Obama About to Pronounce One of his Most Important Speeches

The US president is a "speechaholic" and there is no doubt that he has a special talent in this field. I'm pretty sure that the speechwriters of the White House have already started to prepare the words that Barack Obama is going to pronounce next 10th of December, the day that he is going to receive The Peace Nobel Prize, at the Norway city of Oslo. This is one of that lectures that will remain and it must be prepared with special care.

Obviously, other people have been in the situation that now faces the President. Some of them, men and women well trained in speaking in public as well (people as charismatic as Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela). Others, with a life away from the spotlight (before they received the Nobel, of course). People not used to talk in front of an auditorium and, definitely, with nobody around who writes speeches for them everyday. For instance, the youngest Peace Prize Nobel awarded, Mairead Corrigan. In 1976, when she won the prize, she was 32 years old. If you read her curriculum at that time you would find out that she was a Secretary that co-founded the Northern Ireland Peace Movement. In a very similar situation was Betty Williams who shared the award with Corrigan.

Since 1901 there has been 120 laureates with the Nobel Peace Prize. What it is interesting to detect having a look at the list of the awarded is how has changed the significance of the Lecture. Do you know how lasted the first Nobel ceremony? Fifteen minutes! Just fifteen minutes with the presentation speech included! The awarded were Jean Henry Dunant, founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Frédéric Passy, founder of first French Peace Society. Well, guess what these guys said as the first winners of the Nobel Peace Prize... Not a word! They didn't delivered a speech. In fact, they even didn't went to the ceremony. But that was in 1901. Things changed fast and the lectures gained value. However in those early years, few of the laureates didn't speech. It is surprising, for example, that the President Woodrow Wilson sent a minister of his government to give the acceptance speech. Today it would be disconcerting. In 1919 maybe it was not.

Since those days, the winners of the award go to the ceremony with the best words they find. Well, not everybody. In a couple of cases, there was no speech because they were awarded posthumously. So, it appears reasonable that those guys said nothing. Aung San Suu Kyi didn't give the speech either because she was under house arrest, in Burma. Le Duc Tho, the Vietnamese leader, didn't talk… because he is the only one who has not accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.

As I said, the world has changed and, if it does not happen something really extraordinary, Barack Obama will be in Oslo. At the moment he begins to speak, he will know that THAT will be one of the speeches of his life.