In last week’s post on Obama’s Oval Office speech on the oil spill you read how Mike Allen, the Washington columnist the New York Times dubbed “The Man the White House Wakes Up To,” anticipated the importance of the event. Mr. Allen’s succinct postmortem: “It’s the first Obama speech ever panned by the talking heads.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan, a former speech writer for George H. W. Bush, was more specific:

The president’s failure to turn things around Tuesday night with a speech damaged his reputation as a man whose rhetorical powers are such that he can turn things around with a speech. He lessened his own mystique. Reaction among his usual supporters was, in the words of Time’s Mark Halperin, “fierce, unforeseen disappointment.”

Ms. Noonan went on to list more pans from other Obama supporters, including the usually loyal Keith Olbermann of MSNBC. Then she concluded, “The right didn’t like the speech either.”

Even the New York Times’ Frank Rich, another loyal Obama supporter, agreed, “The speech’s pans were inevitable,” but he went on to add, “it also provides him with a nearly unparalleled opening to make his and government’s case.” Mr. Rich was referring to another oil spill speech that received even worse pans than the president’s; that of Joe Barton, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who said:

I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case, a $20 billion shakedown

The nation, the press, the Democrats, and even the Republicans reacted in utter shock at the insensitivity of the statement. So much so, the Republicans forced Mr. Barton to backpedal:

I want the record to be absolutely clear that I believe BP is responsible for this accident, should be held responsible and should in every way possible make good on the consequences that have resulted from this accident. If anything I’ve said this morning was misconstrued from that I want to apologize for that misconstruction.

Mr, Barton’s position is the “unparalleled opening” to which Mr. Rich was referring. He urged the president, “There couldn’t be a riper moment for Obama, as a man once said, to bring it on.”

Speechmaking is often like sports: win some, lose some.

In anticipation of  President Obama’s Oval Office speech about the BP oil spill, Mike Allen of Politico, who was dubbed by the New York Times as “The Man the White House Wakes Up To,” wrote: “White House advisers acknowledge that if it doesn’t happen tonight, it probably never will.”

Ever since the April 20th explosion in the Gulf, Obama has been the target of increasing condemnation from both critics and supporters, from both the left and the right. Most of the critics, who have called the devastating event, “Obama’s Katrina,” have faulted the president for not taking sufficient action soon enough or decisively enough. So Mr. Allen was looking for him to take charge and to take action.

One of the best indicators of action is to track the use of the word “I” to indicate personal responsibility. A reading of the transcript provides the following: 

• I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge
• I’d like to lay out for you what our battle plan is…
• I have authorized the deployment of over 17,000 National Guard members
• I refuse to let that happen
• I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required
• I make that commitment tonight.
• I have established a National Commission
• I have issued a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.
• But the one approach I will not accept is inaction.
• The one answer I will not settle for is the idea that this challenge is too big and too difficult to meet.

 William Shakespeare wrote, “To take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them.” Will Obama’s calls to action end the troubles in the Gulf?

All of which goes to prove the danger of trying to be funny. The task is difficult enough for professional comedians; the subject of a prior blog called “Beware of Jokes” that discussed how late night television stars Johnny Carson and Jon Stewart, whose gags, written by armies of comedy writers, often fail. In fact, Jay Leno, the professional comedian who followed Mr. Obama at this year’s Correspondents’ event, bombed.

• Patrick Gavin of Politico wrote, “Obama tops Leno at WHCD”
• Frank Rich of the New York Times called the comedian’s performance “mirthless”
• Daniel Kurtzman, in his Political Humor Blog, called Mr. Leno’s performance “a train wreck”

Comedy is even more difficult territory for the non-professional performers such as presidents—and business people, including you. Mr. Obama actually had the advantage of professional help. As reported by Amie Parnes on Politico, the president’s speechwriting team brought in professional help in the person of Kevin Bleyer, who works on with Jon Stewart on Comedy Channel’s “The Daily Show.”

That kind of support is simply out of the question for anyone in business. Nonetheless, the pervasive belief persists that a presentation or speech should begin with joke. As the author of three books about presentation skills, I have often been interviewed on the subject. Almost invariably, the interviewers, professional journalists all, raise the question of starting with a gag.

My response to all of them has been the same as it is for all of you: Beware of jokes.
Coda: Jay Leno’s presence seems to have a dampening effect on Mr. Obama’s humor. You can read about a presidential joke that backfired in a blog about the president’s appearance on Mr. Leno’s show.

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.

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 precarious and urgent here in Afghanistan. And I believe
                  this has to be our central focus, the central front, on our battle against terrorism…I think one of the
                  biggest mistakes we’ve made strategically after 9/11 was to fail to finish the job here, focus our
                  attention here…For at least a year now, I have called for two additional brigades, perhaps three.

