HappySqurriel said:
There is a rationalization for the use of the teleprompter, but the rationalization is not something that most Obama supporters are willing to give. The justification is George W. Bush ... When a person regularly makes long speeches or presentations which are not carefully scripted they’re likely going to make mistakes; there are lots of reasons for this, and it is not (necessarily) a sign of stupidity or someone being ill informed, it is simply a "Feature" of being human. Now, people probably are wondering why this has to do with George W. Bush but I will explain. Every speech George W. Bush gave during his presidency was closely scrutinized by his opponents, and whenever he made a mistake on film it was taken out of context and used to argue that he was remarkably stupid. Obama and his handlers are not stupid or naïve, and they all know that that when Obama goes off script he stops sounding like “The One”, starts "Um-ing" and "Ah-ing", and makes as many (if not more) mistakes that are as bad (or worse) than anything Bush did. |
I agree totally, but I would explicitly take the point you've made to its final conclusion in saying that neither of them are stupid, dumb, or any other colorful language for which the politically divisive find useful in their commentary. They are just human. The oddity of their situation is not their liability for making mistakes but rather the scrutiny that each word they utter comes under.
And I don't think it is at all cynical to say the scrutiny is due, in majority, to a desire by their opposition to undermine their authority and credability through "tempest in a teapot" rhetoric. It is, to borrow a phrase, the politics of personal destruction.
In fact this sort of tactic falls under rules #5 and #11 on Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals:
"Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
....
Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame."
These two rules combined do a fantastic job of summing up what the political environment has become in the last decade. While Alinsky may have been a liberal it would be a farce to say the right hasn't attempted to copy this strategy...intentionally or not.
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| To Each Man, Responsibility |
