Tom Peters: High on rhetoric but low on content?

Although I’ve never seen Tom Peters in action, I’ve heard from people who have that he’s a pretty impressive performer. I also know something about the speaking techniques of ‘management gurus’ from an interesting book called Management Speak: The Live Oratory of Management Gurus (London, Routledge, 2005) by David Greatbatch and Timothy Clark.

But until I came across this short video on YouTube (below), I hadn’t realised just how much and how frequently Mr Peters uses the main rhetorical techniques of contrast, three-part list and puzzle-solution (a device that gets the audience wondering what the solution is going to be, or poses a question before revealing the answer).

How much can you use these techniques?

As you'll see from the transcript below the video, he packages almost everything he says by using one or other of these devices.

It also bears on two intriguing questions that I’m often asked, but to which I have no definitive answer. One is how much of a speech or presentation can be constructed using these devices? On the evidence of this clip, taken on its own, it looks as though the answer is ‘pretty well all of it’.

Content-free presentations?
The second question is whether it's possible, by over-using them, to could produce an 'effective presentation' that's completely lacking in content. One of the best examples I ever heard of anupme coming close to this was the late Peter Sellers, who delivered a parody of a political speech that ended with the immortal line “.. and in conclusion, let me say just this.”

Another was Alan Bennett's sermon on the text "My brother Esau is an hairy man, but I am a smooth man from Beyond the Fringe.

I’ve now watched this clip several times and have to admit that, however impressive his mastery of rhetoric and citation of rhetorically constructed quotations might be, I’m still not sure what exactly it is that Mr Peters is trying to tell us. Maybe one of the other 54,252 who have so far seen it on YouTube could enlighten me.

TRANSCRIPT:
Starts by posing a puzzle that will turn out to be the first one in a sequence of three puzzle-solution fomats in a row:

[P]→ The number one problem with enterprises small or large is: [PAUSE]

The Solution to the puzzle then comes in the form of a somple contrast:

[A]→ too much talk.
[B]→ too little do.

Second (double) puzzle (‘what could this ‘remarkable institution’ and ‘ultimate oxymoron be’?):

[P]→ Now as you know we have this one remarkable institution in the United States, the ultimate oxymoron.

And the solutions (the ‘oxymoron’ is a profitable airline and the institution is South West):

[S]→ A profitable airline. It’s called South West.

Third puzzle (‘what are these words of hers going to be?’):

[P]→ Herb Kelleher the chief executive officer of South West and I agree on the essence of a strategic plan and I love these words of hers:

The solution quotes a puzzle-solution from her (‘what could the strategic plan be?’), solution - ‘doing things’:

[S]→ [P]→ “We have a ‘strategic’ plan.
[S]→ It’s called doing things.”

Then a contrast to underline how important he thinks it is:

[A]→ And literally, as I said, it was number one on my reading list twenty two years ago.
[B]→ It’s number one on my list today.

Followed by an alliterative three-part list (though it’s not very clear how it relates to what went before and what’s coming next):

[1]→ Fail.
[2]→ Forward.
[3]→ Fast.

Then another three part list:

[1]→ No screw-ups
[2]→ No learning.
[3]→ It’s as simple as that.

And two contrasts:

[A]→ No fast screw-ups
[B]→ No fast learning

[A]→ No big screw-ups
[B]→ No big learning

Three sentences set up a puzzle (what could the one favorite slide be out of so many be?):

[P]→ [1]→ Now in my major slide deck at my website there are some twelve hundred slides.
[2]→ By definition one has got to be my favorite.
[3]→ And this next one is my favorite of the twelve hundred, even though I’m using it relatively early in the presentation.

And, to keep the suspense up a bit longer, he extends the puzzle before revealing the solution:

[P]→ Comes from a Sydney Australia exec., and an extremely successful one at that, who said that he owed most of his business success to a simple six word philosophy:

The solution is a contrast, in which each of the three words in the first part contrasts with each of the three words in the second part (reward/punish – excellent/mediocre – failures/successes):

[S]→ [A]→ Reward excellent failures.
[B]→ Punish mediocre successes.

Hardly surprising that he thinks that a contrast with each of the three consecutive words in the first part are followed by three directly opposite words in the second part is a ‘great quote’. And to make the point, his assessment is the first part of another contrast, the second part of which is the first part of yet another contrast:

[A]→ Now I think this is a great quote

[B]→ [A]→ But my goal relative to you is not to have you say “nice quote, Tom”,

[B]→ but to take it literally seriously.

Bobby Kennedy nearly got it right about Obama

The other day, I came across a video on YouTube (see below for the main point, or click on the title for a fuller version of the TV program) claiming that Bobby Kennedy had made an accurate prophesy about how long it would be before an African American became President.

The presenter was, perhaps, a little over eager in trying to make it sound as though Kennedy was right on the button when he said that “a Negro could be President in 40 years”, as the date on the Washington Post story is actually 1961, which was 48 years before 20th January 2009 when Mr Obama actually becomes President.

Extraordinary though Kennedy’s words must have sounded at the time, he has to be admired both for his optimism in a period of such turbulence in the struggle for civil rights and for the near-accuracy of his prediction.

Younger readers should not, by the way, read anything sinister into Kennedy's use of the word ‘Negro’, because it was also used during the same era and without any qualms by Martin Luther King Jr. and more or less everyone else.

‘African American’ may be the ‘politically correct’ description at the moment, but it is only the latest in a series of attempts to eliminate the word ‘Negro’ from everyday usage in the American version of the English language, earlier attempts at which include ‘black’ and ‘persons of colour’.

‘Reliable sources' on where Obama’s 'Yes we can' came from?

On 8th November, the following appeared in the Guardian by Allegra Stratton, who had phoned me the previous day:

Strangest of all, there is a British political scientist who claims he has proof that the actual inspiration for the slogan is Bob the Builder (theme tune: "Can We Fix It?" Answer: "Yes We Can"). Max Atkinson, expert on political rhetoric and author of Lend Me Your Ears, said: "What's so mad about that? I have it on the authority of two very reliable sources."

Er, no. What I actually said when Ms Stratton phoned me about Yes we can and Bob the Builder was that I’d come across two other people who'd made the same connection and that, if true, it wasn’t too difficult to imagine how Mr Obama might have come across it or why he might have had a good reason to use it.

But word must have got around the Guardian offices, because my two allegedly "reliable sources" reappeard on 12th November in another article in the same paper by Alice Wignall:

At least one expert in political rhetoric is convinced: at the weekend, British speechwriter Max Atkinson said that "two very reliable sources" had confirmed that Bob inspired the slogan.

And at least one journalist working for the Sunday Sun in Newcastle must be a Guardian reader, as the same story was recycled again in today's edition:

Max Atkinson, former speech writer for Paddy Ashdown, said that “two very reliable sources” had confirmed to him that Bob was the inspiration for the slogan.

So, to put the record straight, I never said that I had either "proof" or "two reliable sources who had "confirmed" the possible link they were so obsessed with.

To the journalists, who turned this molehill of a comment (“two other people who’d made the same connection”) into a bit of a mountain (“two very reliable sources" and/or "proof"), and anyone else who might have read their misleading articles, all I would say is that I'm not particularly interested in where Mr Obama got the line from.

Much more interesting is the way he used it to prompt audience responses in some of his speeches and how both it and the responses are significantly different from the choruses that regularly peppered the speeches of Martin Luther-King.

And, if you want to keep an eye on what others might be writing about you, I'd recommend signing up with Google Alerts - without which none of these rather annoying articles would have come to my attention.

Will there be any ‘rhetorical denial’ from the Obama camp?

Effective speakers don’t always like to see their technical ability being noticed and analysed by others.

I first became aware of this back in 1984, when I published a book on the rhetorical techniques used by politicians to trigger applause in speeches (Our Masters’ Voices: The Language and Body Language of Politics).

It included a chapter on charisma, part of which used the rhetorical ability of Tony Benn, then at the forefront of the Labour Party’s lurch towards the far left, as an example of how technical skill at oratory can get politicians into prominent positions. Apparently, he didn’t like this at all, and went around telling people that audiences didn’t applaud him because of how he said things but because they agreed so much with what he was saying.

Years later, both of us appeared on the same television programme, for which I had recorded a piece illustrating the main rhetorical techniques with video clips from political speeches. When asked what he thought of this, Mr Benn replied “Well, it’s rubbish” and went on to elaborate as follows:

“I suppose you can analyse great speeches, but it’s a bit like analysing a great painting in terms of the chemical composition of the pigments on the canvas.”