But the West Point speech did mark a significant change in his rhetorical style; from an audience-focused to a self-focused point of view. In the past, throughout his presidential campaign and in his historic Inaugural Address, Obama involved his audiences by deploying the word “you” extensively in his speeches, a technique you read about in an earlier blog. His Inaugural Address had 15 instances of “you” which, when combined with other inclusive words—23 instances of “us,” 62 of “we,” and 70 instances of “our”—connected him with his audience. The technique was noted by Michiko Kakutani, the chief book critic of the New York Times:

                  As in most of his major speeches, Mr. Obama repeatedly referred to “us” and “we,” while playing
                  down his own role as a leader. His few references to himself were put in the service of making a
                  larger point about America.

In the West Point speech, however, he used “you” only ten times, with four of them in the closing, “Thank you. God bless you. May God bless the United States of America. Thank you very much. Thank you.” That left only six instances of the powerful word in the body of the speech. In sharp contrast, he used “I” 41 times, a shift that prompted Peggy Noonan, a Wall Street Journal political columnist—and former presidential speechwriter—to exclaim, “I, I—ay yi yi. This is a man badly in need of an I-ectomy.” She went on to explain:

                  George H.W. Bush famously took the word “I” out of his speeches—we called them “I-ectomies”—
                  because of a horror of appearing to be calling attention to himself. Mr. Obama is plagued with no
                  such fears. “When I took office . . . I approved a long-standing request . . . After consultations with our
                  allies I then . . . I set a goal.” That’s all from one paragraph. Further down he used the word “I” in three
                  paragraphs an impressive 15 times. “I believe I know,” “I have signed,” “I have read,” “I have visited.”

Granted, any senior executive—from the President of the United States to a mid-level manager in business—must take full responsibility for all decisions and actions, but Obama must not and cannot abandon the technique that helped get him elected.

It is all about “you” and not hubris.

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 over health care reform, two unpopular wars, and high unemployment are such difficult issues they would challenge the oratorical skills of Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Cicero combined. Baker quoted David Axelrod, Obama’s former campaign manager and now his senior adviser, on the subject: “No one ever believed that the power of communicating was in and of itself enough,” he said. “It’s important to communicate what you’re doing and why. But without the what and the why, the communicating is of little value.”

Axelrod’s point speaks to the balance between what you say and how you say it. Readers of this blog will recall three separate posts in an earlier series called, “It Ain’t What You Say, It’s How You Say It,” in which I stressed the importance of conveying your message effectively; and illustrated it with examples as diverse as Abraham Lincoln, Frank Sinatra, CNN analyst and author Jeffrey Toobin, and playwright/screenwriter David Mamet.

Is this a reversal of my course? Am I now asserting, “It Ain’t How You Say It, It’s What You Say”? Not at all. The operative word is “balance.” Put equal effort on both sides of the equation. David Axelrod put it best, “I think it continues to be valuable…But ultimately we’re going to be judged not on the power of the oratory but the record.”

The point here—and in another prior blog—is that for any presentation to succeed, every presenter must give full attention to every component; and even more to the point, the presenter must be certain that each component integrates with every other component.

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 repetitive use of a key phrase. (For a fuller discussion of anaphora, please see my earlier blog about his Inaugural Address and my prior blog on his health care speech.)

Saturday’s human interest story was about a campaign appearance candidate Obama made in Greenwood, South Carolina, and about a city councilwoman there named Edith Childs. Ms. Childs is known as the “Chant Lady” because she had a reputation for stirring up crowds at public meetings by chanting. Here’s how Obama described his event in Greenwood to his audience in Minneapolis:

            Suddenly I hear this voice shout out behind me: “Fired up?” And I almost jumped out of my shoes.
            But everybody else acts like this is normal and they all say, “Fired up!” And then I hear this voice:
            “Ready to go?” And the people around me, they just say, “Ready to go!” I don’t know what’s going
            on. So I look behind me, and there’s this little woman there…[and] for the next five minutes, she
            starts chanting. She says, “Fired up?” And everybody says, “Fired up!” “Ready to go?” “Ready to go!”
            And this just keeps on going. And I realize I’m being upstaged by this woman. And I’m⎯she’s
            getting all the attention, and I’m standing there looking at my staff and they’re shrugging their
            shoulders. But here’s the thing, Minneapolis. After about a minute, maybe two, I’m feeling kind
            of fired up. I’m feeling⎯I’m feeling like I’m ready to go.

Then, as any good speaker would, Obama segued from Ms. Childs’ story to his own message, and he did so with his own repetitive phrases:

            And it goes to show you how one voice can change a room. And if it changes a room it can change
            a city. And if it can change a city it can change a state. And if it can change a state it can change a
            nation. If it changes the nation it can change the world. It can bring health care to every American.
            It can lower our costs. It can make your insurance more secure.

Returning to Ms. Childs’ technique, Obama asked the crowd in Target Center,

            I want to know, Minnesota, are you fired up?

The crowd shouted back,

            Fired up!

Obama asked,

            Ready to go?

The crowd shouted back,

            Ready to go!

Obama led the crowd in two more rounds of the chant, with a crescendo of volume, laughter, and applause each time, and then concluded:

            They can’t stop us. Let’s go get this done. Thank you, everybody. God bless you.

