The New York Times had an interesting article yesterday on John McCain's struggles with the teleprompter. I feel for the guy. I suspect that using a teleprompter is hard; I'd really like to try one sometime and see just how difficult it is. Trying to insert feeling into your speech while the words scroll by has got to be a painful experience.
Yet the article and its angle infuriates me. As I've argued here before (aided by hilzoy), John McCain has a serious problem with the facts. Given that McCain intends to devote this week to the economy, my favorite malfunction is likely to arise again. McCain consistently proposes a "stimulus" package for the economy that he then turns around and says he'll "pay for" with spending cuts. John, John, John. It's not a stimulus package if it's revenue neutral. If you do not inject money into the economy, no stimulus occurs. Really. It's Econ 101, as Kal Goldberg taught me at Bradley oh so many years ago. And a new fun "assumption" is surfacing. How will McCain pay for his tax cuts? Victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's right, McCain will save money by winning the wars and, what, bringing our troops home? Or what? This might be the silliest thing he's said. Has he changed his war policy? Has he noticed that Afghanistan is getting steadily worse?
Now, what does this have to do with speech delivery? McCain's problems may have something to do with the technology of the teleprompter--he can't use a personal computer, so he's never read anything off of any sort of screen--but speakers have problems with texts when they play no role in the composition and when they don't know anything about the subject. That's true of McCain in spades. He simply doesn't know very much and he's proved that again and again. This NYT article gives the same excuses and offers the same sorts of obfuscation as those about Bush in 2000. Well, he has trouble with the technology. Well, people prefer someone to be authentic. Well, it's just words.
Enough. McCain has trouble when he doesn't understand the topic of the speech. And there are far too many occasions when that is true. John Kennedy gave his civil rights address in 1963 with about three hours notice and when he went on the air, he had no ending. National television. No ending. One of the top 100 speeches of the century, as voted by rhetoric scholars. Now, very few people are John Kennedys. But when you know something, you can speak intelligently about it. John McCain's problems go well beyond the teleprompter. After eight years of Bush, we need a president who knows the facts.
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