Teleprompter Week
March 10, 2009 by Jerry
Last week was Teleprompter Week. It began with a continuation of the wave of negative reviews, including mine, of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s disastrous “teleprompted” speech. If I may be immodest for a moment, only mine focused on how the use of a single teleprompter unit contributed to Jindal’s forced speaking style.
The teleprompter story then shifted from Jindal to Obama with comprehensive pieces by Peter Baker of the New York Times, Carol E. Lee, a White House reporter of Politico.com, and Dan Spencer of Examiner.com. Baker and Lee gave balanced and through reports, but Spencer, a self-proclaimed “Right Side Politics Examiner,” took only a negative view of the president’s teleprompter style. (However, one element of Spencer’s post, a video of Obama’s teleprompter talking back to him, would undoubtedly make even Obama laugh.) Yet even Baker and Lee had to agree that there is a difference in Obama’s on- and off-teleprompter speaking styles.
Baker quoted Bradley A. Blakeman, a Republican strategist, who said, “the teleprompter makes Mr. Obama look robotic. ‘He is extremely scripted, and he is cautious to the max and afraid of gaffes.’ When answering questions without a script, Mr. Blakeman said, ‘his speech is very halted, and you can see him take a lot of time to think about what he’s going to say.’” And Lee reported that “the teleprompter malfunctioned a few times last summer and Obama delivered some less-than-soaring speeches.”
I have to agree about the differences in Obama’s style. As proof, here’s an excerpt from The Power Presenter about a two key events during the election campaign:
-
- On August 16, 2008, Obama, by then the Democratic nominee, met John McCain for their first encounter of the presidential election at the Civil Forum on Leadership and Compassion at Saddleback Church in Orange County, California.
- The event, organized and moderated by Rick Warren, the pastor of the evangelical mega-church, was not a debate; Warren gave each candidate his own hour to respond to an identical set of questions.
- Obama’s answers rambled into deep erudite analyses and long nuanced discussions. His rambles were exacerbated by a proliferation of “ums,” “ahs,” and “y’knows,” that made his answers seem even longer. McCain, on the other hand, true to his “Straight Talk Express” slogan, made his responses prompt and succinct.
- On the morning of the Saddleback debate, an aggregation of 8 different public opinion polls had Obama ahead by 3.2 points. One week after the event, his lead had dropped to a virtual dead heat of 1.4 points.
- But less than two weeks later, Obama returned to the teleprompter format for his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Standing before 85,000 spectators and 30 million television viewers, Obama returned to his oratorical form. Gone were the nuances, and gone were the “ums.”
- The next morning, Obama’s lead in the aggregate polls bounced back up to 3.5.
By any objective standard, Obama is a master of the teleprompter, and it is due to one particular skill: his cadence. Obama avoids the usual ping-pong effect that bedevils lesser talents by parsing his words and moving between the teleprompter panels in an almost musical rhythm. As proof, look at that DNC speech—or any of his other major speeches—and for a brief moment, close your eyes and listen to his cadence.
He’s got rhythm.
Comments
2 Responses to “Teleprompter Week”
If you want to interact, please leave a comment...
and, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
-
Subscribe
Sign up to receive breaking news
as well as receive other site updates!or subscribe to our
RSS Feed -
Search
Categories
-
Recent Posts
-
Archives
[...] Weissman, America’s leading corporate presentations coach and author of The Power Presenter: Technique, Style, and Strategy from America’s Top Speaking Coach, analyzes the difference in two of Obama’s speeches – one delivered with the teleprompter on, the other delivered at an event where the teleprompter unexpectedly malfunctioned – here. [...]
[...] unwords have also drawn a great deal of commentary. I wrote about the subject in an earlier blog and in a chapter about Obama in The Power Presenter. The chapter was excerpted in an article in [...]