From Walter Shapiro at The New Republic:
Through most of his inaugural primetime press conference, Barack Obama seemed like he was channeling a particularly loquacious combination of Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, and the ghost of Hubert Humphrey. The president's response to the first question from the Associated Press about the risks of sounding too apocalyptic about the economy ran (or, to be more accurate, crawled) for nearly 1,200 words--and ended with Obama saying "Okay" with an implicit question mark as if he were requesting permission to keep on talking. . . .
What Obama was decidedly not Monday night was Kennedy-esque. When JFK unveiled the live presidential primetime press conference 48 years ago, he answered 37 questions in the space of 40 minutes; Obama only half-responded to 13 questions in the space of an hour. . . .
the next time that Obama tries it, he might consider taking his stage cues from that White House master of brevity known as Silent Cal Coolidge.
2 comments:
Yup. I'd have to agree. I watched last night, and even I found his answers circular and overly "wordy."
Someone on his staff has to tell him that he doesn't need to go out there to prove he knows the history of economics in general; he needs to be precise, concise, and more forceful.
I noticed that he's still married to the teleprompter.
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