Stump speech (politics) Stump speech (politics) A political stump speech is a standard speech used by a politician running for office. Typically a candidate who schedules many appearances prepares a short standardized stump speech that is repeated verbatim to each audience, before opening to questions. The term derives from the early American custom in which candidates campaigned from town to town and stood upon a sawed off tree stump to deliver their speech. In presidential campaigns in the United States, a candidate's speech at his or her party's presidential nominating convention usually forms the basis for the stump speech for the duration of
A More Perfect Union (speech) was taken from the Preamble to the United States Constitution. Obama addressed the subjects of racial tensions, white privilege, and racial inequality in the United States, discussing black "anger", white "resentment", and other issues as he sought to explain and contextualize Wright's controversial comments. His speech closed with a plea to move beyond America's "racial stalemate" and address shared social problems. On March 27, 2008, the Pew Research Center called the speech "arguably the biggest political event of the campaign so far", noting that 85 percent of Americans said they had heard at least a little about the speech and