Stump Speech by George Caleb Bingham
With more and more access to the candidate’s speeches through their own web sites and independent sources such as YouYube, more people than ever have heard the candidates giving something other than a one-minute sound bite on the nightly news. Curiously, this has lead to what can only be called a step back in time, since technology is allowing us access to candidates on a level unprecedented since a century ago. The campaign speech which many-including me-had once regarded as dying art may be making a come back.
That is good news for all of us, for by hearing a whole speech-or most of it-it will allow us to better evaluate a candidate’s overall philosophy and stand on various issues. For the past few presidential elections Democrats have decided the way to win elections is to issue elaborate position papers that provide a laundry list of what programs they will implement.
This lead to such disasters as the infamous Kerry/Edwards Plan for America that was-do you believe this-150 pages. I read that plan from cover to cover but this achievement probably puts me in as select a group as those who have reached the summit of Mt. Everest (believe me, that read was a tough climb).
A quote opening the section titled, “Building a Strong Economy” provides a perfect example: “I believe the measure of a strong economy is a growing middle class, where every American has the opportunity to success.” The tortured grammar (didn’t these people have a proofreader?) says all we need to know about the Democrats’ problems. Diagram the sentence the way those little old ladies who taught me high school English would, standing at the blackboard with chalk in hand. The phrase after the comma would have to modify “middle class.” Like fingernails running down a blackboard, the implications of that comma–those not in the middle class have little opportunity for success–would certainly raise eyebrows. Martin Luther King would be outraged.
Yet how many people read that sentence? And how many more realized its implications? How many read it as an expression of the values of John Kerry? If we had, it might have provided a clue as to why John Kerry lost�he wrote off people who were not middle class. He wrote off people of color.
Like the Kerry-Edwards tome, for many years now there almost seemed to be a contest to see which candidate could built the highest mound of paper. Some still believe that is the way to the nomination. Somehow the thickness of their plans was supposed to indicate their leadership abilities which is a bit like evaluating offensive linemen only on the basis of their weight. The more words, the smarter, the more well-versed the candidate, even though every one of us knew these ponderous tomes came from the keyboards of hacks paid to write them and other hacks paid to figure out what to put in them.
When Kerry kept referring to his plan in the debates with George W. Bush, even giving us the web site address, I kept hoping some reporter would actually read it and ask him a question about something on page 89 just to see if the candidate really knew what was in the plan. My guess is that most candidates with such ponderous plans do not everything that is in them–how could they? It would take quite a mind to remember all 150 pages of anything.
Even more ridiculous, all of us also know that such plans are not worth the poor trees sacrificed to print them or the bandwidth and hard drive space needed to hold them. There has yet to be a candidate who could completely carry out all the details in any plan. Being president isn’t like building a house; it’s about the ability to adroitly maneuver in the face of opposition, all the while maintaining a consistent set of values.
Franklin Roosevelt did not issue any 150-page plan to solve the Great Depression, nor did anyone expect him to. They wanted to know what he stood for. Most of all, they wanted to know if he cared about the plight of the average American and was willing to do whatever it took to get them back to work.
They found out those things by listening to FDR’s speeches, in person, on the radio or reading them in the newspapers (back then some printed the entire text). Now we may be seeing a return to those days. Candidates are realizing that a lot of people will journey to their web sites and listen to or read their speeches. Others will hear them on blog sites or places such as National Public Radio.
This time around those ponderous tomes will no longer work. People want to hear the kind of speech FDR gave, which was short on specific programs but long on values and principles. Yes, there are still some issues where we want specifics-most notably Iraq-but even then what we are searching for is more along the lines of, “Is this candidate going to continue to allow people to die for a country that wants us out before the end of the year?” And also, “Can this candidate give us some basic principles that will govern their Iraq policy?” “What is their measure of success for Iraq?”
We still have yet to hear George W. Bush specifically answer any of these questions. Back during the Vietnam War, “Why are we in Vietnam” was a major question. At least Lyndon Johnson could evoke his famous dominoes, even if they ere an illusion, but George Bush does not seem to be able to articulate anything even that specific.
So, in the months ahead I urge everyone reading this post to get to various sites and listen to the candidates for themselves. Then let’s use this blog and email and any other tools we have to let each other know what is in those speeches and what we think of them.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project report on the 2006 campaign found that 23% of what they termed “campaign Internet users” participated in this type of online activism. It would be great if we could double or even triple that number for 2008. Twenty percent got their information from blogs. We bloggers have an unprecedented opportunity to help take back our democracy from the advertisers and the pundits and the news babblers. Let’s go for it!
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