If I’d been given a chance to respond, I’d have said “Yes, and how many other people could have come up with such a powerful simile (with alliteration bringing the image to a close) to make their point?”

At the start of the 1987 general election in Britain, David Owen, who was leader of the SDP (which had broken away from the Labour Party largely because the Bennite tendency had taken it so far to the left), announced that “Reason, not rhetoric will win this campaign.” So here he was using an alliterative contrast, one of the most important of all rhetorical techniques, to tell us that there wouldn’t be any rhetoric from the SDP.

This tendency of good communicators who use rhetoric effectively to deny that they are using it at all goes back at least as far as Shakespeare. Having started his Forum speech in Julius Caesar with a memorable 3-part list with third item longest (Friends, Romans and countrymen) and two powerful contrasts (I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred within their bones), Mark Antony later uses another contrast to inform the audience that he, unlike Brutus, is no good at public speaking (I am no orator as Brutus it, but just a plain simple man), even though this is the most famous speech in one of the most famous plays in English literature.

Now that so many commentators, including me, are waxing lyrical about Mr Obama’s technical mastery of rhetoric, imagery and alliteration, it will be interesting to see if any of his aides start trying to tell us that his success in communicating with mass audiences has had more to do with what he says than how he says it.

The Queen's Speech: an exception that proves the ruler

Here's something at the other end of the scale from previous blogs about Barack Obama's brilliance at oratory.

At the State Opening of Parliament on 3rd December, the Queen, as she does every year, will be reading out her government's legislative plans for the months ahead. Most commentators will be listening to the Speech to find out what Gordon Brown is going to be putting on the statute book in 2009.

How not to speak inspiringly

But you can also listen to it as a model of how not to give an inspiring speech.

Public speaking at its best depends both on the language used to package the key messages and the way it is delivered. Using rhetoric, maintaining eye contact with the audience, pausing regularly and in particular places, stressing certain words and changing intonation are all essential ingredients in the cocktail for conveying passion and inspiring an audience. This is why it is so easy to ‘dehumanise’ the speech of Daleks and other talking robots by the simple device of stripping out any hint of intonational variation and have them speak in a flat, regular and monotonous tone of voice.

When it comes to sounding unenthusiastic and uninterested in inspiring an audience, the Queen’s Speech is an example with few serious competitors. She has no qualms about being seen to be wearing spectacles, which underline the fact that she is reading carefully from the script she holds so obviously in front of her. Nor is she in the least bit inhibited about fixing her eyes on the text rather than the audience. Then, as she enunciates the sentences, her tone is so disinterested as to make it abundantly clear that she is merely reciting words written by someone else and about which she has no personal feelings or opinions whatsoever.

This is, of course, how it has to be in a constitutional monarchy, where the head of state has to be publicly seen and heard as obsessively neutral about the policies of whatever political party happens to have ended up in power. The Queen knows, just as everyone else knows, that showing enthusiasm, or lack of it, about the law-making plans of her government would lead to a serious crisis that would be more than her job is worth. So, even when announcing plans to ban hunting with hounds, she managed not to convey the slightest hint of disappointment or irritation that a favorite pastime of her immediate family was about to be outlawed.

The Queen’s Speech is therefore an interesting exception to the normal rules of effective public speaking, and her whole approach to is a fine example of how to deal with those rare occasions when you have to conceal what you really feel about the things you are talking about. Another master of this was Mr McGregor, an official spokesman for the foreign office during the Falklands war, who made regular appearances of on television reading out progress reports in a flat, deadpan monotone – presumably because a vital part of his job was to give nothing away that might have encouraged or discouraged viewers, whether British or Argentinian, about how things were going in the South Atlantic.

How to prevent a civil war

A much more surprising case was Nelson Mandela’s first speech after being released from prison in 1990. Here was a highly effective communicator, whose words at his trial 27 years earlier are to be found in most books of great speeches, and who had had the best part of three decades to prepare an inspiring and memorable text. But it was not to be. As if modeling his performance on the Queen’s Speech, he buried his head in the script and spoke in a flat measured tone that came across as completely lacking in the kind of passion everyone was expecting from someone who had suffered so much and was held in such high regard by his audience.

Having waited for years for this historic event, anticipating something on a par with Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, I remember being disappointed and surprised by what I saw and heard from the balcony of City Hall in Cape Town. It was only later that it dawned on me that this was another case where rousing rhetoric would have been completely counter-productive. The political situation in South Africa was poised on a knife-edge and his release from prison had only happened at all because the apartheid regime was crumbling. It was a moment when anything more inspiring from Mandela might have come across as a call to arms and could easily have prompted an immediate uprising or civil war. But the political understanding with the minority white government was that the African National Congress would keep the lid on things for long enough to enable a settlement to be negotiated. As when the Queen opens parliament, Mr Mandela knew exactly what he was doing, how to do it and that he could not have done otherwise.

Displaying neutrality
So as well as listening to the content of the Queen’s Speech on 3rd December, it is also worth close inspection as an object lesson on how to address an audience if you’re ever in a position of having to convey complete neutrality and detachment. Or, if you’d rather rise to the much more usual challenge of trying to inspire your audience, pay close attention to the way she delivers it -- and then do exactly the opposite.

(Click here or on title to see her in action at the State Opening of Parliament in 2006).

Max Atkinson is author of Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy: Seven Essential Steps to Success ( 2008), and Lend Me Your Ears: All You Need to Know about Making Speeches and Presentations (2004) and was a speechwriter and coach to Paddy Ashdown (website: www.speaking.co.uk).

Rhetoric & imagery in Obama's victory speech

The Independent on Sunday asked me to annotate Barack Obama’s victory speech last week, the results of which were published on 9th November. It hasn't been posted on their website, probably because the layout with red circles around lines from the speech linked to the notes caused problems in creating a readable web page.

The newspaper’s introduction to the piece is reprinted below, followed by the full text of the speech with my notes in italics between paragraphs (which are slightly fuller than those in the published version).

THE ART OF ORATORY

Barack Obama’s speech in Chicago following his victory in the US election was a fine example of the rhetorical brilliance that helped him defeat Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

Although he has a team of three speechweriters. Led by the 27-year old wunderkind Jon Favreau, Obama likes to write the bulk of his speeches himself.

It’s commonly thought that effective orators are blessed with a mysterious gift, but all successful speakers use the same simple techniques, and have been doing so at least since they were first taught by the ancient Greeks. What makes outstanding speakers stand out is the frequency with which they use them. At its simplest, the more use made of these techniques, the more impressed audiences will be.

The main rhetorical techniques include: Contrasts: e.g. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him (Mark Antony), three-part lists: e.g. Education, education and education. (Tony Blair) and
combinations of contrasts and lists: e.g by contrasting a third item with the first two: We shall negotiate for it, sacrifice for it but never surrender for it. (Ronald Reagan).

Add to these devices like alliteration, repetition, imagery and anecdotes, and you have the basic building blocks of the language of public speaking.

“It’s not often that a single speech launches a politician from obscurity on to the national stage,” says public-speaking expert Dr Max Atkinson, “Ronald Reagan achieved it when he spoke in support of Barry Goldwater at the Republican Convention in 1964, and Obama achieved it with his keynote address to the Democratic Convention four years ago. Already he ranks highly in the league of all-time greats like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. He is particularly fond of contrasts, three-part lists and various combinations of the two. He also knows how to use imagery both to increase impact and to make his points evoke associations with great communicators of the past like Lincoln, King and Reagan. But one of the most interesting things about all this is that, even when you can see that Mr Obama is using the same simple techniques that every other inspiring speaker uses, the power and impact of his language remain undiminished."

(P.S. A question I'm often asked by people attending my courses and/or who've read one of my books is: "how frequently can you can get away with using rhetorical techniques and imagery?" This speech in an impressive example of how they can be used to get across almost every single point you want to make -- and, in this case, had the effect of moving many who heard it, both live in Chicago and around the world, to tears).

THE SPEECH

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

Kicks off by evoking the American Dream, implicitly linking to Martin Luther King’s 'I have a dream speech – by addressing 3 groups of people out there.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voices could be that difference.

This is the first of 3 groups of people for whom “it’s the answer”. High turnout depicted by images of voters in queues, etc.

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, (first groups depicted by series of contrasts) Hispanic, Asian, Native American (group of 3), gay, straight, disabled and not disabled (two more contrasting groups) - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America .

3rd item contrasts with the first two; and this ‘not red states-not blue states-but United States’ line harks back to Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, that first brought him to wider public notice, where he used it to introduce the ‘politics of hope’ theme that has become one of his trademarks.

