He follows...}
The Prime Minister was able to impose his imagination and his will upon his countrymen, and enjoy a Periclean reign, precisely because he appeared to them larger and nobler than life and lifted them to an abnormal height in a moment of crisis.”

Reagan had this quality also.

[Hardens Hollow]

“But, in the event, it did turn a large number of inhabitants of the British Isles out of their normal selves and, by dramatizing their lives and making them seem to themselves and to each other clad in the fabulous garments appropriate to a great historic moment, transformed cowards into brave men, and so fulfilled the purpose of shining armor.”

That’s very true. His speeches were incredible inspiring, even to read today. Kind of like how Reagan saw the best in everyone and thought this nation’s potential was higher than most people thought.