KEY POINTS:
Margaret Pope, who wrote speeches for her late husband, former prime minister and celebrated orator David Lange, rates Barack Obama's acceptance speech among the best she has heard.
"Most of what he said was quite obvious but he said it in such a wonderful way," says Pope. "I
watched the whole thing and it's a long time since I've watched a political speech. He struck the right notes, he was inclusive and he spoke so beautifully."
David Slack, speechwriter for prime ministers Jim Bolger and Geoffrey Palmer, says Obama has "a singular talent".
"A lot of speeches get written about the sweep of the 20th century but I have never heard it expressed as well as he did it. And that goes for just about everything he deals with. A lot of what he says touches on a lot of quite familiar concepts but he presents them in a far more compelling way than I have seen any other orator do it in my lifetime."
They are not alone. The United States President-elect's speech to hundreds of thousands in Chicago was one of the most widely watched and repeated political addresses in recent history.
It ticked all the boxes of influential speaking: it was inclusive, personalised, emphasised common ground and shared goals, included phrases that resonate, referenced history and leveraged iconic words of others.
Obama contributes much to his speeches. He has a small team of speechwriters headed by Jon Favreau, a 27-year-old jeans-clad staffer, who earlier this year described his role to Newsweek thus: "What I do is I sit with him for half an hour. He talks and I type everything he says. I reshape it, I write. He writes, he reshapes it. That's how we get the finished product."
Others may have contributed to Obama's acceptance speech. Englishman Jacob Rigg, 27, claims to have had a hand via phone, email and video conferences from his flat in Notting Hill, west London.
Rigg says his opportunity came from links to some of Obama's Senate staff formed when he worked in Washington as a lobbyist.
Though part of a much larger team, Rigg says some of his writing emerged in the final speech, including Obama's declaration that his election was "the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day".
Rigg said the inspiration for the speech was the most celebrated piece of oratory in American history, Abraham Lincoln's 1863 address at Gettysburg.
Made two years before the end of the American Civil War, it spoke of the "unfinished work" and the "great task remaining" of building a democratic republic and ensuring that "government of the people, by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth".
Echoed too, was Martin Luther King's ringing words spoken the day before he was assassinated: "I may not get there with you but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land."
In his speech, Obama said: "The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you, we as a people will get there."
Obama's promise that "I will always be honest with you" is, suggests the Independent's Sean O'Grady, a subtle acknowledgement of the deceptions that came out of the White House over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Even the folksy mention of his daughters having earned the "new puppy" that will accompany them to "the new White House" had its echoes.
President Harry Truman admonished: "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog". Before he too was elected president, Richard Nixon, in his notorious "Checkers Speech", which he pledged in answer to allegations of corruption as early as 1952, said that the only gift he ever accepted was "a little cocker spaniel dog" that his daughter named Checkers.
Themes of hope, renewal and change - those words were sprinkled through Obama's acceptance speech - are Obama standards.
He is renowned for the power of his oratory to move people, shift obstacles, win hearts, minds and votes. His own story is told as an emblem of the American story, as Favreau noted in a January interview.
"What is your theory of speechwriting?" Obama had asked the aspiring speechwriter.
"I have no theory," Favreau admitted, "but when I saw you at the convention, you basically told a story about your life ... and it was a story that fit with the larger American narrative. People applauded not because you wrote an applause line but because you touched something in the party and the country. Democrats haven't had that in a long time."
Favreau was referring to Obama's keynote address to the 2004 Democrat convention, a speech regarded as the beginning of his rise to the White House.
It blended his story with the founding idealism of America, his father a Kenyan goat-herder who came to "the beacon" of America in hope of education and opportunity, who formed an unlikely union with a white student from Kansas, who together produced "a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him too".
Pope says Obama's maturity can be seen in his speeches. "His [earlier] speech about race shows he is willing to talk about very difficult issues, and not in a superficial way."
"My reaction [to his acceptance speech] was he was even better than his material." Though there were no historic lines such as John F. Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" (from his 1961 inaugural address) the effect was nonetheless powerful. And although he hasn't shown the ringing oratory of a Churchill or a Kennedy, Pope suspects he could easily carry it off if he chose.
But there were still strong echoes of Kennedy .
On 12 September 1962, at Rice University in Houston Texas, Kennedy insisted that American would land on the moon before the end of the 1960s. He declared: "We choose to go to the moon."
And in his famous address on 26 June 1963, when he spoke to a huge crowd in Berlin and expressed his fervent hope that the divided city would be joined. He said: "As a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner."
This is what Obama said: "A man touched down on the moon, a Wall came down in Berlin."
Obama's victory speech was restrained - while wanting his supporters to enjoy the moment, he also sought to remind of the difficulties to be faced - "two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century."( Kennedy again).
Don't bet against Obama producing a line that encompasses his time, warns Slack. Kennedy's immortal words came from his inauguration, a speech Obama is to give in January.
Good leaders inspire a sense of hope and possibility in people which, says Slack, can lead to real change. Lange did that among many here and Obama appears to be doing the same there.
Obama understands the power of personalising common stories and how compelling his own story is, but is also aware of the value of the stories of others. Ann Nixon Cooper, the 106-year-old voter provided the perfect device to personalise and make inclusive the nation's story of what can be achieved through hope and perseverance.
He found too, the perfect words, and wove them together with the affirmation "yes we can" - an Obama slogan pre-schoolers will recognise from kids show Bob The Builder, whose gospel rhythm the religious will hear and which will be noted by speechwriters for the structure and cadence it brought to his speeches.
"When you see those words sounding so effortless," says Slack, "you can misunderstand the skill it requires to bring them together."
An analysis of Obama's speeches is already in bookshops (Say It Like Obama: The Power of Speaking With Purpose and Vision). Obama has proven his worth as a man of words. Next test, proving himself a man of action.