It's the answer that led those who have been told for so long by so many to be cynical, and fearful, and doubtful of what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

‘Hope’ theme again, plus image of bending an arc towards a better future.

It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.

Contrast between ‘what’s been coming’ and ‘what’s now come’ – and it’s come at 3 moments (‘this day’, ‘this election’, ‘this moment’).

A little bit earlier this evening I received an extraordinarily gracious call from Senator McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and he's fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine. We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader.

McCain has done 3 worthy things (‘fought a campaign’, ‘fought for the country’, ‘endured sacrifices’).

I congratulate him, I congratulate Governor Palin, for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nation's promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton and rode with on that train home to Delaware, the vice-president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

Biden has also done 3 things (‘campaigned’, ‘spoken’, ‘ridden on a train’). The train imagery personalises his praise for Biden, who started commuting daily from Delaware to Washington in 1972, after his two young sons had survived a road crash in which his wife and their daughter died.

And I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years, the rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation's next first lady, Michelle Obama. Sasha and Malia, I love you both more than you can imagine, and you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the White House.

Note that the invitations to the audience to applaud Biden and Michelle are perfectly executed – the person is identified, praised and finally named. Naming the person earlier tends to confuse audiences as to when and if they are supposed to applaud. Mention of the puppy for the children depicts him as a thoroughly ‘normal’, kindly father and family man.

And while she's no longer with us, I know my grandmother is watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight, and know that my debt to them is beyond measure. To my sister Maya, my sister Auma, all my other brothers and sisters - thank you so much for all the support you have given me. I am grateful to them.

This sentence can be heard as an implicit reminder that he’s a practising Christian who believes in life after death, followed by more ‘I’m a family man’ references.

To my campaign manager David Plouffe, the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the best political campaign in the history of the United States of America. My chief strategist David Axelrod, who has been a partner with me every step of the way, and to the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics - you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you've sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to - it belongs to you.

Puzzle-solution.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington - it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

This is the first of 3 points about his campaign (‘started modestly’, ‘built by working men’, ‘grew strength from young people’). Then this first point uses a combined contrast and 3 part list, in which Washington is contrasted with 3 ordinary provincial cities. Adding to the impact of this contrast between Washington and the 3 other places are simple images that contrast the corridors of power in one (‘halls of Washington’) with everyday places in the others (‘backyards', 'living rooms' and 'front porches’).

It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause.

Second point about campaign is that it was built by 3 types of drains on personal cash.

It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy; who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep; it grew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on the doors of perfect strangers; from the millions of Americans who volunteered, and organised, and proved that more than two centuries later, a government of the people, by the people and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

Third point is that it grew strength from 3 groups of people (‘the young’, ‘not-so-young people’, and ‘millions of Americans’). Sacrifice depicted by images of young people leaving homes and supporters braving contrasting climatic conditions -- summed up as a proof that Abraham Lincoln’s most famous line, also a 3 part list, still applies. He could have said it hasn’t disappeared, vanished or died, but ‘perished’ has the advantage of adding another alliterative word.

This is your victory.

I know you didn't do this just to win an election and I know you didn't do it for me. You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead.

Two reasons ‘why you didn’t do it’ are contrasted with third reason ‘why you did’.

For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

3 challenges ahead, and the third one is longer than the first two. This is a feature of some of the most famous 3 part lists of all time, such as ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ and ‘father, son and holy ghost’. ‘Tomorrow’ obviously doesn’t mean ‘Thursday’ and is a simple metaphor for the future. Hazards to the planet can be described in many different ways, but ‘peril’ has the ‘poetic’ advantage of alliteration.

Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.

‘Deserts’ and ‘mountains’ imagery to highlight the tough conditions American soldiers are facing.

There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after their children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage, or pay their doctor's bills, or save enough for their child's college education. There is new energy to harness and new jobs to be created; new schools to build and threats to meet and alliances to repair.

Contrast between brave Americans waking up to face difficulties in foreign places and American parents unable to sleep because of difficulties at home – of which there happen to be 3 (paying ‘mortgages’, ‘medical expenses’ and ‘college fees’).

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep.

This simple image of the long road and steep climb was quite widely featured in the media as the main soundbite from the speech. It is also the first of 3 challenges that lie ahead (‘it’s going to take time’, ‘there’ll be opposition’ and ‘we need to remake the nation’).

We may not get there in one year or even in one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you - we as a people will get there

The mountain-climbing imagery, followed by “we as a people will get there” evokes the last speech made by Martin Luther King on the night before he was assassinated: “I’ve been up to the mountain, I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.”


There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree.

And above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for 221 years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

3 alliterative building images, involving repetition of words, to characterize how this has always been done. It’s also another example where the third one is the longest of the three.

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night.

Contrast between winter and autumn.

This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change.

Alliterative contrast between the victory not being the ‘change’ but the ‘chance to make the change’.

And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

3 reasons why it can’t happen, and alliteration with four words beginning with ‘S’ (and more ‘S-’ words at the start of the next sentence).

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other. Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers - in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.

Contrast between ‘ourselves’ and ‘each other’, followed by contrast between Wall Street and Main Street, where street names are simple metaphors depicting the worlds of high finance and ordinary everyday shopping.

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

Lets not fall back into 3 errors (‘partisanship’, ‘pettiness’ and ‘immaturity’). He could just as well said ‘harmed’ or ‘damaged’ politics, but ‘poisoned’ has the advantage of alliteration with other ‘P’ words close by.

Let us remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House - a party founded on the values of self-reliance, individual liberty, and national unity.

The Republican Party had 3 founding values, and Lincoln surfaces again, with a reminder that he, like Obama, started out in Illinois state politics.

Those are values that we all share, and while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours: "We are not enemies, but friends… though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection."

Another quote from Lincoln, which starts with a contrast between ‘enemies’ and ‘friends’.

And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your president too.

Combination in which the second part of the contrast is a 3 part list (‘you may not have voted for me’, ‘but 3 things link us together’).

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces (alliteration) to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world - our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared (contrast), and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

Addressed to 3 groups of people (‘foreigners’, ‘political leaders’ and the ‘developing world'), with alliteration and image of people in ‘huddled in corners’. The mood and imagery here is reminiscent of the way Kennedy addressed different parts of the world in his inaugural address in 1960: “To those peoples in the huts and villages across the globe …” The image of a 'new dawn of American leadership' also has echoes of another line in Kennedy's inaugural: "The torch has passed to a new generation of Americans .."

To those who would tear the world down - we will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security - we support you.

And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright - tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

Alliterative image of a ‘beacon burning’ echoes one of the first few lines of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech: “This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.” Then we have another contrast in which the third one, ‘power of our ideals’, contrasts with the first two. The first three of these are commonly cited a American ideals, but ‘hope’ resurfaces again, having been a central theme for Obama since he published his book ‘the Audacity of Hope’.

For that is the true genius of America - that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

Genius of America has 3 components, ‘hope’ again and ‘tomorrow’ again used as metaphor for the future.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing - Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

Starts an extended anecdote to highlight a century of change, setting it up by contrasting this one with the many other stories that could be told. This woman just happens to come from the same place as Martin Luther King (Atlanta). And the fact that she’s 106 enables him to talk about events from the past century, as MLK did at the start of ‘I have a dream’. His reference point was the emancipation proclamation, in relation to which he produced a series of sentences starting with “One hundred years later..” (“But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination…etc.”).

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons - because she was a woman and because of the colour of her skin.

Transport imagery to highlight technological change, and it now turns out that she is black as well as female and very old – which sets it up for him to say more about Martin Luther King’s central themes of emancipation and discrimination.

And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America - the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes, we can.

His thoughts about her are expressed in 3 contrasts (‘heartache and hope’, ‘struggle and progress’, we can’t versus we can). The repetitive sequence of ‘Yes we can’ that eventually results in the audience joining in as a chorus, harks back to Obama’s speech after losing the New Hampshire primary, where he did exactly the same thing. The audience participation can be heard as a secular version of the regular crowd interjections (“Yeah Lord”, “Holy, Holy Holy”, “Amen”, etc in Martin Luther King’s speeches. “Yes we can” has no religious connotations and carries no risk of making Jews and members of other religions feel excluded.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes, we can.

First two negative things in the history of women's emancipation that she saw contrasted with a victory in which they achieved 3 things.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs and a new sense of common purpose. Yes, we can.

Alliterative image referring to how a previous bad time in economic history was overcome by 3 new things.

