Barack Obama
January 29, 2010 by Jerry
In anticipation of Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address, a conservative website posted a table with 36 phrases they expected him to use. After the speech, we checked the transcript and tallied the results. Clear evidence of the risk of forecasting.
December 9, 2009 by Jerry
In a prime time speech delivered at the United States Military Academy at West Point last week, President Barack Obama committed 30,000 more troops to fight the war in Afghanistan. His decision was consistent with a policy he had stated during his campaign for the presidency in 2007: I did not oppose all wars, I said. I was a strong supporter of the war in Afghanistan. And then stated again in 2008: We have to understand that the situation is
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November 13, 2009 by Jerry
Last Sunday, the New York Times ran an article by Peter Baker, their political correspondent, who questioned whether President Barack Obama’s widely-recognized oratorical skills were being diluted by overexposure. Baker tracked the increasing frequency of the number of times presidents speak publicly from Harry S. Truman’s average of 88 times in a typical year, to Ronald Reagan’s average of 320 times, to Bill Clinton’s average of 550 times. Obama, who speaks five or six times a day in what Baker calls a “hyperactive media environment…is on pace to match Mr. Clinton and likely exceed him.” Of course, the controversy
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September 16, 2009 by Jerry
After his formal address to a Joint Session of Congress last Wednesday about his health care reform proposals, President Obama went out on the stump to seek the support of the public. According to CBS News, by Saturday, when he got to Minneapolis to speak “to more than 10,000 people at the Target Center,” it was for the fifth time that week. The setting was like that of his stump speeches during his campaign for the Presidency and, as in those times, he called upon two of his familiar rhetorical devices: the human interest story and anaphora, or the
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September 14, 2009 by Jerry
In his weekly New York Times column yesterday, Frank Rich called Barack Obama’s health care speech to a joint session of Congress last Wednesday, “inspired, lucid and, in the literally and figuratively Kennedyesque finale, moving.” Mr. Rich was referring to two Kennedys, Ted and John; the latter was the figurative reference and the former the literal. Obama quoted directly from a letter Ted had written to him just before he died: He expressed confidence that this would be the year that health care reform⎯”that great unfinished business
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July 28, 2009 by Jerry
In last month’s blog about Barack Obama’s fourth press conference, you read about a contentious exchange between the president and Chuck Todd of NBC News, sparring about the demonstrations in Iran. In yesterday’s blog about Obama’s fifth press conference, you read how Obama diminished his use of “unwords” in his handling of the reporters’ questions—until Todd tangled with him again. Perhaps it was the aftertaste of that first encounter, perhaps it was because Todd asked a follow-on question, perhaps it was because the question challenged what Obama had said in his opening statement, but Obama’s unwords reappeared during
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July 27, 2009 by Jerry
Barack Obama, whose smooth, articulate delivery style in his major speeches has been lauded by friend and foe alike, has also been derided by friend and foe alike for his tendency to sputter “unwords”—“ums” and “ahs”—throughout his extemporaneous press conferences. In my previous blog on the subject, you read a serious online commentary and saw a comic television mash-up of Obama’s sputtering. One of the major factors for the sharp differences in his cadence is his use of the teleprompter. Because of his diligent attention to policy as well as to rhetorical detail, Obama uses the teleprompter to read
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June 29, 2009 by Jerry
From his stunning upset victory in the Iowa Caucuses at the start of the presidential primaries, throughout the election campaign, and in the first hundred days of his term in office, the media treated Barack Obama like a rock star and handled him with kid gloves. He acknowledged as much when he spoke at the Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner earlier this month. “Why bother hanging out with celebrities when I can spend time with the people who made me one?” he said with a broad smile, and then added, “I know where my bread is buttered.” But less
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May 13, 2009 by Jerry
A recent Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle had as its theme, “Roughly Speaking,” which played out in answers of words containing either “er” or “um.” When spoken, those two sounds are known as “fillers” or “unwords,” because they have no meaning. Unwords are the bane of any speaker’s existence because they produce a perception of uncertainty. Barack Obama, whose superior speaking skills undoubtedly contributed to his ascent to the presidency, is known to lapse into unwords whenever he departs from his trusty teleprompter and speaks extemporaneously—as in a press conference. This lapse has drawn much spoofing, much of it
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May 4, 2009 by Jerry
Listening is a social skill that is rapidly becoming extinct in the 21st Century, a subject I wrote about in a March blog, saying, “For those people who still retain a semblance of politeness, it has become waiting for one’s turn to speak; for those who no longer bother, it has become not to listen at all, but to talk past the next person.” This rude behavior is merely annoying in social circles, but can be destructive in the more mission critical circumstances of business and politics. One of the most common instances of not listening comes in response to
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