These rhetorical skills helped Barack Obama win the election. Will they help his health care reform plan win?

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 of our society,” he called it⎯would finally pass. He repeated the truth that health care is
            decisive for our future prosperity, but he also reminded me that “it concerns more than material things.”
            “What we face,” he wrote, “is above all a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but
            fundamental principles of social justice and the character of our country.”

Obama then plucked that last phrase, “the character of our country,” and proceeded to expand upon it in his objective to overcome the controversy that has divided our country over health care reform. Invoking the spirit of Ted Kennedy’s lifelong efforts on the issue, Obama appealed to the Republicans and Democrats in the Joint Session, and to the millions of American citizens watching the prime time broadcast, to put aside their differences and come together on an efficient and fair system of health care.

The figurative reference to John F. Kennedy came in Obama’s finale. JFK’s most memorable words, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” represent a rhetorical technique called antithesis, or a figure of balance in which two contrasting ideas are juxtaposed in adjacent phrases, clauses, or sentences. Here’s how Obama employed antithesis:

            We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it.

And then Obama turned to one of his own favorite rhetorical devices, anaphora, or the repetitive use of a key phrase. (For a fuller discussion of antithesis and anaphora, please see my earlier blog about his Inaugural Address.)

            I still believe that we can act when it’s hard. I still believe we can replace acrimony with civility,
            and gridlock with progress. I still believe we can do great things, and that here and now we
            will meet history’s test.

            Because that’s who we are. That is our calling. That is our character. Thank you, God bless you,
            and may God bless the United States of America.

My next blog will have another example of Obama’s use of repetitive phrases in another speech about health care that he gave three days after his address to Congress.

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 his answer.

Todd’s testy question was:

                  Back to the politics of it, you mentioned two Republicans in your opening statement.

Todd was referencing this part of Obama’s opening statement:

                  I’ve heard that one Republican strategist told his party that even though they may want to
                  compromise, it’s better politics to go for the kill. Another Republican senator, that defeating
                  health-care reform is about breaking me. So let me be clear. This isn’t about me.

So Todd not only challenged Obama’s original statement, he also went on to stir the pot—as any journalist worth his salt would; after all, conflict is drama. Todd said:

                  You have 60 Democratic seats, a healthy majority in the House. If you don’t get this, isn’t
                  this a fight inside the Democratic Party? And that Republicans really aren’t playing—you can’t
                  really blame the Republicans for this one.

Obama took the challenge and promptly rebutted Todd’s claim:

                  Well, ah, first of all, uh, you haven’t seen me out there blaming the Republicans. I’ve been,
                  ah, a little frustrated by some of the misinformation that’s been coming out of the Republicans.
                  Uh, but that has to do with, as you pointed out, politics.

In his rebuttal, Obama accelerated his cadence. You’ll recall from yesterday’s post that speed overrides pauses and without pauses, the mind, in search of thinking time, inserts unwords. As Obama’s answer continued, his rapid pace continued and so did the “ums” and “ahs,” as well as several iterations of the meaningless phrase, “you know.”

                  Uh, you know, if you’ve got somebody out there saying not this, you know, let’s get the
                  best bill possible but instead says, ah, you know, let’s try to beat this, so we can gain
                  political advantage, well, you know, that’s not, I think, what the American people expect.

The “ums” and “ahs” continued throughout the remainder of his answer to Todd. But when he finished and called on ABC News’s Jake Tapper—who asked a less challenging question—the unwords diminished. Tapper’s question was followed by questions from six other reporters, and Obama’s unwords stayed few and far between.

To maintain his trademark cool demeanor and to abolish his unwords, the president would do well to insert more pauses in his answers—and to avoid Chuck Todd.

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 his major speeches verbatim. The two teleprompter panels cause him to swing back and forth, the swings cause him to pause between his phrases, and the pauses eliminate his unwords. But when he speaks extemporaneously, his words, fueled by his deep knowledge and dynamic delivery, come pouring out with far fewer pauses. Unbroken strings of words inhibit thinking, and so the mind, in search of processing time, breaks into the word strings with “ums” and “ahs.” The problem is compounded by the insertion of unnecessary “ands,” which also inhibit thinking and cause even more unwords.

All of that changed in Obama’s fifth and latest press conference last week. After his usual smooth reading of his opening remarks from a teleprompter, he opened the floor to reporters’ questions. In his response to the very first question, his cadence was as smooth as it was in his remarks; almost as if his answers were on the teleprompter—which they were not. Punctuating his phrases and pausing frequently, he produced his signature rhythmic pattern.

To appreciate the full power of Obama’s almost musical cadence, listen to one of his speeches with your eyes closed and hear how he parses his words. (By the way, there is now a dedicated website of his speeches.) During this latest press conference, his parsing pattern eliminated almost all of his unwords in his answers—until he responded to a question from Chuck Todd of NBC News.

Tomorrow’s post will examine that exchange in detail.