Obama eloquent without TelePrompTer

Thursday, February 11, 2010

To the Editor,

One of the most frequent criticisms of President Barack Obama by “your average Joe” conservative Republican is to belittle his eloquence by frequently referring to a presumed reliance upon TelePrompTers. It’s an absurd criticism when it’s common knowledge that every politician facing a national audience relies upon them to remain on message.

Bush used TelePrompTers, but it didn’t help him much. Let’s recall this from a 2004 campaign speech about medical tort reform: “Too many good docs are getting out of business! Too many OB-GYNs are unable to practice their love with women all across this country.” He had TelePrompTers right in front of him while he was stumping, but he still messed up.

Even though Obama uses TelePrompTers for speeches, he’s still extremely eloquent without them. This was on full display when he faced the Republican House caucus for bipartisan dialogue, and, without any TelePrompTer at all, fielded questions from the audience artfully, eloquently and off-the-cuff. What a mistake it was for the House Republicans to give him that chance.

During the State of the Union address, Barack Obama said that Republicans and Democrats had to work together to change the tone in political dialogue because the country is losing confidence in government.

Republicans have no incentive to meet him in the middle when he’s already there. Jeopardizing confidence in government is their mission when their agenda is to de-fund it however they can in order to rescue their chief constituency, “the haves and the have-mores,” from taxation.

STEPHEN D. CLARK

Merrimack