Great speechmaking is rare, and recent great speechmaking (in this soundbite-driven age) is rarer still.  All the more reason to celebrate, then, President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.  This speech is an instant masterpiece. 

Obama’s genius comes in his willingness to speak the unvarnished truth in three primary ways.

First, he confronts directly the controversies surrounding his award.  Obama says:

In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage. Compared to some of the giants of history who have received this prize – Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela – my accomplishments are slight.

He then continues with the most serious complaint:

But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by forty three other countries – including Norway – in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.

Note how deftly he deals with the issue even as he confronts it directly. 

These questions are not new. War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease – the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.

This discussion leads President Obama into a defense of the principle of the just war – war that is fought by rules, respects the rights of civilians, is waged in self-defense, and uses proportional force. 

Obama uses the idea of a just war to review and justify America’s role as the sole superpower: 

Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans.

From that justification, the President turns to his concept of a just peace.  That’s a neat rhetorical turn, and allows him to propose three tenets in support of it.  First, the world must develop alternatives to violence “that are tough enough to change behavior.”  Second, the just peace must be based on “the inherent rights and dignity of every individual.”  And third, a just peace must “encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.” 

After that, and a blunt rejection of terrorism and violence in the name of religion, Obama closes with some of the most stirring rhetoric we’ve heard from him to date:

So let us reach for the world that ought to be – that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls. Somewhere today, in the here and now, a soldier sees he's outgunned but stands firm to keep the peace.

Somewhere today, in this world, a young protestor awaits the brutality of her government, but has the courage to march on. Somewhere today, a mother facing punishing poverty still takes the time to teach her child, who believes that a cruel world still has a place for his dreams.

Let us live by their example.

With this speech, President Obama shows that he can hold his own among the great voices of the modern era.  This is indeed public rhetoric of the finest kind.