Two weeks ago we wrote a review of President Obama’s commencement speech at Barnard College, and in the interest of being nonpartisan, today we will review a commencement speech by his foil and political rival Mitt Romney, who delivered his address to the graduates of Liberty University on May 12. The setting of the candidates’ respective speeches were appropriately partisan: Obama’s at an all-girls college in liberal New York City and Romney’s at an all-boys college in conservative Lynchburg, Virginia. Unfortunately (or perhaps inconsequentially) for Romney, Obama is still the go-to candidate for quick tips when it comes to delivering effective, memorable presentations. With that said, let’s discuss what Romney did right, and where he went wrong.
The biggest, most obvious flaw in Romney’s commencement speech is that more often than not he forgot about his audience: what their needs were, what they wanted to hear. His job was to offer congratulations to the graduating students and supply them with bits and pieces of advice as they begun a life anew. Instead, most of the time it sounded like he was giving a speech to a crowd of Republican Party diehards holding Romney for President 2012 signs. For example, “not everyone has completed as much as you have in four years…” and “what the next four years hold for me are yet to be determined” and “marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman.” The majority of the crowd may agree with that last declaration (it garnered the biggest applause of the speech), but it’s not the most appropriate content for the speech at hand.
Romney focused a majority of his speech on Christianity, which is very appropriate content for the speech. Liberty University is a devout Christian University. One can assume that the graduates hold Christian values and beliefs in the utmost esteem, and thus it’s appropriate for Romney’s speech to extol on the Christian faith. Obviously, this clearly aligns with his political platform, but that is to be expected; likewise, President Obama chose to speak at a college that would champion his liberal beliefs.
Romney did well to include a significant amount of secondary sources and stories in his speech, which nuanced his points and made his content more interesting and well rounded. His use of these quotes, stories and anecdotes was where he connected the most to his audience of graduating students.
Interestingly, Romney unwittingly fell over and over again into the trap that presentation guru Jerry Weissman says to avoid. He made the audience think. He didn’t connect the dots for them. He spoke fittingly about religion, but his words sounded more like a sermon than a commencement speech because more often than not, he didn’t remember to connect those musings on religion to the audience. Of course, the audience and now the viewer could make all sorts of connections between his opines on Christianity and how the audience should live their lives, but his speech lacks in impact and quality because he didn’t make those connections himself.
Romney ends strongly in his final minute, and keeps his total time down to a little under nineteen minutes. Overall his speech would have greatly benefitted from a stronger awareness of the audience to whom he was addressing.
Watch the entirety of Romney’s commencement speech on YouTube.
