Prediction: The Better Speaker Will be President–That Means President Obama.
John McCain can be a great speaker, especially when he is a little bit angry and speaking without notes. The problem is that he consistently (at least 50% of the time) is boring, mundane and flat, due to poor reading of a speech. Barack Obama is occasionally flat and has too many “uhs” and “ums” (especially during a media interview), but Obama is consistently (over 80% of the time) a great speaker. He’s smooth, fluid, emotional, and compelling.
My prediction: This spells doom for McCain. Since the modern TV era (1952), the general election candidate who is the better speaker has always won the presidency. (I grant you 2000 and 2004 can be debated due to the poor speaking skills of Bush versus the irritating speaking styles of Gore and Kerry).
But 2008 is a very clear-cut contest between someone who is a great speaker most of the time (Obama) and someone who is a poor-to-middling speaker most of the time (McCain). I’m predicting a clear-cut Obama based purely on his oratorical talents.
Tags: Barack Obama, John McCain, Politics, public speaking
June 15th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
TJ,
I agree with you on this point.
I have personally been throwing around the question in my head of whether the next president needs to be eloquent or not.
In the past there has often been a conception of someone who is eloquent as “slippery:” a true rhetorician in the negative sense. This was usually compared to someone who was a “straight-talker,” someone who “tells it like it is.”
The conclusion I have come to is that this is a false dichotomy used for political purposes.
John McCain is definitely playing up this dichotomy, as did George W. Bush’s first campaign in 2000.
Instead of buying into this false dichotomy, I would say that the audience (in this case the public) of a speech is a fairly good judge of character, whatever style it was given in.
As a public speaking coach / trainer, I present frequently and coach others on their presentations. Hence, I am constantly observing the interplay between presenters and audiences.
I find that most audiences form accurate general impressions of a speaker, though they may not be able to articulate the behaviors and techniques that led them to form that impression. After all, we’ve all spent a good portion of our lives gaging the truthfulness of the people with whom we interact.
In his book, “Strangers to Ourselves,” Timothy Wilson of the University of Virginia notes that the brain can absorb about 11 million pieces of information a second, of which it can process about 40 consciously. The unconscious brain handles the rest.
Our unconscious brains are gathering up thousands of subtle signals from the speakers that we observe regularly and forming general impressions such as, “He’s lying.” or “She’s arrogant.”
I think that this helps to explain Obama’s incredible charisma and his amazing rise to the Democratic nominee: he comes across as human, authentic and competent.
Thanks for the post