On the Eve of the SOTU: Obama the Speechmaker vs. Jobs the CEO
Conventional wisdom – at least for a while – was that Barack Obama was a great public speaker.
Not to me. He always seemed a boring, cliché-ridden bloviator from my perspective, but, of course, like almost everyone else, I’m biased. Still – how about a pop quiz? Can anyone think of anything memorable Obama said in one of his speeches other than hope, change, etc.? Not easy, is it? No Churchillian turns of phrase spring to mind. Well, there is this: “There is no red state America; there is no blue state of America; there is the United States of America.” Ringing words that the President followed about as closely as I followed the Scarsdale Diet for the three days I was on it.
So Ann Althouse asks a good (loaded) question: What are we more excited about – tonight’s State of the Union address or this morning’s Apple Tablet debut? As an Apple “fanboy,” I’m much more curious about the tablet, which now seems may have some kind of “proximity sensor” touch screen. I have very little curiosity – although I will be listening tonight, out of professional obligation more than anything else – about what Barack Obama has to say before Congress. Unlike Steve Jobs, the President almost never delivers on what he says. It’s all “Words! Words! Words!” that we are “sick of,” as Lerner & Lowe would have it. When you never deliver on your speeches, they begin to fall of deaf ears. Gimme Jobs over Obama any time.
Maybe I’ll watch the SOTU on my MacBook Pro. That way I can multi-task.
I’ll be following the SOTU exclusively on VodkaPundit! Steve Green is the only person who could make it bearable.
How about…
“Let me be clear. Change is not easy. Make no mistake.”
I think the photo of Obama and his teleprompters at Falls Church grade school (http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0a7B2Y71ji7IX/610x.jpg) captures perfectly the president’s poor skills of communication.
Probably the reason you have a deafening silence in response to your post is that people are all watching the liveblog of the Apple Event .. and I’m just killing the 5 minutes before it starts!
If the Apple Event was opposite the State of the Union speech, comparing the ratings might be a tad embarrassing. I’m a political junkie but it’s Apple event all the way today
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My lovely new 27″ iMac and I are watching together!
D
I think the SOTU will be more exciting and I’m sure it will be quite dull. No Apple fanboy, me.
I have no intention of watching or listening to The One (and apparently Only) bloviate tonight, thanks to you bloggers who suffer on my behalf.
There’s also “I inherited this mess.”
I’m going to be joining Sally at Vodkapundit. Vodka’s the only way to make SOTU bearable.
For some people, their WORD (and also their words) actually means something,
For others, it’s just noise.
I actually feel a little bit sorry for those who cannot comprehend the difference and don’t give a damn about which category they fall in.
They truly re-define cluelessness.
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Here’s an idea: Obama should use TWO iPads as teleprompters tonight. That’ll make it more interesting.
pfft. Easy.
“I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war.”
Not inspiring or anything, but I still remember it.
Obama is a talented reader of other people’s words. Nothing more.
That’s not a novel assertion, but it is annoying how so many people are realizing this only now when it’s been obvious from the start. If Obama hasn’t come up with any really interesting phrases, then he needs better speech writers because they’re the only ones those phrases were going to come from anyway.
Is the SOTU scheduled before that 6th Grade Class? Well, you might say the Democratic Congress has about as much effectiveness for a prosperous America as 6th graders.
“Can anyone think of anything memorable Obama said in one of his speeches other than hope, change, etc.?”
I dunno — “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” is pretty memorable, though for all the wrong reasons.
..bruce..
Me neither Becky. I can’t stand to listen to him anymore. I am sure we will get the bad news on the inter-webs, or in the paper in the morning.
Let me be the first to say it. After this SOTU, this speech will be known as the “cowbell speech”.
Well, Jobs is an Obambi fanboy, so I guess we know whom he’ll be watching tonight. I won’t. (IIRC, W was a Mac user, too.)
“They behaved stupidly!”
I still marvel at the construction of that sentence. It is so awkward, and childish.
It’s another unforced error…like the Chicago Olympics bid, the Copenhagen climate change, handing the stimulus package to Pelosi, and…..
Come on Roger, be fair. These two are legend. Real Abraham Lincoln, Patrick Henry, George Washington worthy:
(1) “And it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
(2) “There are things you can do individually, though, to save energy. … Making sure your tires are properly inflated – simple thing. But we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling – if everybody was just inflating their tires? And getting regular tune-ups? You’d actually save just as much.”
A hard science degree is usually earned. Somebody possessing a PhD in physics most assuredly is the real deal. But that is not necessarily true in the softer sciences! Affirmative policies were instituted in our universities in the mid to late 1960s. Blacks and other legally protected minorities began receiving inflated grades. A few years later—white students also start getting a piece of the action. In other words, most liberal arts departments have significantly lowered their standards in roughly the last thirty-five years. Barack Obama is merely another poorly educated graduate of our modern era.
I was the only one warning voters that Barack Obama’s Harvard credentials should perhaps not be taken so seriously. Needless to add, I was often ridiculed for my well thought out position. Fewer people are laughing today. They now realize that Obama is an intellectually shallow man.
