William Katz: Great speech, I'll vote for the other guy
Occasional contributor Bill Katz now posts daily at Urgent Agenday, though he has promised to save his longer reflections on life and politics for us. Bill reflected for us most recently on "Alfred Hitchcock and the 2008 election." Today he reflects on the role of speechifying in presidential politics:
Those who’ve read these pieces know that I was a talent coordinator on The Tonight Show. When the staff met with Johnny Carson, in an office overlooking Radio City Music Hall, one thing was constantly drummed into our heads: Substance. Carson, a master of his game, knew that the talent of a guest wasn’t enough. The guest had to have something to say. If the guest ran out of material, or interesting stories, the guest was inducted into our alumni hall of fame. Hollywood is filled with people who thought they could drop in at The Tonight Show, say a couple of witty things, smile for the civilians, and leave. They would in fact leave, never to return.To comment on this post, go here.I thought about that lesson in the days before Super Tuesday, as the huge wave of Obamamania rolled over me. Here, we were told, was a great speaker. As Sinatra might have put it, leave us we should count the ways. He is 1) inspiring, 2) dynamic, 3) articulate, 4) intellectual, and 5) human. He is the Obama, and we will go crazy for him because he is such an orator.
Carson had a line for hype like that: Aren’t we lucky.
Granted, Barack Obama is a terrific speaker. But how important is his oratory, or anyone else’s, in a presidential campaign? Well, the Gallup organization took a poll on this very question in January. This is what they found:
“Even though Americans value having an inspiring president, they give higher priority to a leader who has been tested when asked to choose between two hypothetical candidates as defined by these two dimensions. Fifty-two percent of Americans say they would prefer the 2008 presidential election winner to be ‘a candidate who is a tested leader but who is not that inspiring’ while 43% say it would be better to elect ‘a candidate who is inspiring but who has not been tested as a leader.’”That’s pretty much in line with the history of the last 75 years.After all, in the 1950s we were madly for Adlai. Like Obama, he was from Illinois, and he too was a great speaker. I remember Adlai Stevenson well. I stood right behind him as he addressed a huge crowd in our high-school gymnasium. Pearls came from his mouth, veritable pearls. But Adlai got buried in two presidential elections by Dwight Eisenhower, whose speaking abilities ranked somewhere between Yogi Berra and a silent movie. Eisenhower, though, was a tested leader.
Then there was Jack Kennedy. Now there was a guy who could command a room. I was in the hall on November 4, 1960, in Chicago, when Kennedy proposed the Peace Corps. There he was, his right hand jutting into space to underline every point. The girls squealed. They jumped at every Jack gesture. But, despite his inspiration quotient, Jack Kennedy lost the women’s vote to Richard Nixon, and barely inched by on election day. If truth be told, he may even have lost on that day before Hollywood accounting was applied to the Chicago vote totals.
Douglas MacArthur? He was one of our finest orators, eloquent and dramatic. He was known almost as much for his style as for his generalship. He could thrill an audience or send a West Point team on to victory. He wanted desperately to be president. He didn’t get to be president. He didn’t even get close.
The point here is this: I looked back as far as the 1930s and concluded that great speaking is vastly overrated as a political weapon. In fact, in presidential politics, the better speaker often loses. Though no spellbinder, Thomas E. Dewey in 1948 was a far better speech maker than Harry Truman. He lost. Hubert Humphrey was actually a distinguished orator, especially on the floor of the United States Senate. In 1968 he lost to the same Dick Nixon whom Kennedy may have beaten. We mentioned poor Adlai, now largely forgotten. Al Gore, again no candidate for Mr. Excitement, was far more articulate than was George W. Bush. He lost in 2000, although the Daily Kos is still holding out.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was a fine speaker, but it wasn’t his public speeches that endeared him to millions. It was his fireside chats, person to person, through a radio. We remember Rooseveltian phrases like “day of infamy” or “rendezvous with destiny.” But consider these lines:
"I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking – with the comparatively few who understand the mechanics of banking but more particularly with the overwhelming majority who use banks for the making of deposits and the drawing of checks. I want to tell you what has been done in the last few days, why it was done, and what the next steps are going to be.”There’s not a memorable phrase there, no soaring or inspiring rhetoric. But that’s solid writing, and perfect for the occasion, Roosevelt’s first fireside chat, delivered by radio on March 12, 1933.What did those words have? Well, to start, they were personal. “I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States…” But they had something else. They had substance. The president is going to tell us specifically what he’s done. He’s going to explain why. And he’s going to reveal what comes next. The rest of the speech did all three.
There was probably only one candidate whose rhetoric was critical in sending him to the White House. He was a man who was laughed at, ridiculed, but who filled his speeches not only with inspiring lines, but with substance, and more substance. He was, of course, Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s task in 1980, running against an incumbent, was to convince the American people that he was up to the job, that he was a president, not an actor filling the role. Consider these words, about the federal government:
“In the 34 years since the end of World War II, it has spent $448 billion more than it has collected in taxes -- $448 billion of printing-press money, which has made every dollar you earn worth less and less. At the same time, the federal government has cynically told us that high taxes on business will in some way "solve" the problem and allow the average taxpayer to pay less. Well, business is not a taxpayer; it is a tax collector. Business has to pass its tax burden on to the customer as part of the cost of doing business. You and I pay taxes imposed on business every time we go to the store. Only people pay taxes, and it is political demagoguery or economic illiteracy to try and tell us otherwise.”Ronald Reagan won. Johnny Carson wasn’t wrong.
I don’t know what Mr. Obama’s future will be. He’s an exciting speaker, but his speeches have the substance of a vacant apartment. He might just get by. After all, there are other things propelling his candidacy. But he might also look back on our history and realize that rhetoric alone rarely carried the day. If anything, it can, especially with the intimacy of television, wear out its welcome and become tedious.
The conventions will be held in the summer. The election is nine months away. While I won’t be voting for Mr. Obama, I will be interested to see if he can put some furniture in the room.
