At long last I have noticed the obvious: candidates for president have a stump speech, which they give in a manner that looks fresh and extemporaneous, but is in fact very well practiced and repeated several times a day. Some of the set speech comes as a set introduction and some of it comes as answers to familiar and predictable questions, in which case the candidate inserts the appropriate, well practiced two minute response.
Seeing multiple events by the same candidate make this obvious. The Christie talk about addiction that went viral is essentially verbatim the same thing I heard back in September and again on Saturday. I had assumed Rubio had superhuman skills in eloquence. Now I realize he is repeating lines. He does it really well, but so does Carly Florina. Rubio and Florina have rapid fire delivery, soaring words of civic idealism gushing out in perfect sentences and paragraphs. Christie is equally well practiced, but he delivers in a slower manner, heavy with emotion.
At this point in the campaign candidates are actors, doing a performance of lines.
Of course they sound eloquent, the lines perfect, delivered without mis-step. So did Allison Janney and Bradley Whitford actors playing CJ Craig and Josh Lyman on The West Wing, saying well crafted memorized lines written for them by Aaron Sorkin. The performers I am seeing here in New Hampshire are actors playing themselves, reading lines presumably written by themselves, the subject being themselves, with the candidate taking full political responsibility for the lines they say, presumably saying them fully in the first person.
But with the exception of Bernie Sanders, who appears to me in politics and in life to be sincere to the bone, all of the candidates seem to me to be more like Steven Colbert (with the character “Steven Colbert”, a noxious right wing blowhard of the same name and body) than they are like Bernie Sanders. The candidates are playing characters who are cleaned up versions of themselves, morphed somewhat to fit the political need. They act a role that is plausible and non-disprovable, a role they hope to be able to sustain, a role that fits a strategy they hope will lead to election victory.
Carly Florina describes herself as a secretary (leaving out the fact that she was a secretary with a Stanford degree)
Ben Carson describes himself as a redeemed teenage sociopath
Hillary Clinton is tacking left to squeeze Bernie
Christie says he is not a viscous bully, but rather simply the good son of a Sicilian mother
I watched John Kasich in three different venues over a 12 hour period. His performance is the one at greatest variance from that of Rubio and Florina, since Kasich seemed least practiced. His Town Hall persona was consistent with his filing day comments at the NH capitol building and the comments to supporters at a bar across the street from the capitol. Same person, but different words. If he was reciting lines in his Town Hall, he had not yet mastered them, since he was conversational rather than polished and eloquent. His message was that governing is difficult, few people are good at it, that it is learned, that he is experienced, and he has a track record of success. About 100 people came to see him on Friday evening in Londonderry, a suburb of Manchester. Saturday afternoon in the same town 500 people showed up to see Carly Florina, whose performance was perfectly polished and rapid-fire and polished. Imagine CJ Craig.
Seeing multiple events by the same candidate make this obvious. The Christie talk about addiction that went viral is essentially verbatim the same thing I heard back in September and again on Saturday. I had assumed Rubio had superhuman skills in eloquence. Now I realize he is repeating lines. He does it really well, but so does Carly Florina. Rubio and Florina have rapid fire delivery, soaring words of civic idealism gushing out in perfect sentences and paragraphs. Christie is equally well practiced, but he delivers in a slower manner, heavy with emotion.
At this point in the campaign candidates are actors, doing a performance of lines.
Of course they sound eloquent, the lines perfect, delivered without mis-step. So did Allison Janney and Bradley Whitford actors playing CJ Craig and Josh Lyman on The West Wing, saying well crafted memorized lines written for them by Aaron Sorkin. The performers I am seeing here in New Hampshire are actors playing themselves, reading lines presumably written by themselves, the subject being themselves, with the candidate taking full political responsibility for the lines they say, presumably saying them fully in the first person.
But with the exception of Bernie Sanders, who appears to me in politics and in life to be sincere to the bone, all of the candidates seem to me to be more like Steven Colbert (with the character “Steven Colbert”, a noxious right wing blowhard of the same name and body) than they are like Bernie Sanders. The candidates are playing characters who are cleaned up versions of themselves, morphed somewhat to fit the political need. They act a role that is plausible and non-disprovable, a role they hope to be able to sustain, a role that fits a strategy they hope will lead to election victory.
Carly Florina describes herself as a secretary (leaving out the fact that she was a secretary with a Stanford degree)
Ben Carson describes himself as a redeemed teenage sociopath
Hillary Clinton is tacking left to squeeze Bernie
Christie says he is not a viscous bully, but rather simply the good son of a Sicilian mother
I watched John Kasich in three different venues over a 12 hour period. His performance is the one at greatest variance from that of Rubio and Florina, since Kasich seemed least practiced. His Town Hall persona was consistent with his filing day comments at the NH capitol building and the comments to supporters at a bar across the street from the capitol. Same person, but different words. If he was reciting lines in his Town Hall, he had not yet mastered them, since he was conversational rather than polished and eloquent. His message was that governing is difficult, few people are good at it, that it is learned, that he is experienced, and he has a track record of success. About 100 people came to see him on Friday evening in Londonderry, a suburb of Manchester. Saturday afternoon in the same town 500 people showed up to see Carly Florina, whose performance was perfectly polished and rapid-fire and polished. Imagine CJ Craig.
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| Carly Fiorina, smiling for this selfie, hoping I would post it on line in service to her campaign to be elected US President |
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| Chris Christie,a candidate smiling for this, in the hope that I would post it and it would help him get elected. |
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| Hillary Clinton, pretending to enjoy posing and greeting warmly some 160 people in 40 minutes |
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| John Kasich, presidential candidate, willing to cooperated in this selfie with a stranger, doing it in the service of getting publicity |
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| Steve Colbert, acting the role of "Steve Colbert", a character who is a right wing TV pundit with the same name and same body |
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