OK. So I'm a stickler when it comes to the virtues of
warming up an audience. Some don't. Some speakers launch right in by telling
stories or relating funny anecdotes. I've done it myself.
BUT … and this is the key … I've only done that when the
audience members already had a mostly favorable view of me. I didn't have to
warm them up.
Compare that to the jarring beginning of President Bush's
wooden address to the nation on Jan. 10. Already down in the polls – I mean,
way down in the polls – with an electorate that thinks his strategy in Iraq has failed
and that has no confidence in him as a leader – he starts off his "new way
forward" speech in the most impersonal way possible.
"THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. Tonight in Iraq, the Armed Forces of the United States are engaged in a struggle that will determine the direction of the global war
on terror -- and our safety here at home. The new strategy I outline tonight
will change America's course
in Iraq,
and help us succeed in the fight against terror. "
Um. OK. That's kind of like trying to get a woman who you've
stood up twice before at the wedding chapel to go through the whole shebang
again by saying: "Tonight, thousands of couples are engaged to be married
for a life of wedded bliss. The marriage I have outlined for us will change
your life forever."
Maybe it will and maybe it won't. First, you'll have to get
her to the chapel. President Bush, in many ways, was still standing on the
front stoop, trying to plead his case twenty minutes after he started to a
potential partner that never even opened the door.
And why would Americans open the door for him? He gave them no
reasons to listen from the very beginning. The newscasters on CNN pointed out
ahead of the speech that President Bush was giving this speech from the White
House library in hopes of giving it a warmer feel. Too bad the words didn't
match the setting.
Instead of the wooden recitation of the obvious that he did
present, how about instead trying to curry a little favor with the American
people by acknowledging up front that he knows they're concerned? That he knows
American men and women are in harms way? That he realizes many American worry
that the wheels have come off the freedom express and the whole thing is
careening toward a deep chasm?
Acknowledging the audience's concerns is a good way to get
from arms-folded stoicism to ears-opened engagement. Unfortunately, at the end
of his 20 wooden minutes of prime time rhetoric (apologies to Aristotle), the
bride was no closer to walking down the aisle than before.
