This is a great article by Stanley Fisher, dean emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, on the clarity of the speeches by candidates Bush & Kerry. His freshmen writing class voted overwhelmingly for George W. Bush after doing a side-by-side comparison of Bush & Kerry's speeches as they were excerpted in the September 8th New York Times. Kerry may be smarter, but he gives a lazy & unfocused speech that wanders all over the place.
He concludes:
So what? What does it matter if Mr. Kerry's words stumble and halt, while Mr. Bush's flow easily from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph? Well, listen to the composite judgments my students made on the Democratic challenger: "confused," "difficult to understand," "can't seem to make his point clearly," "I'm not sure what he's saying," and my favorite, "he's kind of 'skippy,' all over the place."
Now of course it could be the case that every student who voted against Mr. Kerry's speech in my little poll will vote for him in the general election. After all, what we're talking about here is merely a matter of style, not substance, right? And - this is a common refrain among Kerry supporters - doesn't Mr. Bush's directness and simplicity of presentation reflect a simplicity of mind and an incapacity for nuance, while Mr. Kerry's ideas are just too complicated for the rhythms of publicly accessible prose?
Sorry, but that's dead wrong. If you can't explain an idea or a policy plainly in one or two sentences, it's not yours; and if it's not yours, no one you speak to will be persuaded of it, or even know what it is, or (and this is the real point) know what you are. Words are not just the cosmetic clothing of some underlying integrity; they are the operational vehicles of that integrity, the visible manifestation of the character to which others respond. And if the words you use fall apart, ring hollow, trail off and sound as if they came from nowhere or anywhere (these are the same thing), the suspicion will grow that what they lack is what you lack, and no one will follow you.
Nervous Democrats who see their candidate slipping in the polls console themselves by saying, "Just wait, the debates are coming.'' As someone who will vote for John Kerry even though I voted against him in my class, that's just what I'm worried about.
I have to agree with him on this. As a trial attorney, I am a professional persuader. I have to make a majority of jurors vote for me, or I lose. So I have to have a tight focused message for every case.
While the best way to prepare a case is to go over my evidence & arguments again & again & again, I can't spill out all the evidence every time I talk to someone about the case. I need to boil it down to its essence.
I use a simple exercise called the ten word telegram. (Taught to me by a great drama teacher.) For a legal case, that theme must identify the parties, the wrong, & the solution that only the jury can provide. My teacher's example was "Greedy developer poisons village well; he must pay." The words in the telegram must be the most powerful words for conveying what I am trying to say. I write this ten word telegram as soon as I get the case, & then I use it to lead off EVERY COMMUNICATION I have with the court & with opposing counsel until the case is over. Until I hear them repeating it back to me. Then I know I'm in their heads, & they're seeing the case my way.
Unfortunately, John Kerry doesn't have a ten word telegram yet. Why is John Kerry running for President? He can't tell you in a a sentence, or in a paragraph. Not even a chapter. He has to give you the entire book, every time. Aaargh!
John Kerry has been campaigning for the job of President of the United States for over one year now, but he hasn't boiled down his argument one bit. Today I turned on MSNBCCBNNBC & CNN a few time during the morning while Kerry was speaking live. Once again he was giving a 45 minute to one hour policy speech. That's just a crazy way to campaign. Modern communication has come a long way since Daniel Webster could stand in a village square & pontificate for 8 hours or more. People just don't have that kind of attention span any more.
Worse than that, as Mr. Fisher rightly points out, that kind of speech tells me that Kerry hasn't really focused in yet. He doesn't know what the core of his message is yet. What are the crucial contested issues in this election? Why should I vote for John Kerry?
So I offer this word of advice to the Kerry campaign. Boil it down. Say to the candidate when he goes off, "Give it to me a sentence." Give me the ten word telegram.
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