The first-person voice of authorial self-confidence

Fred Kaplan, in Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, takes us to a 28-year-old Lincoln's "first memorable speech" and tells us:

The audience was small, the occasion obscure, the speaker irrelevant to the national debate. But Lincoln gives no sense that he thinks of himself or his ideas as peripheral, let alone irrelevant. The language positions itself in the first-person voice of authorial self-confidence: he speaks from himself, for himself, with the voice of someone whose literary style creates the impression that he has earned the right to speak. What he says is credible because he has thought deeply, carefully, impartially, and with noble intentions; because he believes he has something important to contribute to the national discussion; and because his argument is based on a combination of evidence, reason, and analysis.

First let me say that Mr. Kaplan writes exquisite sentences (if you don't count the kludgy handful of words in the middle of the passage). We welcome them here for their beauty and for their power. His message to the speechwriter is a twin to Mr. Sorensen's contribution in our March 2nd piece: help your speaker speak as if he or she had something important to contribute to the national discussion.