I’m not weighing in on the politics of the day regarding Bill Clinton’s involvement with his wife’s presidential campaign. However, I am interested in his thought process regarding public speaking. I take as a given that no serious person doubts Bill Clinton’s prowess as a public speaker.
In today’s New York Times, we get a glimpse of exactly why:
“When former President Bill Clinton took to the podium on Friday at the Chapman Cultural Center in Spartanburg, he told the audience a story. He said he had just inadvertently walked into the adjacent auditorium and was mortified to see that all the seats were empty. Then, he recounted, he saw a ‘tech guy’ in the back of the room and said to himself, ‘well, I’ll give my best speech to one guy.’ He pounded his fist. ‘I’ll give my best speech if it’s the last thing I do today.’”
There reeally are no small speaking audiences, just small speakers. Bill Clinton may be many things to many people, but he is never an unenthusiastic speaker.
I feel for former President Bill Clinton. He is, by all accounts, an indefatigable campaigner, often getting by with less than four hours sleep. Well, apparently even Clinton gets tired. Below is a video clip of Clinton snoozing and attempting in vain to stay awake while on the stage behind a speaker. My cheap easy advice is for everyone to get at least 8 hours of sleep, not only on days when you are speaking, but also when you are going to be near any0one else who is speaking and might have a video camera pointed at him or her. If you need motivation to get a good night’s sleep, then you need to watch this.
As much as I think Bill Clinton is a master communicator, no one is perfect. Lately, he has been a little too quick to appear angry at reporters. There is a role for anger, but it must be used sparingly and for big issues only, especially if you have the stature of being a former president.
Great piece on evolving political oratory in today’s New York Times. In the current political season, Hillary Clinton has been making the case that oratorical skills don’t mean much without the ability to work behind the sense to get things done, an endorsement for her experience and an implied attack on Barack Obama and John Edwards—good speakers both. Obama supporters make the point that rhetorical skills are intertwined with political skills. The article quotes Ted Sorensen:
“The most important quality for a president, as Kennedy and Roosevelt demonstrated, is not how many roll call votes he answered sitting in the Senate, but his qualities as a leader who can mobilize people, inspire them, galvanize them, arouse them to action,” Sorensen said. “The ability to inspire and excite an audience on the campaign trail is one of the reasons I think Obama will be a success as president.”
Honestly folks, I’m really not judging politics here. I am simply attempting to look at how the authenticity levels of candidates are affecting their public speaking effectiveness. Here’s how I rate the top remaining candidates.
1-10 scale
10 equals perfect authenticity
1 equals phony baloney
Republicans
John McCain. Rating 9. McCain is an inconsistent speaker (his victory speech after the New Hampshire Primary was awful), but he does ooze authenticity. He’s not afraid to say unpopular things; in fact he enjoys doing so. His “let the chips fall where they may” attitude doesn’t help him in front of every crowd or on every issue, but over the long haul, it does cement his image of authenticity.
Mitt Romney. Rating 1. Romney has superb public speaking skills, but he comes across as extraordinarily inauthentic. Romney is obviously highly educated, extremely intelligent, very rational, and a huge talent. But he’s been a moderate/libertarian/liberal his whole life. When Romney speaks, you can almost see a thought bubble over his head that reads “I must tell these rubes this idiotic BS, because that’s what the polls say is popular. Once I get elected I can do what I want.” And now when voters watch him mouthing platitudes that he obviously doesn’t believe in, it’s comical. It’s like watching a public service announcement on TV starring Wink Martindale, the game show host (and Romney look-alike) warning kids about the dangers of watching too many TV game shows. It’s laughably un-credible.
Mike Huckabee. Rating 10. Wow, with Huckabee I get the feeling he could get elected as a member of parliament in Japan—without changing any of his positions. You don’t ever get the sense that Huckabee has any doubts when expressing his beliefs and positions.
Rudy Giuliani. Rating 2. Giuliani looks and sounds phony pretending to be a gun-toting, NASCAR loving, Rush Limbaugh fan. Giuliani is authentic when he talks about 9-11, but when he tries to worship at the alter of Ronald Reagan and pretend to be a conservative, the former mayor becomes a joke. Giuliani’s contempt for traditional values and the 2nd amendment are only surpassed by his love of homosexual cohabitation and cross dressing. Giuliani fighting to be the standard-bearer of the Right as the credibility of jess Jackson running to Grand Wizard of the KKK.
Democrats
John Edwards Rating 2. In 2004, the 50-year old Edwards ran for president as a conservative-centrist North Carolina Democrat. In 2008 he is a Huey-long, left-wing populist. Huh? Edwards takes a lot of flack in the media for fancy haircuts and his mansions because he seems so inauthentic. For goodness sakes, Edwards made nearly half a million dollars last year doing part time work at a hedge fund. Edwards would seem much more authentic if he just smiled and said “It’s great to be rich. I love money!”
Barack Obama. Rating 9. Like McCain, Obama has written a universally acclaimed autobiography. He has been candid about past traumas and drug use. It doesn’t seem to twist and turn with new positions on the campaign trail.
