The contrast between President Biden’s first address to Congress last Wednesday night and the Republican response delivered by Sen. Tim Scott, R-South Carolina, reminded me of another occasion between one long-winded and another profound speaker.
It was 1863, and the nationally known orator Edward Everett was the featured speaker in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to commemorate the soldiers who had died during that terrible battle.
Everett’s speech was 1,607 words and lasted two hours. He was followed by President Abraham Lincoln, whose far more famous address, once memorized by schoolchildren as “The Gettysburg Address,” was 275 words and took a mere two minutes.
Everett later wrote Lincoln, praising his brief remarks for their “eloquent simplicity and appropriateness. I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”
Biden wasn’t Everett and Scott was no Lincoln, but Scott in his brevity, along with his kind and optimistic spirit, delivered the superior speech.