Those of us who follow politics more regularly than the average American often consider ourselves, given our familiarity with the political landscape, in a fine position to judge a politician’s speech. And perhaps we are.
We are not, however, in much of a position to gage how a speech resonates with those individuals who only tune into politics when election time rolls ’round — and even then with considerable disinterest.
The general consensus — on both sides of the political aisle — is that First Lady Michelle Obama delivered a humdinger of a speech Tuesday night. But, can we really determine if it will make a difference?
Reviews of former President Bill Clinton’s address were mixed. “Democrats in the convention hall may have loved Bill Clinton’s speech last night,” writes Conn Carroll in the Washington Examiner, but most thought it just went on too long. And that, pundits are certain, will cause people to lose interest. Carroll’s colleague Michael Barone finds the Arkansas native
. . . better suited to the task of instilling talking points than any other Democratic speaker I can think of. But, as he implicitly conceded in his asides, this stuff can get complicated and incomprehensible.
The National Review’s Rich Lowry likes “the instinct to make a wonky case for the president on substance“, but does that resonate with the voter not inclined to politics?
Would those voters buy Clinton’s argument, which Ed Morrissey calls “about the only argument that can be made for Obama, and the one that Obama’s self-assessed grade of ‘incomplete’ suggests — that four years wasn’t enough to fix the huge problems created by the economic crisis“?
Lowry is “not sure how much it will help Obama”. Perhaps, Clinton would have been more effective if he pointed the specific plan his fellow partisan had laid out to “fix” those “huge problems.” But, much of his plan for a second term remains “an open question“, with many of the priorities he has floated far from the concerns of the American voter.
We can’t really tell how Bill Clinton’s speech will play with the voter disinclined to politics. Or whether Mrs. Obama’s, for that matter, will resonate. The real issue is whether the incumbent can convince wavering voters that he has a good plan to end the current economic malaise. And that he has not yet done. Maybe tonight he will.
ADDENDUM: Seems the Washington Post has been fact-checking the Democrats, but will their reports gain as much currency as did the “fact-checking” they did in Tampa?
I can tell you right now that, under Obama’s policies, another four years won’t be enough, either.
It’s Obama’s policies that have prevented recovery. Obama is clueless. He is in way, way over His cute little jug-eared head.
The “neutral” viewer probably thought Michelle was warm and personable and very stunning.
The “neutral” viewer probably started working Sudoku about 10 minutes into the Clinton cram session.
Just how the “neutral” viewer took the booing of putting God back into the platform depends on whether “neutral” means brain dead or not.
Now, how will the “neutral” person proceed from here? He will tune out, drift in, wobble and waiver and wait for the soundbite that cements his choice.
The fact of the matter is, any “neutral” person waiting for glitz and glamour and soundbites and promises and pandering and an epiphany to reach a “decision” is really just a hammer in a box of hammers.
I think the question isn’t just how well a particular speaker’s speech will play with voters but whether it will play at all. Most speeches don’t really get any traction, at least the ones that are not network broadcast, and even the ones that are shown on the major networks are mostly watched by political junkies. Speeches then go through the media filter (unfortunately for us), which basically distills a speech down to a summary no longer than a tweet. And I think when someone hears afterward that so-and-so gave a great speech, I don’t imagine that influences votes unless the person feels compelled to go back and look at the speech. Sometimes though, gaffes are made, and sometimes great arguments or zingers are made.
Clinton wasn’t nearly as rhetorically magical as he has been at various times in the past, and he did go too long, but the interesting thing about his speech is that he actually wonked it up a lot and made consequential arguments rather than just throwing out meaningless platitudes that play on the emotions of those watching but that don’t really make a substantive argument that can be debated later. I don’t agree with his arguments, but he nevertheless put stuff out there that Republicans should be ready to respond to, specifically on welfare reform and medicare. I did think though that it was not politically savvy to be attacking voter ID. That’s one issue where swing voters seem to be very much in agreement with conservatives, and it is especially unhelpful for Democrats, I think, to paint those supporting voter ID as wanting to suppress the minority vote. Clinton has the gravitas, skill, and political capital to reach moderates in a way that really no one else does, but selling Obama’s presidency as something akin to his own is, I think, not even something he can do. Inasmuch as people love Bill Clinton, I think it’s the centrist Bill Clinton they love, not the one defending far-left ideas.
People remember that Obama is the president right now, right? He doesn’t need to be elected in order to do something. He’s had almost 4 years to do something (and 2 years with a Democrat-controlled congress to do pretty much whatever he wanted), and he hasn’t done anything that has worked or put forth a viable plan on what to do next. He’s probably in a better position now than his next term, since Congress is likely to become more heavily Republican then.
Is that a metaphor for “idiot”? This is why I hate democracy. Politicians have to appeal to the idiots or people who aren’t interested in politics to win, which requires that they be sensationalist and appeal to people’s ids or something (or focus more on their “likeability” than policy). One thing Obama being elected tought me (if I didn’t already know this) is that political elections are more about being popular than competent.
Dammit. I misspelled “taught.”