R. Peterson read this item I posted a few days ago, then dashed off the following note to me…
I love your site, and have long been a faithful reader, so I am sorry that my first communication to you is prompted by a complaint–especially one over what may strike you as a trivial matter. (I don't think it's trivial, though, which is why I felt compelled to write.)
In your post on whether Chris Christie would be unelectable because he's "fat"–the thesis of which I entirely agree with–you say that Pres. Obama "relies more on a TelePrompter than some other presidents."
This is entirely baseless. It is one of those lies that has been repeated so often that the sheer repetition has turned it into something "everyone knows." But it's utter nonsense. It could only be considered "true" if the comparison includes presidents who served before the invention of the teleprompter–which is, of course, most of them, but is a meaningless measurement. Obama does not use the teleprompter more than George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, or Ronald Reagan did.
Right-wing critics started the teleprompter business because this is their method: take whatever criticisms of our guys which are somewhat legitimate, and hurl them against their guys, whether they are legitimate or not. Because the news media is predisposed to cover everything in a "he said/she said" manner, this accomplishes two things: it makes the criticism of ours look like merely another opinion, and makes the criticism of theirs appear to have some basis in fact, which everyone must "admit" to, in the interest of "fairness."
So, in this case: George W. Bush was an exceptionally inarticulate president. When he went off script (i.e., when he didn't have the benefit of a teleprompter), he sounded clueless ("Fool me once, shame on…shame on you. Fool me twice…can't get fooled again"). Obama's eloquence and command of facts stand in marked contrast to Bush. It's like night and day, and any objective observer would have to notice this, ideology aside. So it was in the interest of GOP spin doctors to minimize this obvious distinction. So, they had to get people talking about how Obama was inarticulate and unable to speak off the cuff (totally false), to "balance" the fact that Bush was.
It's ludicrous on the face of it. Again, one could support Bush's policies and abhor Obama's, but to suggest that while the former was infamous for his inability to speak off the cuff, the latter is somehow almost as bad flies in the face of observable facts. Obama speaks without a teleprompter quite often, and is always articulate. When Bush spoke without one, he was almost always inarticulate. Obama uses a teleprompter during formal speaking occasions. So did Bush — no difference.
And yet, it worked. Because it's been repeated so often, late night comics started to pick it up. And now, even people like you, who generally support Obama, and clearly know he's much more able to speak off the cuff than Bush, feel they have to "concede" this point.
This might strike you as a paranoid take on the power of the conservative media machine to control minds. But it's a simple technique, and they've done it over and over. See the case of "Al Gore takes credit for everything" for another example. (He said he "invented the internet" — except that he didn't — and through repetition, soon even his supporters had to "concede" that he was a braggart who always took credit he didn't deserve — though I defy anyone to show me using only actual facts that this is more true of Gore than of the average politician.)
Please, please don't lend credence to this lie about Obama's supposed over-reliance on teleprompters. It is utterly baseless. A lie repeated does not become truth.
I pretty much agree with all this, though I might quibble with one leap of logic. I don't think the fact that someone garbles their speech is necessarily indicative of stupidity. I know some smart people who get very tongue-tied in front of a microphone or a large audience and don't come off as intelligent. My problems with George W. Bush were mostly that he had an agenda that I thought was very bad for most of America but very good for a tiny body of already-very-wealthy cohorts, and that I think he talked to us like we were children who could and should be deceived. I never thought he was stupid.
The main thing that bothered me about Bush's verbal gaffes was that his supporters pretended that kind of thing was normal. When a Bill or Hillary Clinton or Al Gore misspoke or misphrased something, that was proof that the speaker was ignorant or a "congenital liar" (that's what William Safire called Ms. Clinton for a statement that turned out to be absolutely true). When G.W. Bush said we'd found Weapons of Mass Destruction or that he'd personally watched TV coverage of the first plane hitting on 9/11, that could be overlooked. Frankly, I think all politicians accidentally say a lot of things that aren't so or are just plain clumsy and that we should forgive a certain amount of that.
You're right. Obama is one of our more articulate politicians and I'm not sure that isn't something that a lot of his detractors especially hate about him. I don't know that he uses a TelePrompter more than any other Chief Exec. If he did, I could certainly make the case that no one else in that office has ever had quite such a mob going over his every syllable looking for ways to use it against him. But I don't think he does. I'm also led to believe that he is the actual author of much of what does appear on his TelePrompter, whereas Bush and some others almost never wrote the speeches they read off theirs.
I always wish that the debates these folks engage in didn't rely so much on short answers to questions for which they usually have anticipated, rote replies. Wouldn't it be nice to hear all our candidates and politicians talk at length in a format for which they can't cram or rehearse? One of the reasons I like Jon Stewart's interviews is that he usually asks his guests valid questions but not ones that they could have expected and prepped for.
Thanks for the message, Mr. Peterson. I think you're right.