What exactly does it mean to be a leader? There are a variety of things that makes one a leader. Today, I will be focused on speech. How does a great leader speak? What does a great leader say? I love to analyze speech. What a person says and how a person speaks says a lot about their character. As we know, there is a pretty important election in progress that will only determine who will be the most powerful person in the world come November. I have decided to look at what the candidates are saying. I looked at the tiny, seemingly insignificant words that no one pays attention to but means everything. I decided to analyze the speech of the two remaining democratic candidates. Through their words the candidates are subconsciously telling us who they are. Over the past few months I’ve listened to quite a few speeches by the candidates and I have compared their speeches to some of the greatest leaders of our time and great leaders before us. The results are quite intriguing.
The great leaders, you hear something constantly repeated throughout their speeches and when they talk. They use something I would like to call “unity words”. Unity words are words like, we, we’ve, our us, the people. In fact, one of the most important documents in the history of the United States, the Preamble begins with “We the people”. Shouldn’t the person who will soon be the most powerful person in the world be about “We the people”?
Recommended for you
I compared these unity words to something I would like to call “I words”. I call it that simply because I couldn’t come up with a better term. But these “I words” are words such as, I, I’ve, I’m, me, my etc. These are words that are talking about the individual and not the collective group. There is a great difference between people who are leaders, and people who are in leadership positions. Leaders embody the word “we”. They put others before themselves and think about the happiness and betterment of the collective group rather than just their own happiness. In fact, people who are great leaders are happy when other people are happy. A person that is in a position of leadership can be a great leader but that’s not always the case. Sometimes a person is just appointed a position of leadership but could be a horrible leader. So who are some of our great leaders and who is the better leader between the two democratic candidates?
One of the greatest speech in the history of America was given by one of the greatest leaders in the history of America. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr wrote the “I have a Dream” speech. In that speech he spoke about uniting people, loving each other and if the ideologies of man match the ideologies of god, only then can we have a great nation. In his famous speech, he said unity words 73.68 percent of the time compared to the 26.31 percent of the time when he used “I words”.
Unfortunately, even horrible people can be great leaders. Charlie Chaplin played Hilter in a movie called “The Great Dictator.” Chaplin in that movie gave a speech that was truly earth moving. If Hitler gave a speech anywhere as breathtaking as Chaplin's speech in that movie, you can see how he was able to convince millions of people to commit heinous crimes against humanity. His speech in “The Great Dictator” contained an even higher percentage of unity words than Martin Luther King's “I have a Dream Speech.” A whopping 82.75 percent of his words were unity words compared to I words.
I then listened to a combination of 4 random interviews and speeches by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. On average Barack Obama used unity words 65.52 percent of the time. Bernie Sanders said these unity words on average 68.69 percent of the time including using the unity words 37 consecutive times on two separate occasions before using an “I word”. However, Hillary Clinton used these unity words in her speeches and interviews an underwhelming 38.67 percent of the time on average. You can see the difference in their leadership ability through the crowds these individuals drew at their respective rallies.
In 2008, Barack Obama drew massive crowds on the campaign trail, especially in New York. His rally in Washington Square Park drew 24,000 people. Why is that significant? The 24,000 people that came out to listen to Obama that night was the largest crowd ever drawn at a rally there for a presidential candidate. This year, Bernie Sanders' rally at Washington Square Park drew over 27,000 people. That was more than 3,000 more than any crowd Barack Obama drew in New York. The largest crowd Hillary drew at any of her rallies in New York City this year was 1,300 people. Bernie Sander drew a larger crowd in New York than Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's largest crowd combined. The smallest crowd Sanders drew was in the South the Bronx, a mere 18,000 people. Also the Sanders campaign has by far the most individual donations that any presidential candidate in American history. Hillary is leading right now for by a significant margin for reasons that I will discuss in anther article but she does not inspire her supporters. She does not have the leadership ability to make America a truly great nation. At best, she looks to maintain the status quo.
Hillary is not about “we” or “the people”. She is about herself. We can tell this not just by what she says, but it’s also evident when looking at the sign she has beneath her at the podium at her rallies. She has her logo, an “H” with an arrow going through it. The "H" is much bigger than anything else on the sign. This can be interpreted as she is much bigger than everyone else. Right besides the "H: is her website. Her sign epitomizes narcissism. It's all about Hillary. There is nothing about the people that she is supposed to serve on her sign. What is her message? We still don’t know. It seems to be, "I’m with her". That message is not about the people.
When you look at the sign below Bernie Sanders at the podium, it says, “A Future to Believe In” and in tiny letter below it, the sign has his website. This shows us he about the people first and he comes second. People believe in Sanders because he's not asking us to trust him. He's asking us to join him. Now that’s a message for the people. Whether or not you choose to vote for Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump or a third party candidate, the choice between Hillary and Sanders will be a choice between a narcissist or someone that cares about “We the People”
