hi, did anyone manage to capture the text of John Berger's Aofmhabap?
The blog that originally published it one stanza at a time has went busto.

If so please email me at littlebootslive@hotmail.com

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From “A More Perfect Union” by Barack Obama (2008)

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.
[…]
And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

[…]

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag…
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I will submit this example of Obama's rhetoric, even though, technically, it comes from his presidential campaign (and thus it was delivered BEFORE he was elected president). I dare not shirk David's carefully considered contest directions, but I think this example can be useful for us as teachers of rhetoric. That is, we can (and I have) used this example in my rhetoric classes to show students how classical technique gets appropriated in contemporary contexts.

The example, which won't surprise most rhetoricians, is the speech “A More Perfect Union” that Obama delivered in Philadelphia (the location itself an important rhetorical decision--the city of friendship). This particular speech has quickly become a classic, so in a way this example is not very original. But again, the pedagogical implications for teaching students about rhetoric with this speech are myriad.

Two concepts that I discuss with students here are decorum and imitation. In fact, I use the concept of imitation to get my students thinking about decorum. First, let me cite two definitions of decorum that I give to students: Decorum, as Walter Beale (1996) explains, names the conventional power dynamics to which a rhetor must first appeal in order to garner the credibility needed for persuasive speech. Decorum is a “situational ethic, a situational epistemology, and a situational doctrine of style and performance”; moreover, “decorum is not merely an additional player but the keeper of the peace, the genial arbiter of conflicting claims, the guardian of moderation and common sense” (168). And as Robert Harimon says, “Decorum provide[s] both the major stylistic code for verbal composition and the social knowledge required for political success” (1992, 152).

How we assess the decorous codes and conventions of a rhetorical situation is, in part, through the study and analysis of what rhetors have done in other similar situations. Enter imitation.

What type of rhetorical situation is this? What is the problem, the exigency, that Obama addresses in the speech? – I begin with these questions and have students discuss them.

Next I ask them to consider other occasions in American history where orators have tried to intervene in some sort of problem, national crisis, or social injustice. I then give them two more examples of American rhetoric:

First, I give them excerpts from King’s “I Have a Dream”:

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(Here's the beginning):
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
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Next, I give them the entire text of Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address”:

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Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
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I love watching the expressions on students' faces as they start to trace the tropes, style, and figures that these speeches share. The introductions of each one, especially, illustrate the power of imitation to establish decorum and garner an audience who recognizes, even if they don't know it, the rhetorical significance of Obama channeling King channeling Lincoln. The way King uses the same metaphors as Lincoln, and the way Obama uses the same delivery and style of King--the repetition, the cadence, etc., illustrate to students how the most eloquent orators are students of rhetoric themselves--they have studied and imitated what successful oratory sounds like.

So is this Obama's most significant piece of rhetoric? Maybe, maybe not. For our students though, and for us, this might be the best piece of Obama's rhetoric for what we do as teachers of this classical art.

Thanks, David, for getting us to think about Obama and rhetoric!