When the bombs fell on our harbour and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes, we can.

Two nasty things about war contrasted with 'salvation'

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that "we shall overcome". Yes, we can.

3 negative images of racial discrimination contrasted with a positive reference to Martin Luther King (again).

A man touched down on the Moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes, we can.

3 images of advances she witnessed, followed by her being able to use modern technology to vote and a contrast between ‘best of times’ and ‘darkest of hours’.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do.

3 part list with third item longest and contrasting with the first two.

So tonight, let us ask ourselves - if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

Two rhetorical questions to lead into the peroration.

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.

This focus on ‘our moment’, and ‘our time’, developed further in the next sentence, again echoes Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech, in which his reference to “the fierce urgency of now” prefaced three sentences starting with “Now is the time…”

This is our time - to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: yes, we can.

The Image of opening ‘doors of opportunity’ brings us back to the American dream theme, harking back to the opening line of the speech. This simultaneously lets the audience know that he’s nearly finished, continues to echo the spirit of Martin Luther King and gives a sense of overall structural unity.

Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.

Max Atkinson is author of Lend Me Your Ears: All You Need to Know about Making Speeches and Presentations (London, Vermilion, 2004 & New York, Oxford University Press, 2005), and Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy: Seven Essential Steps to Success (London, Vermilion, 2008), available from Amazon UK and Amazon USA by clicking links from here.

Not Clinton, not McCain but Obama

For speech-making anoraks like me, Barack Obama’s arrival on the public stage at the 2004 Democratic Convention was a joy to behold. If you’re looking for examples of how to do it well, you can always find plenty of illustrations in more or less any speech he ever makes.

If you’re interested in rhetorical techniques, his widely acclaimed victory speech in Chicago relied very heavily on one of the simplest devices of all, namely the three-part list – of which he cranked out 29 at a rate of just under one every 30 seconds.

John McCain, he told us, had done three worthy things and so had Joe Biden. What’s more, the genius of America has three components to it.

He seems particularly keen on combining contrasts with three part lists, and especially contrasting a third item with the first two, as when he said “We have come so far, we have achieved so much but there is so much more to do.”

This example also has the longest item in third position, which is a common feature of some of the most famous three-part lists of all times, such as “Father, son and holy spirit” and “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

As everyone seems to agree, Obama is a seriously good orator. Apart from his mastery of rhetoric and imagery, I think part of his genius has been to secularise the religious (i.e. Christian) language and imagery of Martin Luther King in a way that implicitly reminds people that he's on message with MLK, while appealing to important wider constituencies of non-Christian voters - especially Jews, but also Muslims, agnostics and atheists - who might otherwise have felt excluded.

For more on this (when I've had time to check it out a bit more), watch this space.

How the BBC handled one complaint about Ross

On 5th September, I made the mistake of phoning the BBC complaints line after the British Olympic gold medallists appeared on Jonathan Ross's Friday night show.

It wasn't the sniggering double entendres about 'muscles', pitiful though they were (see below for a sample), that made me pick up the phone, but Ross's mockery of one of his guests for wearing glasses and reaction to his loss of a contact lens during the final with "boo f******* hoo" (also on the clip below)

I was told by the complaints department that such language was quite normal on his programmes and that regular viewers knew perfectly well what to expect. I was then informed that it was alright because it was after the 9.00 p.m. ‘watershed’, when swearing is O.K.

When I made the rather obvious point that a lot of children would have been allowed to stay up late to see their heroes on their return from the Olympics, the reply was that it was the fault of parents, not the BBC, if there happened to be any young children watching.

What was made very clear was not just that Ross had the BBC'S full approval to use offensive language, but that they were prepared to defend his right to do so against anyone stupid enough to complain about it.

But that, of course, was two months before the recent uproar about his witty contribution to the Russell Brand show.

Rory Bremner as Huw Edwards and Robert Peston

Another BBC News Slideshow

Click on the title above to watch the show and then write an essay on one or more of the following:

(1) To what extent are you any the wiser?

(2) Compare and contrast the helpfulness of the slides in helping you to understand the message(s).

(3) Evaluate Mr Peston's chances of being awarded the Nobel prize for economics.

Don't put clocks back

If you find the darker afternoons that start tomorrow a depressing and pointless exercise, you might be interested in an article in The Times a few days ago (click on title above for the full story).

Apart from relieving the gloom, not putting the clocks back tonight would reduce electricity consumption by 1-2% and save NHS expenditure on dealing with accidents and emergencies:

“During an experiment 40 years ago, when British Summer Time was used all year for three years, there was an average of 2,500 fewer deaths and serious injuries each year. Opposition from Scotland contributed to the decision to return to putting the clocks back in winter.”

If putting the clocks back is such a big deal for the Scots, why don’t we let them do it on their own?

A different time zone in Scotland might be marginally inconvenient for the rest of us, but no more so than it already is when trying to plan meetings in other EC countries.

BBC Television NEWS: produced for or by morons?

I’d very much like to know if I’m alone in noticing that BBC television news programmes are making more and more use of slide shows and graphics in their bulletins.

So I’ve put together some edited highlights from the 10 o’clock News on 8th October to illustrate the style of news coverage that seems to be taking up an increasing proportion of the available air time (see below to view), and there follows a step-by-step commentary on some of the news stories as they unfolded that night.

Before writing any more on the subject, I’d really like to get an idea of what other people think and would very much appreciate it if, after reading the commentary and watching the video, you could let me know your views on the subject (either on the blog or by email).

BBC TELEVISION NEWS, 10.00 p.m., 8th October 2008:

The news starts with a picture of a revolving globe as the number “0.5%” appears with a red arrow pointing downwards and a voice-over from Huw Edwards, tonight’s newsreader, telling us that interest rates around the world have fallen, and in Britain by “half a point”.

There follows the normal opening tune and swirling graphics which fade away to reveal Mr Edwards standing next to a slide with “GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS” written on it against a background of a globe and red graphs.

Click below to watch video:


He’s clutching a mysterious piece of paper that he occasionally looks at while telling us about the crisis and the fact that the government is making £400 billion available (and if you missed the number, don’t worry because you’ll be hearing and seeing it again). He announces that our specialist correspondents are going to explain the magnitude of what’s happened.

The globe on the slide next to him now disappears behind a picture of Robert Peston and the subtitle “BANK RESCUE PLAN” appears below “GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS” – as Edwards informs us that our business editor Robert Peston will tell us about the rescue plan for the banks.

Then the picture of Peston changes to one of Hugh Pym and the new subtitle “GLOBAL RATES CUT” appears below “GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS" – as Edwards informs us that our economics editor Hugh Pym will look at the likely impact of the lower interest rates.

The Picture of Pym changes to one of Nick Robinson and the words beneath “GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS” disappear – Edwards tells us that our political editor Nick Robinson is coming on first to report on “the most dramatic day so far in the global financial crisis.”

Then we hear Robinson’s voice-over a picture of the City of London in the background, as £400,000,000,000 appears in the foreground and another £400,000,000,000 tracks across the screen behind it, while Nick Robinson helpfully tells us that the key figure is £400,000,000,000 – and, if you still haven’t got it, he informs us “that’s eleven naughts at the end”.

A digital clock appears showing the time 7.30, as Robinson tells us what happened “first thing this morning” (presumably at 7.30 a.m.).

His voice-over continues as we’re shown pictures of dealing screens, a shot of the Bank of England quickly followed by ominous-looking red graph lines moving across the screen while a red arrow points downwards through the graphs.

Robinson goes on to ask “what exactly is the deal” as another slide appears with “what’s the DEAL?” written on it, along with pictures of the Bank of England and more descending red graphs.

He tells us that banks will be part-nationalised, and, if you didn’t hear that, red letters drop down from above to form the words “Part Nationalisation”.

He tells us the cost will be “50 billion pounds of tax payers’ money”, as more red numbers and letters fall into place so we can now read “£50 bn taxpayers’ money” – and so it goes on, with more letters and numbers falling into place to coincide with what Robinson has to say.

Then it’s back to Huw Edwards, who is now sitting at a table next to the screen with “GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS” written on it. It’s an oval table with a mirror in the middle that reflects part of whatever’s on the screen at his side.

He reminds us that, “as Nick Robinson’s just told us”, the full cost could be as much as – yes, you’ve guessed it – “£400,000,000,000”. He also repeats various other facts already mentioned before handing over to “our business editor Robert Peston who examines the detail and asks if this will work.”

