Sparrowhawk
09-28-04, 10:06 AM
Who do you feel will win the debate?
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The Atlantic Monthly | July/August 2004
When George Meets John
Presidential debates always put more importance on projecting character than on being right. George W. Bush and John Kerry can both boast of never having lost a debate, though the two candidates rely on strikingly dissimilar sets of skills. A viewer's guide to this fall's version of "asymmetric warfare"
by James Fallows
.....
ecently I saw an amazing piece of political video. It was ten-year-old footage of George W. Bush, and it changed my mind about an important aspect of the upcoming campaign. Because the President so rarely exposes himself to live, unscripted questioning, and because he has expressed himself so poorly the few times he has risked such exposure this year, the political establishment assumes that John Kerry has a big advantage in this fall's debates.
I'm not so sure. Bush has been far more skillful in his debating career than is generally appreciated, and his successes in that realm put his widely noted lack of eloquence in a different light. During his career George Bush's speaking style has changed significantly, which is why the tape from 1994 was so intriguing. But his underlying approach to political communication has been constant—and extremely effective.
In 1994 Bush was an underdog candidate for the governorship of Texas. The incumbent, Ann Richards, was a phenomenon renowned above all for her biting wit. She had attended Baylor University in the 1950s on a debate scholarship. She had become the star of the 1988 Democratic convention with a keynote speech that mocked the elder George Bush: "Poor George. He can't help it! He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." When she first ran for governor, in 1990, Richards made a fool of her Republican opponent, Clayton Williams, with barbs and repartee that provoked him into intemperate outbursts.
As Richards prepared to run for re-election, she faced several obstacles. Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" was about to help the Republicans take control of Congress. The growth of the suburbs was accelerating Texas's shift from a solidly Democratic to a solidly Republican state. And Richards seemed visibly to have lost passion for her job. Her relatively young and inexperienced opponent, whose lackluster business career was his main credential, seemed to be the least of her problems—especially when it came to speaking skills. So great was Richards's perceived rhetorical advantage that the Bush campaign stonewalled in debate negotiations and finally agreed to one debate only, to be held on a Friday night in October two weeks before the election.
This spring I watched dozens of hours' worth of old videos of John Kerry and George W. Bush in action. But it was the hour in which Bush faced Ann Richards that I had to watch several times. The Bush on this tape was almost unrecognizable—and not just because he looked different from the figure we are accustomed to in the White House. He was younger, thinner, with much darker hair and a more eager yet less swaggering carriage than he has now. But the real difference was the way he sounded.
This Bush was eloquent. He spoke quickly and easily. He rattled off complicated sentences and brought them to the right grammatical conclusions. He mishandled a word or two ("million" when he clearly meant "billion"; "stole" when he meant "sold"), but fewer than most people would in an hour's debate. More striking, he did not pause before forcing out big words, as he so often does now, or invent mangled new ones. "To lay out my juvenile-justice plan in a minute and a half is a hard task, but I will try to do so," he said fluidly and with a smile midway through the debate, before beginning to list his principles.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200407/fallows. (The URL for this page is For rest of story click here
http://www.theatlantic.com/images/window-logo.gif
The Atlantic Monthly | July/August 2004
When George Meets John
Presidential debates always put more importance on projecting character than on being right. George W. Bush and John Kerry can both boast of never having lost a debate, though the two candidates rely on strikingly dissimilar sets of skills. A viewer's guide to this fall's version of "asymmetric warfare"
by James Fallows
.....
ecently I saw an amazing piece of political video. It was ten-year-old footage of George W. Bush, and it changed my mind about an important aspect of the upcoming campaign. Because the President so rarely exposes himself to live, unscripted questioning, and because he has expressed himself so poorly the few times he has risked such exposure this year, the political establishment assumes that John Kerry has a big advantage in this fall's debates.
I'm not so sure. Bush has been far more skillful in his debating career than is generally appreciated, and his successes in that realm put his widely noted lack of eloquence in a different light. During his career George Bush's speaking style has changed significantly, which is why the tape from 1994 was so intriguing. But his underlying approach to political communication has been constant—and extremely effective.
In 1994 Bush was an underdog candidate for the governorship of Texas. The incumbent, Ann Richards, was a phenomenon renowned above all for her biting wit. She had attended Baylor University in the 1950s on a debate scholarship. She had become the star of the 1988 Democratic convention with a keynote speech that mocked the elder George Bush: "Poor George. He can't help it! He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." When she first ran for governor, in 1990, Richards made a fool of her Republican opponent, Clayton Williams, with barbs and repartee that provoked him into intemperate outbursts.
As Richards prepared to run for re-election, she faced several obstacles. Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" was about to help the Republicans take control of Congress. The growth of the suburbs was accelerating Texas's shift from a solidly Democratic to a solidly Republican state. And Richards seemed visibly to have lost passion for her job. Her relatively young and inexperienced opponent, whose lackluster business career was his main credential, seemed to be the least of her problems—especially when it came to speaking skills. So great was Richards's perceived rhetorical advantage that the Bush campaign stonewalled in debate negotiations and finally agreed to one debate only, to be held on a Friday night in October two weeks before the election.
This spring I watched dozens of hours' worth of old videos of John Kerry and George W. Bush in action. But it was the hour in which Bush faced Ann Richards that I had to watch several times. The Bush on this tape was almost unrecognizable—and not just because he looked different from the figure we are accustomed to in the White House. He was younger, thinner, with much darker hair and a more eager yet less swaggering carriage than he has now. But the real difference was the way he sounded.
This Bush was eloquent. He spoke quickly and easily. He rattled off complicated sentences and brought them to the right grammatical conclusions. He mishandled a word or two ("million" when he clearly meant "billion"; "stole" when he meant "sold"), but fewer than most people would in an hour's debate. More striking, he did not pause before forcing out big words, as he so often does now, or invent mangled new ones. "To lay out my juvenile-justice plan in a minute and a half is a hard task, but I will try to do so," he said fluidly and with a smile midway through the debate, before beginning to list his principles.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200407/fallows. (The URL for this page is For rest of story click here