Healthy Influence Blog

Yesterday, President Bush delivered a speech on the current economic challenges we face and what to do about them. Whether you agree or disagree with his plans or policy, most folks will agree that he is not a great public speaker and that this speech is yet another bad example of his poor technique. Gail Collins, an editorialist with the New York Times, offers a fair assessment.

This is not the first time Bush’s attempts to calm our fears redoubled our nightmares. His first speech after 9/11 — that two-minute job on the Air Force base — was so stilted that the entire country felt like heading for the nearest fallout shelter. After Katrina, of course, it took forever to pry him out of Crawford, and then he more or less read a laundry list of Goods Being Shipped to the Flood Zone and delivered some brief assurances that things would work out.

O.K., so he’s not good at first-day response. Or second. Third can be a problem, too. But this economic crisis has been going on for months, and all the president could come up with sounded as if it had been composed for a Rotary Club and then delivered by a guy who had never read it before. “One thing is certain that Congress will do is waste some of your money,” he said. “So I’ve challenged members of Congress to cut the number of cost of earmarks in half.”

Besides being incoherent, this is a perfect sign of an utterly phony speech. Earmarks are one of those easy-to-attack Congressional weaknesses, and in a perfect world, they would not exist. But they cost approximately two cents in the grand budgetary scheme of things. Saying you’re going to fix the economy or balance the budget by cutting out earmarks is like saying you’re going to end global warming by banning bathroom nightlights.

I saw the speech on CSPAN and would have to agree with Collins’ evaluation. Like almost every policy speech I’ve seen Mr. Bush deliver, there just not much speaking skill there. (Realize that we’re not talking about the speech content, right, just the delivery.) Especially when he is giving a speech that has any serious persuasive intent, he tends to come across as wooden, rote, somewhat bored, and definitely eager to finish the damn thing so he can finally get to his dessert. I suspect that he really doesn’t like these kind of speeches.

However, when the speech does not have persuasive intent, Mr. Bush is an effective public speaker. If you’ve seen any of his White House Correspondent’s Dinner speeches, Mr. Bush is funny, at ease, and focused. He enjoys the moment, slows down a bit (for him), and connects with his message and audience. He is also an excellent ceremonial speaker when recognizing others. He comes across as sincere, thoughtful, and, again, connected to the message and the audience. In those ceremonial settings, as when giving awards, he comes across as someone who feels the humanity of the moment and who wants everyone to understand and like the award receipient.

Thus, there is a clear interaction going on here. Mr. Bush is not a poor public speaker. He’s just not a great persuasive public speaker. In persuasive contexts, Mr. Bush’s words are guarenteed to generate conflict, while in ceremonial settings, this conflict is less likely. Then he can relax, not worry too much about how the “opposition” will react and just give a natural, at ease performance.

I further speculate that Mr. Bush has learned through painful professional experience that unless you have great persuasive speaking skill, when you’re in a fight, such speeches will not be the crucial tool in your success or failure.

Please consider this thought experiment. Imagine that Mr. Bush is as good a public speaker as . . . Martin Luther King, Jr. or Winston Churchill or John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan . . . but he did everything else (most notably, Iraq) the same way. Do you believe that the editorial board of the New York Times would have a significantly more positive view of Iraq as a result? Wouldn’t he just be a more artful liar?

I strongly believe that persuasive skill in public speaking is a valuable leadership quality, but it is by no means the most important or even crucial attribute. Mr. Bush clearly knows how to develop strong interpersonal networks with key people, then activate those connections to deliver resources when he needs them. He is smarter than many political leaders at identifying correctly the essential people and resources he must attract to achieve his goals. I think he uses persuasive public speaking to generate just enough support from “the people” to keep a hot pot from boiling over.

This offends people who believe in “the word” and the art of speaking - the chattering classes who populate mass media. If you make your living with the word, then a guy like Bush, who clearly doesn’t have the same value, annoys you greatly. But, you need to take a broader view of leadership and persuasion. No one gets to be elected and the re-elected President without having great persuasion skills.