What we get from Peston is a carefully prepared PowerPoint presentation, with him standing next to a screen as ten slide changes repeat most of what he’s saying in written bullet points. He too has a slide with “£400,000,000,000” written on it – the eighth time we’ve been shown or told about this number since the news began.

When it comes to Hugh Pym’s turn, we hear his voice-over and see a picture of the City of London behind the number “0.5%” with a red arrow pointing downwards. As he proceeds, a revolving globe with numbers materialises in the background while two red graph lines move across the screen in the foreground. As he speaks, written phrases zoom out towards us four times in quick succession, and, apart from the first one, each one tells us something different from what he’s actually saying.

Finally, we get to some of ‘today’s other news”. Edwards shuffles his mysterious pieces of paper, presumably to let us know that we’re moving on to something new (if only he can find it). But we are given a hint of what to expect on the screen next to him, where there’s a picture of a blue shirt with a badge on it that could just be an American flag.

As he starts to talk about last night’s presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, the badge zooms towards us and disintegrates into hundreds of small bubbles. The legend “US08” appears before shrinking back into the top right hand corner, to be make room for the words “ELECTION DAY 27 days to go”, superimposed over rows of tiddly winks going round in a circle.

Experience and inexperience in presidential campaigns

Reflecting on televised ‘debates’ in US presidential campaigns for my previous entry reminded me of two memorable moments from previous shows, both of which majored on the importance of a candidate’s experience or lack of it .

The first, from the 1988 vice-presidential ‘debate’, was Lloyd Bentsen’s reply to Dan Quayle’s claim to be as experienced as Jack Kennedy was when he ran for president:

"Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

The second had more resonance for the current campaign, in which one of the candidates also has an age problem. When running for his second term in 1984, Ronald Reagan was a year older than John McCain is now, and one of the interviewers had the cheek to raise the matter with him on prime time television. No doubt carefully prepared in advance, Reagan came up with the classic response:

“I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

Watch the second video below and you’ll see that Walter Mondale, Reagan’s ‘youthful and inexperienced’ opponent, thought it a pretty good joke too. But part of the humour lay in the fact that Mondale was not particularly youthful and, as vice-president to Jimmy Carter, could hardly be described as ‘inexperienced’.

McCain, of course, can’t pull a similar trick on Obama, because he’s been doing his best to make his opponent’s youthfulness and inexperience an issue. Nor does this Senator McCain seem to be gifted with the folksy self-deprecating sense of humour that served Ronald Reagan so well.

Presidential debates – tedious television but better than commercials

For British audiences, the televised ‘debates’ between US presidential candidates come across as a very strange form of television indeed, which is hardly surprising given the peculiar rules of engagement as set out by Bob Schieffer of CBS News at the start of the third one:

“The rules tonight are simple. The subject is domestic policy. I will divide the next hour and a half into nine-minute segments. I will ask a question at the beginning of each segment. Each candidate will then have two minutes to respond and then we’ll have a discussion. I’ll encourage them to ask follow-up questions of each other. If they do not, I will.”

The candidates are then allowed to make a two-minute mini-speech on each topic before having to answer any subsidiary questions, and they certainly don’t have to worry about being interrupted, challenged or knocked off course by a Dimbleby, Paxman or Humphrys.

The fact that such ‘debates’ take place at all is a reflection of (or perhaps a necessary antidote to) what struck me as one of the most depressing aspects of US politics when I was working and watching television there during the Reagan-Mondale election in 1984. What astonished me was that you never got to see either of the presidential candidates or candidates for a local senate seat being interviewed in the way that’s routine on British radio and television. The reason is alarmingly simple: after all, why would you risk being put on the spot in an adversarial interview when you can buy as much advertising time as you can afford?

Back in 1984, two candidates for one senate seat the North Carolina managed to spend more than $20 million on advertising. As viewers, we weren’t just subjected to short and nasty TV commercials, but we also had to put up with ghastly 20 minute documentary-style propaganda ‘programmes’ aimed at showing what wonderful people the candidates were, produced and paid for, of course, by the candidates themselves.

Although I have serious reservations about interviews taking over from speeches as the main form of political communication in the UK, I have none at all about our politicians being banned from buying political advertising on radio and television. This is because the lesson from the dismal situation in the USA is that, once political advertising is allowed, politicians can ignore invitations from the media to be interviewed on news and current affairs programmes, and thereby insulate themselves from being exposed to challenging questions from well-informed neutral interviewers.

A secret of eternal youth?

When I was a teenager, my brother thought it very amusing to give me Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People as a birthday present. Still in print, it’s one of those self-help manuals that keeps on repeating the same basic message until it’s long enough to count as a full-length book.

All I can remember about it is that the ‘secret’ is to show interest in what other people say and to encourage them to say more and more about whatever it is they want to talk about -- while not volunteering much about yourself unless they happen to ask.

What I’ve noticed increasingly in conversations with strangers at parties is that fewer and fewer of them ever ask me anything at all about myself. It’s not that I’m desperate to tell my life story to anyone who cares to listen, but I am getting rather bored with endless details about where these people live, their family and/or job history, their hobbies, their latest ailments, etc., etc.

Quite often, I come away realising that the person I’ve just been talking still knows nothing whatsoever about me, other than what I look like. In fact, I’ve started to wonder whether Dale Carnegie might have penetrated my subconscious all those years ago and that I’ve unwittingly become rather good at following his advice.

Or, and I fear this is much more likely, it’s nothing to do with me at all, but reflects the age of the people I’m most likely to meet at parties these days. Maybe growing old really does mean that you become more and more preoccupied with yourself and less and less interested in anyone else – in which case, Dale Carnegie’s instructions may also be pointing us to the secret of eternal youth, or at least be telling us something about how resist one of the symptoms of old age.

Hair today, win tomorrow: baldness and charisma?

My past attempts to analyse charisma have concentrated on the speech-making and communication skills of politicians. But there are clearly other more subtle and elusive factors that are more difficult to pin down. This was highlighted by a study of US politicians, from presidents down to the lowest levels of local government, that identified the two most powerful predictors of electoral success in American politics as being the candidate’s height (the taller the better) and record of athletic achievement (the sportier the better).

But there’s some evidence that another, even more trivial, physical attribute has become a key component of charisma since the age of mass television began – namely that successful male politicians need a good head of hair. When radio was still the main form of broadcast media, how much or how little hair you had was not as visible to the public. And, even if you were out and about, it was a time when men routinely wore hats in public, which kept baldness conveniently concealed from any passing press or film cameras.

Wigs and career success
It was a consultant dermatologist who first got me thinking seriously about baldness. He claimed to have transformed some of his patients’ careers by the simple device of prescribing a wig. Bald men, who had been repeatedly rejected at interviews for jobs as diverse as head chef and leader of an orchestra, enjoyed immediate success as soon as they appeared at an interview with a good head of hair.

Shortly after being told about this, I appeared on a television programme about the problems former Labour leader Neil Kinnock was then having with his public image. I had no qualms about discussing how his theatrical style of oratory tended to come over as too manic when transmitted to the small screens in people’s living rooms. But I also confessed to the producer that there was another possible cause of his difficulties that was far too delicate to mention on air, namely that he was bald.

The fate of bald Tories
Since then, we saw the leadership ambitions of Conservative party leaders William Hague and Ian Duncan Smith come to grief in double quick time. And, even if you never joined in the chorus yourself, it’s a sure fire bet that you heard others making snide remarks about their lack of hair.

In fact, if you want to find the last British prime ministers who were bald, you have to go back more than fifty years to Atlee and Churchill, both of whom were elected to office before the age of mass television. After them, the only ones with even slightly thinning hair were Sir Alec Douglas Home and James Callaghan -- but both of them only became P.M. when their predecessors resigned in mid-term, and both of them went on to lose the first general elections they fought as party leaders.

Transatlantic similiarities
It’s much the same story on the other side of the Atlantic, where the last really bald president was Eisenhower. After that, the long succession of presidents with plenty of hair was only interrupted by Lyndon Johnston and Gerald Ford. And, like Home and Callaghan, they were far from being completely bald, they too came to power without winning an election for the job and neither of them survived much longer than Home and Callaghan: Johnston declined to run for a second term, and Ford lost to Jimmy Carter.

Baldness and electability
Two intriguing patterns emerge from this. The first is that, apart from Churchill, Atlee and Eisenhower, the only bald or balding leaders who got to the top in Britain or America since then did so because of the death or resignation of their predecessor, rather than by the popular vote of their parties or the electorate at large. The second is that those who did fight a general election were promptly defeated.

