Politico brings us one the most ridiculous non-issues on the campaign trail. McCain thinks it is laughable that Obama may already have a draft of his inaugural address somewhere in his files.
Of course Obama is working on his address. He hopefully works on it every week, thinks about it every day. Has been since he became interested in politics. McCain, I guess, does not. This is yet another example of, not only the lack of intelligence in the McCain camp, but the complete absence of any sense of what thought is. A man who is running for president is always drafting his inaugural address. That's how he thinks his position through. An intelligent man does this in writing (not just in daydreams).
The fact that the Obama compaign believes it has to deny the rumour ("not one word has been written") is, of course, not encouraging. It says something about how silly this race is getting. In his introduction to Advertisements for Myself, Norman Mailer said he had been spending the time since he published his first book "running for president in the privacy of [his] own mind". He was, ridiculously, accused of being arrogant.
But surely we are not suprised that Obama has been running such a private campaign, long before his public one? Surely we hope he has considered the possibility that he might have to hold an actual inaugural address. "If I win," said Mailer of the New York City mayoralty primaries in 1969, "I am in trouble." He, of course, was a maverick.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Scandal: McCain Has Given No Thought to What He Will Say at His Inauguration!
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3 comments:
There may be two kinds of people: those who rehearse speeches as a practice of reflexion - i.e. wedding speeches for wives-to-be, congratulatory speeches for our colleagues, etc. Self-indulgent, yes, rational, yes.
And then there might be people who don't, but who may nevertheless be excellent, trustworthy and efficient politicians.
There's a similar divide in management these days between managers who'll let others deal with communication (and think of marketing and communications as something different from management), and managers who believe their job begins and ends with communication.
My point is this: of course Obama has a speech in a drawer and an ongoing revision in his mind. It would border on negligence if he did not. That's understandable for anyone but those taking communication to be what we turn to after everthing important is already done.
Yes. (I just edited the post to make it less ambiguous that I also think Obama has his speech ready in some form at the moment.)
I like this stuff about communication. A thoughtful leader makes decisions that include the way the decision will be communicated. A decision that cannot be communicated is never a good one (unless it doesn't need to be communicated ... though I can't think of an example.)
Obama only has one speech that he's been giving for ten years. I don't see why he even has to write it down.
Yes, we can, blah blah blah.
Provide some vague details.
Yes, we can, blah blah blah.
Provide some vague details.
Repeat.
McCain is all action, he doesn't have to write anything down because for him there is no gap between thought and action.
He's like Superman! Except his values are all found in the Bible!
He's Samson and Jesus and King David rolled into one.
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