Hillary Clinton. Rating 9. I know I’m going to receive hate mail for this one. But I simply don’t think that the average voter who hasn’t been caught up in the Hillary Hating Media Industrial complex has negative views about Clinton’s levels of authenticity. Clinton is basically a very hard-working, centrist policy wonk. That’s how she talks and it appears to be consistent with who she really is.
Here is an interesting piece on CNN that compares this year’s crop of political candidates with leading orators of the past half century. As I’ve mentioned in this space before, the 2008 candidates, as a class, have been the best speakers I’ve seen in my lifetime.
John Kerry today endorsed Barack Obama at a press conference. I have to confess I couldn’t watch more than 30 seconds of the speech. John Kerry spoke, like, well, John Kerry. Buy that, I mean Kerry sounds as if he trying to play Hollywood’s version of a pompous, self-important, sanctimonious wind-bag. As I commented on repeatedly in 2004, Kerry’s problem stems from projecting to loudly, thus robbing his voice of its conversational quality.
Bill Richardson dropped out of the race today. I would have gladly listen to him for the whole speech but he was so boring, bland and tedious that CNN cut away from his speech and I never could find it on another news network. Richardson started off by complaining that the news media had leaked the story that he was dropping out—it’s never attractive to whine. Next, Richardson read his speech (with his eyes bobbing up and down—mostly down) saying boring and predictable things. Why he needed a written script at all is beyond me. Richardson can be a talented and funny speaker—it’s a shame he blew a big opportunity today. It may have been his last opportunity of the national limelight for awhile.
(I’ll post videos of both speeches once they are available)
Once in every election there is a sound bite where something dramatic occurs that supposedly turns the election. Usually, the news media get this wrong. Here is the clip where Senator Clinton allegedly cries in New Hampshire. Only, if you look closely, she doesn’t actually cry—she simply speaks in emotional terms. In 2004, Howard Dean’s scream allegedly destroyed his campaign. In truth his campaign had already peaked and John Kerry had already destroyed Dean in Iowa.In 1987 Gary Hart supposedly destroyed his campaign by issuing a challenge to the press “Go ahead and follow me around. You won’t find anything and you will be bored.” But what everyone always forgets is the story where that this was quoted came out one day AFTER the Miami Herald broke the story about Hart’s Monkey Business. Did Ed Muskie’s crying in New Hampshire destroy his candidacy in 1972? In truth he was an establishment candidate who didn’t campaign very hard and was seen as a sinking ship. Even the supposed tears on his face are questionable, given that it was snowing on him at the time.So what’s the point? I am a lifelong fan of politics and the art of the sound bite. But the more I follow both, I realize that the political media and other observers will often latch on to a sound bite to try to impose a narrative onto a story and to establish a cause and effect when it fact all they are doing is guessing. I think Hillary Clinton’s emotional moment in New Hampshire was a compelling emotional moment. But did it turn the election? I find that a dubious proposition.
Mitt Romney—I thought he seemed down, depressed, and as if his whole world were caving in. Other pundits thought it was his best speech of the campaign—candid, genuine and personal.
Mike Huckabee—He was his usual Huckabee, i.e., funny, personal, emotional, and empathetic. Huckabee is Rush Limbaugh, Ronald Reagan, James Carville and Gomer Pyle combined. He looked and sounded like a winner.
John Edwards—He is Mr. Sunshine. You might not like his populist, left-wing politics, but Edwards has a strong grasp of classical oratory. He doesn’t talk about “people” who need healthcare. He talks about “Natalie” who needs a liver operation by 10 AM tomorrow. He is extraordinarily clear, understandable and memorable.
John McCain—What an awful speech! He read, head down, poorly. Whether he was stumbling on his own lines or repeatedly poorly written bromides, McCain did himself no good.
Hillary Clinton—“I found my own voice”—great sound bite from Clinton. She resisted gloating after the whole world had written her off. Clinton did a great job of speaking in an earnest, conversational manner. She resisted the urge to increase her volume, which tends to make her sound stilted and condescending. It was a euphoric speech in front of a euphoric audience.
Barack Obama—Obama played it exactly right—he properly congratulated Senator Clinton, and then he proceeded to give a speech exactly as if he had won the election. It reminds me of precisely how Bill Clinton handled his second place finish in 1992. Obama did a great job of concealing what must have been extreme disappointment about losing a race that nearly every poll said he would win by double digits. P.S. Obama did a fantastic job of using a teleprompter!
Below you will find a real time analysis of both the Democratic and Republican Presidential debates.
Here is final analysis of the Democratic debate.
This seems like a horrible dodge, but I have to give a three-way tie for first to John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. all three were at their best. They all played to their strengths. No one made any big blunders or mistakes. Each used compelling logic and made forceful appeals, plus showed signs of likability.
Richardson had a few good moments, but he was clearly not at the same level as the top tier candidates in terms of his polish, positioning or presentation skills.
