Conservative blogger John Hinderaker has advice for Barack Obama: "Take public speaking lessons from George W. Bush!" (link: TPM)
Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. [italics mine] If Obama doesn’t raise his standards, he will exceed Bush’s total before he is inaugurated.
Accidental Blogger 
5 responses to “Learning at the feet of the master”
Of course, Obama could definitely learn from this ‘master’ ;)
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I will actually miss Bushism though not the Bush Doctrine.
Obama would better watch out a bit. He can be carelessly cocky sometimes (remember “You are likeable enough, Hillary,” during the N.H. debate?) and now he will be hanging out with Rahm Emanuel a lot.
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I’m also gonna miss the catalog of Bush’s mangluage. (Sometimes, though, I think Weisberg’s unfair. “The German asparagus are fabulous,” for instance, is fabulous.) So I’ll be grateful we’ve got Emanuel to kick around, not so much like a can down the road as like Nixon. Still, nothing beats this treatment of Thomas Friedman as superficial literate.
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Thomas Friedman is rich source material.
One of my favorite Harper’s items was a sort of blank verse poem that one of their interns created several years ago by compiling sentences she extracted from Friedman’s editorials:
And now for a wild prediction. Real men drill wells. Don’t know if they’re right, but you gotta root for them. Deep down they all know it and they admit it to each other in private. You have to admire it. Because they are anything but crazy. Normally I wouldn’t mind. But perfect isn’t on the menu anymore. Think about it. This is dangerous. No really. It’s pathetic when you think about it but also sad. Yes, yes, yes. No, no, no. Woo, woo, woo. That’s embarrassing. Gotta tell you, it’s the darndest thing I’ve ever seen. But you have to love this figure. It’s kind of a two-for-one deal. A plus B equals C, but what will C be? Or does he know that I know that he knows? Say what? You guessed it. Not a bad deal. But guess what? There is a wall. Several actually. And that’s the drama. But hopeless? Stay tuned. This is going to get interesting.
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The review of Friedman’s book linked above was too hilarious. I haven’t read the book, but knowing Friedman et al, and judging from the excerpts, the reviewer is almost too kind in focusing on its literary failures, leaving the reader to conclude for herself the hopeless (yet often infuriating) logical circularity of the rah-rah capitalism arguments.
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