If voters really do prefer candidates with a good head of hair, the main political parties in the UK have made all made safe choices for the next election. But in the USA, the Republicans have arguably taken quite a risk by pitting John McCain’s receding hairline against Barack Obama’s full head of hair. When it comes to sport, there may not be much to chose between them: McCain apparently excelled at wrestling and boxing and Obama still plays basketball. But the other big risk the Republicans have taken is to have selected a candidate who is a good six inches shorter than his rival.

Pesky Peston?

One of the points made in my books on presentation and speech-making is that, when it comes to assessing others, we’re all wired up in much the same way, and that it’s difficult to see how human communication could work at all if we weren't.

So I’ve been intrigued to find myself on the receiving end of 3 completely unsolicited complaints about the presentational peculiarities of Robert Peston, the BBC’s business editor.

The most outspoken one, which I’ve had to censor for publication purposes, went as like this: “As for that (expletives deleted) Robert Peston, all the training they must have poured into him still doesn’t make him any more coherent. I can do without the ‘y'knows’ and ‘errrrrrrrs’ and EMPHASIS where you're LEAST expectiiiiiing IT.”

Another said of him: ".. almost UNWATCHable as he seems to stress WORDS and syllables COMpletely at random without much regard for the meaning OF what he happens to be ON about – with similarly random upWARDS and downwards shifts IN intonation."

According to an article in the Daily Telegraph earlier this year (which you can inspect by clicking on the above title), he does at least seem to be aware that his “on-screen delivery lacks polish”.

But is that all? And does anyone else have any strong views on the matter?

ConVincing Cable

In the days of Paddy Ashdown’s leadership of the Liberal Democrats, his staff were always having to struggle, usually without much luck, to persuade the broadcast media to have any LibDem MPs other than Paddy on their programmes – which risked creating the impression that the party was a bit of a one-man band.

How things have changed now that Vince Cable is popping up all over the place, and seems to have become a regular on programmes like Newsnight and Question Time.

But he’s only the deputy leader, so what’s going on?

Is it just that, as former chief economist at Shell (and one of the ever-diminishing number of MPs who’ve ever had a serious career outside politics), he talks more sense about economics than most politicians?

Or maybe they're hoping he’ll come up with another gem like his ‘Stalin to Mr Bean’ quip about Gordon Brown.

Whatever the reason, it doesn’t strike me as being very good news for new leader Nick Clegg, who still needs to raise his public profile and could surely do with as much exposure as Vince is getting

‘Mature, grown-up and statesmanlike’ Cameron at the lectern

So David Cameron did stay at the lectern for his big speech - and won the instant accolade of being ‘mature, grown-up and statesmanlike’ in one of the interviews with the party faithful a few seconds after he’d finished.

But there’s still some room for improvement in his delivery. There were quite a few mis-readings of the script that had to be corrected as he went along. If, as seems likely, this was because he hadn’t had enough time to rehearse all the last-minute changes that were apparently made, the lesson is clear – late modifications are fine, but only if you leave enough time to rehearse the new lines.

He also did something I’d never noticed before, perhaps because it doesn’t happen when he’s doing a walkabout speech. In fact, it was a rather unusual form of ‘skewed’ eye-contact. It wasn’t that he excluded one half of the audience by hardly ever looking at them at all, as is likely to happen if you’re sitting to Gordon Brown’s right during a speech (see 'More tips for Gordon Brown'). What Cameron did was to alternate between one very long period looking one way and another very long period looking the other, with occasional glances straight ahead.

On average, it was about 20 seconds each way, which means that the rest of the audience was having to wait for about five sentences before they got another glance from their leader (see for yourself what it looks like by clicking on the title of this section, and go to video 4).

The most extreme case was one sequence when he spent nearly a minute and a half (about twenty sentences), looking continuously to one side, effectively excluding everyone on the other side (and in front of him) for a very long time indeed.

So my advice would be that, if he’s going to carry on using a lectern, he needs to work on alternating his glances much more frequently than he did in this speech, so that no one in the audience can complain that he’s ignoring them for unusually long periods of time.

As for why I think he’s doing it, I’ll leave that for another blog when I’ve got more time.

Cameron skewed gaze video:

Cameron takes to the lectern in a crisis

One reason why I suggested last week that Gordon Brown should give up trying to emulate David Cameron's walkabout style of delivery and return to the lectern was that it would make the embattled P.M. look more statesmanlike.

So what does Cameron do when he wants to appear statesmanlike in the middle of today's financial mayhem? Well, it was back to the lectern, back to a script and hardly any movement at all, let alone any walking about.

And making this unscheduled emergency intervention at his party conference on the day before his big speech was probably a very smart move. Otherwise, the risk was that both he and the Conservative conference would have been completely wiped off the front pages and prime-time news programmes by all the reports of financial crisis.

But doing what he did paid off and got him to the top of tonight's BBC 10 o'clock television news.

His dilemma now is how to play it tomorrow? Will we see another 'unscripted' walkabout or a carefully scripted statesman speaking at a lectern?

Objects as visual aids: Obama & Archbishop Sentamu in action

If you've read my books or been on any of my courses, you'll know that one type of visual aid that tends to go down well with audiences is the use of objects or props to make a point. Two nice examples came my way recently, showing that even something as apparently unpromising as cutting up or brushing items of clothing can be very effective.

In the first one, Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, took off his dog collar during an interview with Andrew Marr, and then proceeded to cut it into small pieces to illustrate what Mugabe was doing to the identity of the Zimbabwean people, ending by promising not to wear it again until Mugabe was gone.

In the second one, Barack Obama dismisses criticism from the Clinton camp by brushing invisible dust from his jacket - and the more he brushed, the more the audience applauded.

You can see both these examples by clicking below - and more on objects as visual aids in my books Lend Me Your Ears: All You Need to Know about Making Speeches and Presentations, London: Vermilion, 2004 & New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, and Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy: Seven Essential Steps to Success, London: Vemilion, 2008.

PowerPoint comes to church

This Sunday, it was the Harvest Festival in our village church, where the congregation was treated to a PowerPoint presentation that went on for twice as long as it was supposed to do.

As for how it went down, I couldn't help noticing that the assembled multitude only managed about 4 seconds of applause - way below the standard burst of 8 (plus or minus 1) seconds - further proof, if proof were needed, that the C of E shouldn't be putting too much faith in PowerPoint to reverse declining church attendance!

Mediated speeches -- whom do we really want to hear?

I've just been watching the first of the US presidential debates on the BBC's main evening news programme, as I wanted to see what the candidates had to say, how well they said it and how competent they seemed. But actually I had to watch and listen to far more from the BBC's correspondent in Washington than from Obama or McCain - the reporter was speaking for 2.4 minutes compared with 30 seconds each for the two candidates-- i.e. the BBC forced its viewers to listen to more than twice as much media commentary as we were allowed to hear from the the candidates themselves.

Of course, I shouldn't really have been surprised because I know that things have been moving in this direction for a long time. Between 1968 and 1988, the length of excerpts from speeches shown on American television news programmes during presidential campaigns fell from an average of 42 seconds in 1968 to an average of only 9 seconds in 1988. In the UK, during the 1979 general election campaign, BBC 2 showed a nightly half-hour programme of excerpts from the day’s speeches. It was not continued during the 1983 election, and, by 1997 (and all subsequent UK elections), viewers were much more likely to see shots of politicians speaking in the background, with the all important foreground being dominated by a TV reporter summarising what the speaker was saying -- as also happened during parts tonight's report on the Obama-McCain debate.

But does it matter? I think it does, because television has the capacity (which it used to exercise long ago) of allowing viewers/voters to hear arguments coming directly from the horses' mouths, from which they used to be able to draw their own conclusions about what they saw and heard -- which strikes me as something that should be encouraged in a democracy.

But tonight, as usual, the BBC took it upon itself to tell us all what to think - i.e. "the debate was a tie with no clear winner." From the little they did let us hear, I'm not sure I agree. But, without seeing rather more than 30 seconds of Senators Obama and McCain arguing their cases, I'm not really in much of a position to come to a considered or definite conclusion of my own. And that's precisely why I find this ever-increasing occupation of the air time by media employees so unsatisfactory and and why I worry about the damage it might be doing to the democratic process itself.

Wisdom of forethought?

