Boooring. Obama was at his most professorial. He looked presidential, which was enough to give him the win. McCain was more articulate than one would expect from his campaign sound bites. Obama was clever enough not to use terms his audience wouldn't recall from their own history. McCain, not so much (SDI, George Schultz, etc.) Jim Lehrer looked boggled. The audience was whipped into submission and could have been anywhere--at a funeral in Des Moines or a school spelling bee in Dubuque. As Nutty Professor Ralph Nader later said, the winners were corporate interests, nuclear power, etc.
Although McCain tried to make us think that across-the-aisle Ted Kennedy was getting last rites, it turned out that the DOA was really Paul Newman. So sad--not only was he a joyful actor, but he gave a ton of money to good causes, including schools.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
When you use the word "professorial" as a perjorative in describing Obama's debate style, you merely reinforce the pervasive national fear of any form of articulate thoughtfulness. Why is this something to discredit?It's bad enough that intelligent progressives have allowed conservatives to villify the word "liberal," as if it were some ideological form of cancer. But when you begin criticizing a gifted politician's manner because it too closely resembles that of your college teachers, you show the same shallowness that you rightly condemn in the narrow-minded opposition. Surely you can do better than this!
Stoat
You're quite right. Perhaps "pedantic" is better. "Professorial" doesn't provide the correct connotation of dry, uninspiring, bloodless delivery. I had many professors who were funnier and quicker to capture an audience. We know BO can do that in a speech, so why he can't pull it off in a debate is beyond me.
It may be because in a speech, the speaker builds rhetorically, while in a debate with only 5 minutes to respond, it is difficult to build that rhetorical momentum. And Obama is not reading prepared remarks -- he is thinking as he speaks, which may cause him to speak more slowly and more deliberately than he would while reciting a memorized speech. Why is that a bad thing? Wouldn't you rather have a measured, thoughtful delivery than a wildly impassioned 5 minutes of blather (see Sarah Palin interview)?
DZ
Sure. I didn't say it was bad. I said it was boring. Was there any sense that the world is teetering on the verge of financial ruin? There's a big difference between causing the people to live in unnecessary fear, a la "the sky is falling" Bush, and fiddling while Rome burns. I could have used a modicum of passion, if only to keep me awake past my bedtime.
Have to agree with KAZ (although pedantic is indeed a better term than professorial, as Stoat points out). Obama was pretty bloodless, and on top of that he spoke too fast and had too many "ums" and "uhs" -- which is perfectly understandable if you are NOT running for president (and thus not being held to a higher, or perhaps lower, standard), but gave the impression that he was nervous and somewhat uncertain or confused. Not a performance to win many undecided votes.
I've noticed that Obama says "um" and "uh" when he's thinking. It's a vocal tic -- a time-filler that keeps him from saying things that are stupid or meaningless to fill the empty void. And as for being bloodless -- it's a debate, not a gladiatorial competition. We can probably see the latter on Thursday. Do we not want our candidate of choice to be able to speak in a measured, reasoned way? Simply because he doesn't yell or hammer his fists on the lectern doesn't mean he is without passion. He saves his passion for his oratory -- which a debate is not.
DZ
Post a Comment