Pelosi: Obama’s speech an all-time great

Kennedy, Roosevelt, Lincoln — President Obama matched them all.

At least that is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s take on the president’s health care speech Wednesday night.

“Last night, President Obama delivered what I believe to be one of the greatest speeches ever delivered in the Congress of the United States,” the speaker told reporters Thursday at her weekly Capitol Hill press conference.

The California Democrat applauded Mr. Obama for speaking with “great eloquence and connecting with the American people and their aspirations.”

“He talked about his vision for America and the character of our country. He demonstrated knowledge and judgment on an issue of concern to America’s families — health care,” she said.

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Mr. Obama’s prime-time speech to a joint session of Congress was designed to retake the reins of a health care debate that veered out of the Democrats’ control during August. But much remains unresolved about the details of the plan and about gaping divisions among Democratic lawmakers about a government-run health insurance option.

Mr. Obama punctuated his address with such memorable lines as: “Now is the season for action. Now is when we must bring the best ideas of both parties together and show the American people that we can still do what we were sent here to do.”

Memorable, perhaps. But the competition for “one of the greatest speeches ever” is pretty stiff.

Congress technically is meeting in joint session for the inauguration of presidents, meaning Mr. Obama’s health care peroration was competing that of President Kennedy, who challenged Americans in his 1961 inaugural address to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

Two decades earlier, Congress met in joint session to hear President Roosevelt rally them to war with his “date which will live in infamy” speech, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

A speech that many deem the greatest delivered to Congress was President Lincoln’s second inaugural address, in which he tried to salve the wounds of a nation bloodied by civil war with the words: “With malice toward none; with charity for all.”

Beyond the presidents, the list of world leaders who have delivered great speeches to joint sessions of Congress is long, and includes Nelson Mandela, who in 1994 challenged the U.S. to make sure the “new world order” went beyond just rich countries, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who after the Sept. 11 attacks told Congress it had a destiny to fulfill on the world stage