Back in 2004, when Brownites were busy briefing against Tony Blair, I wrote an article questioning whether Gordon Brown would make a good or better leader. It was rejected by the various newspapers I sent it to, but, in the light of events since he became Prime Minister, I don't think it was too far off the mark:

Can Labour afford to back Brown?
(written in September, 2004)

1979 Revisited?

On the day after the 1979 general election, I remember being flabbergasted by a letter to The Guardian that seemed completely out of touch with reality. Signed by Tony Benn and a group of like-minded colleagues, it attributed Labour’s defeat entirely to the fact that it had failed to pursue policies that were left-wing enough. The authors conveniently ignored the fact that the Callaghan government had only managed to stay in power because of a pact with the Liberals. And they were undaunted by the complete lack of evidence of any widespread support for left-wing policies from an electorate that had just voted Margaret Thatcher into office.

With the price of ignoring the preferences of the electorate as high as eighteen years in opposition, the party ought surely have learnt its lesson. But calls from Labour malcontents to replace Blair with Brown are beginning to sound like the first drum beats of a renewed retreat from political reality. It’s not just that the anti-Blair agitators have apparently forgotten that bickering and division are a sure-fire recipe for damaging a party’s fortunes. They also seem to be assuming that the electorate would be happier, or at least just as happy, with Brown at the helm as they are with Blair.

What harks back so resonantly to 1979 is the fact that the change being pressed for by the siren voices within the party once again seem to have more to do with internal party feuds than any rational assessment of Labour’s wider electoral appeal. Unlike the last time the party turned in on itself, the present situation has little or nothing to do with policy. After all, Blair and Brown were co-architects of New Labour, even though Brown now seems obsessed with deleting the phrase from his vocabulary. Nor, as far as the average voter can see, does there seem to be much difference between them about current policies. So whether the malcontents like it or not, the issue actually boils down to personalities – or to be more precise to which of them has greater electoral appeal. And this is where I find myself almost as flabbergasted by the pro-Brown lobby as when I read the Benn letter 25 years ago. And there are at least three reasons why a Brown leadership could be one small step, and perhaps even a giant leap, towards electoral disaster.

Lawyer v. Lecturer?

Gordon Brown’s first problem is that, when it comes to communication skills, the former lawyer has the former university lecturer beaten hands down. Blair knows how to craft and deliver a speech. He knows how to make the most of rhetoric, imagery and anecdotes to get his points across. And he has that rare and essential electoral asset of being able to attract respect, however grudging, from supporters of other parties. His ‘people’s princess’ speech on the death of the Princess of Wales caught the mood of the nation, regardless of party affiliation. And the impact of his speeches after 9/11 transcended national boundaries: such was the power of his oratory that, for a while at least, many Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike, looked on Blair, rather than Bush, as the world’s leading spokesman against global terrorism.

By comparison, even the most casual research into audience reactions to Gordon Brown’s speeches comes up with descriptions like ‘the quintessence of dour’, ‘a finance geek in a grey suit’, ‘serious’, ‘sombre’ or just plain ‘boring’. However much he may be admired for his undoubted intelligence or competence as chancellor, he comes across as dull and uninspiring -- except to a tiny minority of political commentators who delight in looking for the presence or absence of words and phrases that might be a coded hint about the current state of his relationship with Blair and/or the party at large.

In an age when coverage of speeches makes up an increasingly small proportion of broadcast political news, Brown’s supporters might offer the defence that dourness on the podium doesn’t matter as much as it did in the past. But even if there is some truth in this, the trouble is that their hero has a second, and arguably even bigger, handicap in the way he conducts himself in what has become the main cockpit of political debate on television and radio, namely the interview.

Not Answering Questions

For at least two decades, viewers and listeners have had put up with the sight and sound of politicians treating interviewers’ questions as prompts to say anything they like, regardless of what they were asked, or as yet another opportunity to dodge an issue. As an exponent of how to carry this depressing art to its limits, Gordon Brown has no serious competitors among contemporary British politicians. When he was still shadow chancellor, one commentator noted that if you asked him what he had for breakfast, his most likely response would be ‘what the country needs is a prudent budget’ – and that would merely be the preamble to a lecture about his latest thoughts on the matter. I recently asked one of the BBC’s most experienced and best-known presenters what it was like to interview him. His answer was rather more outspoken than I’d expected:

‘Brown answers his own questions, never the interviewer's, and is utterly shameless. He will say what he wants to say and that's it. And he'll say it fifty times in one interview without any embarrassment at all. I've never met anyone quite like him in that respect. I once spent 40 minutes on one narrow point and still failed to get him to make the smallest concession. He's extraordinary and is never anything but evasive and verbose.’

If politicians like Brown think it clever or smart to get one over the interviewer with such tactics, they betray a staggering lack of sensitivity to two rather obvious and basic facts about the way people interpret verbal communication. The first is that viewers and listeners can tell instantly when interviewees are being evasive. And the second is that they don’t much like it. Politicians may say that they’re worried about their low esteem in the eyes of the public and growing voter apathy. But it never seems to occur to them that their relentless refusal to give straight answers to questions might have something to do with it.

The 'drink tonight' Test

Finally, Gordon Brown fails a simple test that I’ve found to be an interesting barometer of charismatic potential. I first started using it during a stint as visiting professor at an American university which just happened to coincide with 1984 U.S. presidential election. Noting that all the bumper stickers on cars in the faculty parking lot were pro-Democrat, I took to asking colleagues a simple question: ‘If you could go out for a drink tonight with Reagan or Mondale, which one would you choose?’ Without exception, they opted for Reagan, who was duly elected a few weeks later.

According to this test, the Tories have made a number of serious blunders since the demise of Margaret Thatcher: it pointed to Heseltine rather than Major, Clarke rather than Hague and Portillo rather Duncan Smith. And, if the opportunity had arisen, David Davis might have come out ahead of Michael Howard

Applied to Labour’s choice of leader after the death of John Smith, the test resulted in 100 percent of my respondents opting for a drink with Blair rather than Brown -- a statistic that has remained unchanged to this day. Add to this the prime minister’s greater effectiveness as an orator, the chancellor’s dour image and continuing evasiveness in interviews, mix in the damaging effect of internal splits and squabbling, and the plan to ditch Blair in favour of Brown begins to look almost as far removed from electoral reality as the left-wing fantasies of Tony Benn and his cronies in the 1980s.

Time for Cameron to surf applause?

This suggestion for the Conservative leader hasn't been published (yet), and video clips illustrating the main points can be seen below.

When it comes to speech-making, David Cameron has enjoyed more success than most British politicians of his generation. His short unscripted pitch for the party leadership in 2005 was enough to transform him from rank outsider to eventual winner. And his speech at last year’s conference was so effective that it was arguably one of the factors that helped to deter Gordon Brown from calling an election at a time when Labour were still safely ahead in the polls.

If Mr Cameron has already mastered most of the key techniques that set a good orator apart from an average one, the question arises as to whether there’s anything else he could be doing to take the next step into the premier league? And one thing he might like to consider is the art of surfing applause, a technique that’s only to be found among those at the top of their trade. Past maestros include Martin Luther King and Tony Benn, and today’s most prominent exponents are Nicholas Sarkozy and Barack Obama.

Unlike most speakers, surfers don’t just stop whenever the audience applauds and wait until they’ve finished. What surfers do is to carry on speaking after the applause has started, which creates a number of positive impressions. It makes it look as though you hadn’t been seeking applause at all, and are really quite surprised that the audience has interrupted you with an unexpected display of approval.

Then, if you keep trying to go on while the audience is still clapping, it’s as if you’re telling them that, unlike less passionate politicians, you’re the kind of person who regards getting your message across as much more important than waiting around to savour the applause. If you’re really lucky, and the broadcasters want to put this particular extract on prime time news programmes, the lack of any clean break between your speech and the applause makes it difficult for them to edit without including the adulation of the crowd as well – so that the various positive impressions are transmitted beyond the hall to the much bigger numbers viewing or listening at home.

On the plus side, Mr Cameron is already exhibiting the first signs of surfing in some of his speeches, but needs to carry through with a bit further if he’s to make the most of it. A sign that he was almost ready for fully-fledged surfing came in his 2005 conference speech, when he said:

“That is a stain on this country and this government [applause starts] and what is – [applause stops] -- and what is the government’s answer?”

This was all right as far as it went, but he didn’t have to stop after only a single attempt at carrying on and then wait for the applause to subside before speaking again. More experienced surfers don’t just make one aborted attempt to speak during the applause, but do it several times in a row, as in this example from Barack Obama:

“.. that threatens my civil liberties. [applause starts] It is that fundamental belief – [applause continues] -- It is that fundamental belief -- [applause starts to fade] It is that fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper, that makes this country work.”

The important thing is to make sure that you don’t say anything that really matters while the noise of the applause might still drown it out, because there’s no point in developing the message until you’re sure it will be audible.

