Now that the fall political line up is (semi) official, what can we expect from our two candidates, and what do they have to do to achieve their goals as public speakers?

Senator Obama's oratorical skills are already widely praised, so I won't go there.  Instead, I'll talk about ways he could improve. 

Content.  The great thing about Obama's speeches is that they are about the audience, not the candidate.  The tendency to focus on self is what did Senator Clinton in, I believe.  Obama and his speechwriter have their attention squarely focused on exactly where it belongs.  Every other word out of Clinton's mouth was 'I', always a tip-off that the speaker is narcissistic.  Obama always makes it about you, the voter, the American, the one with dreams and ambitions.

What Obama needs to do is to learn how to use the telling specific detail.  His speeches are too general, and that kind of general uplift will pall after a while if it doesn't get down to specifics.  We certainly need to feel that we are going to have an uptick in America's fortunes in the next 4 (or 8) years.  We're tired of war, the economic squeeze of the middle class, high gas prices, being trashed around the world, and so on.  We want the good news.  But Obama is going to have to tell us how at some point.

Style.  Obama does a couple of interesting things as a speaker that are not optimal.  Watch him after he delivers a line and the crowd roars its approval.  What does he do?  He listens to the audience.  That's a wonderful sign of a great speaker.  But, as he listens, he tips his head back.  The effect is to distance himself (ever so slightly) from the audience.  The result is that he doesn't close the sale as much as he could, and he risks coming across like an elitist, someone who is literally looking down his nose at the audience. 

He's best in front of big crowds.  There, he rises to the occasion.  But in front of smaller crowds, he seems not to make the effort.  He's got to learn how to captivate all sizes of audience.  The way he dominates a big audience is instructive.  It's mostly through volume.  He's like a rookie pitcher with only one pitch:  the fastball.  He's going to need a curve and a changeup to go the distance.

Now, McCain.  Once again, his rhetorical skills have been widely panned, so I won't go there.  Much.  I'll focus instead on what he does right.

McCain is at his best off the cuff with reporters, and in question-and-answer sessions in town-hall style meetings.  He's famously awful with major speeches and teleprompters.  He can't sustain interest in front of a large audience, or a small one, for that matter, when he is scripted.

The solution?  Keep him on talking points all the time.  Never give the man a script.  Give him a couple of points to cover, and let him go.  He'll go off the reservation at times, but that's preferable to the appalling performances you're going to see otherwise.