I really want to know how Obama came away with a reputation as a “great speaker” after the debates with Alan Keyes.
I think Alan Keyes is our greatest living orator. I saw him speak in Tulsa shortly after 9/11, without notes. He borrowed a Bible from Bishop Slattery to look up a verse a minute before he started speaking, and everything else was straight-up. It was exquisite. I was diagramming his sentences in my mind: every transitive verb had a direct object, every pronoun was in the correct case, every antecedent was clearly defined. And I agreed with what he said, too.
However, he is an orator, not a debater. When I saw him on the TV show he did on Fox News for a bit, he did not come over well. He could not listen to others or exchange ideas.