Repeating the first few words, as Obama did in the above example, is probably the easiest and safest way of doing it, but it’s not the only option. Another is to keep adding a few more words each time until the applause has died down enough for people to be able to hear the fully formed sentence you want them to hear. Really experienced surfers develop a finely-tuned ear for the volume of applause that enables them to know exactly when it’s become quiet enough for it to be safe to carry on.

Tony Benn often used to do this three or four times before carrying on with his point,
as in this example from the 1980s:

[Applause starts] “My resent – my resentment – my resentment about the - uh- [applause fades] my resentment about the exclusion of the House of Lords …”

Nearly 30 years later, he's still at it

"That's the [applause starts] real distinction that we have to face -- and it's not just -- actually - [applause stops] you can't even give Karl Marx the credit for that."

It might seem, of course that the Conservative Party’s annual conference is far too important and exposed a platform for Mr Cameron to start having a go at surfing the applause. But he has already been showing a natural inclination to do it, and taking it a small step further might not be any bigger risk than his daring departure from the lectern in 2005 –which yielded such such a handsome dividend.

Click below to see examples from Benn, Sarkozy, Obama and Cameron:

Did Gordon Brown take my advice?

Here's what I said in The Times after Mr Brown had made his speech:


Judging from his conference speech, Gordon Brown seems to have taken on board the three main points I recommended on these pages on Monday, and arguably gained from some of the benefits I had in mind.

The first was that he should stop trying to emulate the ‘unscripted’ walkabout style favoured by Messrs. Cameron and Clegg and return to the lectern. By doing this, he looked much more comfortable than when he’s tried walking about: his gestures looked much more ‘natural’, he didn’t have to worry about what to do during bursts of applause and, perhaps most important of all, he came across as a confident and experienced elder statesman.

My second concern was that, in some of his previous speeches, his average pause rate was only once every fifteen words -- three times longer than in speeches by the likes of Churchill, Thatcher, Reagan, Clinton and Blair, who used to pause, on average, every five words. Not pausing often enough can cause two main problems. One is that it’s much easier for audiences to follow if they can take in short chunks at a time. Another is that even slight pauses can transform the meaning, emphasis and mood of the point being made.

On this occasion, Mr. Brown made a startling improvement on some of his other efforts by matching, almost exactly, the one pause per five words of the famous leaders mentioned above.

The third thing that’s worried me about his speeches is his past tendency to pack in long lists of statistical information that doesn’t instantly mean very much to the average listener. On this too, he did particularly well. Certainly he had some big numbers, but there was a really nice sequence where made them come to life with real life examples, such as “That’s not just a number, that’s the dad who lives to walk his daughter up the aisle” – a contrastive technique that he used four or five times in quick succession.

And the contrast, in its various forms, triggers about a third of the applause in political speeches. Before Mr Brown’s speech, I’d said that if he could equal or exceed Mrs Thatcher’s achievement at the 1981 Conservative conference (when things weren’t going too well for her either), at which she was applauded, on average once every three sentences, he would be home and dry.

He came very close, with a rate of once every 3.5 sentences -- so he might just be nearly there.

Eternity, eternity and eternity

A radio station asked me to suggest some lines for Gordon Brown to include in his speech. As self-deprecating humour always worked well for Ronald Reagan and can be quite effective in getting an audience on your side, I came up with this:

"I’m sure that no one would ever expect me to be critical of anything said by any previous Labour Prime Minister.

But I’ll admit that I do have a question for one of them: just what did Harold Wilson mean when he said that a week is a long time in politics?

And what would he have said about the 63 weeks since I came into the job?

So I asked Tony what he thought.

“Obvious”, he said: 'eternity, eternity and eternity.' "

More tips for Gordon Brown's speech

Here are some more that weren't published, and you can see a video clip of Brown and Clinton at the end of this entry,

When it comes to party leaders’ speeches in the television age, it’s widely believed that the audience that really matters is the millions watching excerpts on news bulletins at home, rather than the hundreds who are actually there in the conference hall.

But for Gordon Brown this year, his live audience is arguably far more important than usual, consisting as it will of key Labour decision-makers and activists who will have to be won over if he’s to succeed in reducing the heat in the kitchen. So here are three tips that could help to make or break his performance on Tuesday.

1. MAKE EVERYONE IN THE AUDIENCE FEEL INCLUDED

It’s quite common for speakers to look at one side of the audience more frequently than they look at the other. For example, during Mrs Thatcher’s speeches, she used to look to the left three times more often than she looked to the right. But Gordon Brown suffers from by far the most serious case of ‘skewed eye-contact’ I have ever seen, and spends the vast majority of his time looking towards his left. His glances to the right sometimes fall to as low as 5% of the time, as happened in his speech to the Labour Party Forum in July, during which he only looked to the right for just under two of the 37 minutes it took to deliver.

The trouble with this is that it’s likely to make half audience feel ignored or left out, as if he’s not really speaking to them at all. And with a conference audience made up of so many doubters, dissidents and plotters, he really cannot afford to risk making a large proportion of them feel excluded or uninvolved. So he needs to remember to alternate his gaze to both sides (and straight ahead) for the duration of his speech.

2. TRY TO TRIGGER AS MANY BURSTS OF APPLAUSE AS YOU CAN

Although observers and commentators are not equipped with clapometers, the fact is that they do notice how much applause there is and us this as a basis for assessing the success or otherwise of a speech. This means that the more bursts of applause there are and the longer the standing ovation at the end, the more favourably will the speech be reported by journalists. So the more positive the response Mr Brown gets, the more will it weaken the case of the those who want to continue their campaign against him -- and might even see them off for the foreseeable future.

Two key points need to be borne in mind when it comes to maximizing the frequency of applause. The first is that about 70% of the applause in political speeches comes after the speaker attacks, criticises or ridicules the opposition.

The second is that most bursts of applause come after the speaker has used one or other of a small range of very simple rhetorical techniques. This means that he should use these to package as many of his key messages as possible, because the more use he makes of them, the more applause will he get.

If he could equal or exceed Margaret Thatcher’s 1981 conference speech, when she was applauded, on average, every three sentences, Mr Brown would surely be home and dry.

3. DON’T LIFT LINES FROM OTHER POLITICIANS

In 1988, Senator Joe Biden’s campaign for his party’s presidential nomination collapse when he was exposed for having borrowed verbatim from a Neil Kinnock speech during the 1987 general election – an iniscretion that has continued to haunt him since being selected as Barack Obama’s vice-presidential running mate.


There was a strong echo of this in Gordon Brown’s July speech to the Labour Party Policy Forum, when he said “There is nothing bad about Britain that cannot be corrected by what’s good about Britain”, which was suspiciously close to a line from Bill Clinton’s inaugural address in 1993: “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what’s right with America.”

Brown was lucky that it went unnoticed at the time. But the Labour Party Conference is a much bigger stage, and Mr Brown and his speechwriters should be aware that there is nothing to be gained by taking the risk of being accused of plagiarism.

Click below to watch clips of Clinton and Brown in action.

Tips for Gordon Brown's conference speech

Here's what The Times published about what I said before Gordon Brown's conference speech: 

David Cameron does it. Nick Clegg has tried it. But there is no need for Gordon Brown to bend to fashion by abandoning the traditional lectern for a no-notes, pacing the stage speech.

He tried it at Warwick in July, but the regular pacing - two or three steps from side to side - was distracting. Instead he should make the most of looking and sounding like the 'elder statesman' he has become.

It also throws up other problems, such as what to do when the audience applauds. Do you walk aimlessly around, stand still, look down, look away? At a lectern, at least he can look down as if to check his script, turn a page or have a drink of water, all of which look a good deal more natural.

Maybe there's a lesson to be learned here from Neil Kinnock, who is reputed to have had a lectern made to measure to fit the width of his shoulders.

Secondly, he needs to appreciate the importance of pauses. Churchill, Thatcher, Reagan, Clinton, Blair and Cameron paused, on average, every five words. But, in some of Mr Brown's speeches, he is pausing only once every fifteen words. This needs to come down. When and where the pauses come make a huge difference to the meaning, feeling and emphasis.

Thirdly he needs to think about his hands. In the past, Brown has resorted to a small number of repetitive gestures that seemed contrived or robotic. This is another argument for using a lectern: at a podium, his hands tend to look after themselves and appear more 'natural', whether clutching the sides, moving away occasionally to give emphasis.

Finally he should make his speeches simpler. He tries to pack far too much information into them, including long recitations of statistics and huge numbers. He cannot rely on everyone finding such things easy to understand.