Two Points:
The only thing I can think of that would be worse than watching tonight’s SOTU would be a rerun of Letterman’s opening monologue at the Oscars (but it would be close);
Thankfully, there’s tonight’s hockey game!
Speaking of speech writing, I humbly submit this re-write of the end of Roger’s penultimate paragraph.
Instead of:
“When you never deliver on your speeches, they begin to fall of deaf ears. Gimme Jobs over Obama any time.”
He should have written:
When you never deliver on your speeches, they begin to fall on deaf ears. Gimme Jobs over Obama promising jobs any time.
Didn’t Obama have those memorable lines:
“You like me. You really like me.”
Oh, wait. That was Sally Field.
Rush Limbaugh is a Mac user and promoter, too. I wonder how Steve Jobs likes that.
Roger, Obama reminds me of another “talented speaker”, Saruman, from The Lord of the Rings.
A line I recall from one of his speeches:
“A salaam aleikum”
(I probably butchered the spelling, but you get the idea)
Government is more predictable and valued than Business. Businesses sometimes make promises they don’t keep, surprising and angering their paying customers. Government makes promises that it almost never keeps. This doesn’t surprise anyone, who are still happy for whatever free help they receive.
Mojavewolf tagged it, “I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war” has got to be his most memorable line. “It was like the special olympics” of speech making.
No wonder he gave Churchill’s bust back. He must have felt two inches tall every time he looked at it.
The gems I remember tripping from his blue-grey lips:
“typical white person”
“and did I mention? He’s black!”
and my all time fave: “…this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow…” or some sloppy swill like that. He even hedges, hems, and haws when his rhetoric is “soaring”.
Best quote so far ABOUT Obama?
“The Ego has landed.”
Superb.
rbj:
There’s also “I inherited this mess.”
That’s what widely separates Jobs and Obama. If you recall, Apple was in dire of irrelevance and was bleeding cash during Spindler-Amelio era. Jobs came in as an “advisor” and then took over as its interim CEO. Not once did he complain about “inheriting the mess” from the previous CEOs. He didn’t keep talking about the previous 8 years before he took over. He did his job. He injected his vision and his work ethic to the company. He trusted the consumers to buy Apple’s products if he did his job right. Even during the failure of the Mac Cube, he didn’t blame consumers for being too stupid to get his vision.
OTOH, Obama kept blaming Bush. He kept referring to the last 8 years or the last decade. He never provided any leadership to the Congress. He didn’t trust Americans to buy his vision and tried to cover up everything with back room deals. When he fails, the Americans are too stupid to realize his grand plan.
Dear Mr. Simon,
Recently I received from you a message regarding the formation of Tea Party TV. You wrote that you would be following and discussing among other things “How the tea party groups are working, or not, with the Republicans, Independents, Libertarians and Democrats.”
In the interest of wishing to help you create a completely accurate accounting of the Tea Party movement, I should like to suggest that hereafter you include reference to Objectivists or, as we are known politically, “Radicals for Laissez-faire Capitalism.” In short, we are admirers of Ayn Rand’s work and philosophy who seek to restore individual rights, limited government and establish a true free-market economy in the United States.
While many Tea Partiers mention these ideas, most do not grasp their full meaning and implication. Consequently, there is lack of coherence and integration that works to undermine their best achievements. One cannot be for individualism, for example, and at the same time denounce those who defend their property rights.
Two exceptionally brilliantly staffed and hard-working organizations work tirelessly to make clear and comprehensible to Americans the meaning of individual rights, limited government and free-market economy. They are staffed by Objectivists, both in academia, the arts and the media. I refer, of course, to the work of The Ayn Rand Institute and The Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.
Yaron Brook, Executive Director of ARI, has a long and impressive record disseminating knowledge and understanding of important philosophical and financial ideas. He has been interviewed countless times on radio and television. He has participated in discussions and panels. His editorials and op-eds and those of his colleagues have appeared hundreds of times in numerous newspapers across the nation, including The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, Investor’s Business Daily, USA Today, during the March on Washington, he was invited to address the crowd from the Capitol steps, and so forth. He has made weekly appearances on PJTV.
I respectively suggest that for your new project, Tea Party TV, you may want to contact him to present a wider perspective of the Tea Party movement. Although not yet widely recognized, those of us who follow Tea Party activities know that the ideas of ARI and ARC are helping to give foundation to a movement which otherwise could easily flounder without a clear and consistently accurate exposition of individual rights, limited government and capitalism.
Thank you for your attention to this e-mail. I hope henceforth that you include identification and recognition of ARI and ARC in reports about your Tea Party TV project. In particular, I hope you identify Objectivists or Admirers of Ayn Rand or Radicals for Laissez-faire Capitalism among those whose work is nor merely a temporary political activist movement but an intellectual force to transform the currently mixed-economy and collectivist culture into one in which reason predominates and individualism is taken for granted as appropriate to man.