« William van Alstyne passes on | Main | ATF changes mailing addresses »
Thoughts on the 2019 SOTU
Speaking as a person with an undergrad in speech, and a fairly good speaker himself, who has never before watched a state of the union speech from beginning to end, because they are boring speeches by amateur speakers...
It wasn't just good, it was magnificent! Scott Adams is right, the man is a master persuader. You could base a large part of a Speech class on having the students analyze it. Aristotle said a speaker must focus upon logos, logic, pathos, emotion, and ethos, hard to translate but something like dignity. Trump hit all three.
And the fine points, making a point that any reasonable person would applaud, leaving the Demos the choice of stand and applaud or sit sullenly. But capping them with a statement that, if they applauded, would make them look foolish or hack off their base.
They sat when he praised the ICE agent who'd rescued women from sex trafficking! An event carefully chosen - an upstanding fellow from an agency their radical base hates. Sit or stand? Quite a dilemma. And rubbing it in with a statement he'd never abolish the guy's agency. That finishing touch ensured that if they DID stand, they'd be screwed with their base.
He praises high female employment -- this time they do stand and cheer -- but caps it with a reference to more women being elected to office, so it looks like they are cheering themselves. Sit or stand, he's got them both ways.
And it dealt with all the criticism/stereotypes put upon him. He's a Nazi. Funny, he's lauding WWII soldiers, and Israel. He's dangerously power-mad. Strange, he praises de-regulation. He's going to be a militarist. Hmm, he talks about getting out of wars and avoiding them in the future. He's a racist. Strange, he talks about repealing laws that burden blacks disproportionately, and how happy he is that some very nice people got out of prison, and that black employment rates are the highest ever. He's some rich guy. Hmm... his major theme is defending the working class.
The Demo response was pathetic. It bet it was filmed in advance. No real response to Trump's speech, just a presentation that could have been given any time, and not a good one. Climate change? Was that a response to the SOTU?
It's even possible it was green-screened. That is, that the crowd in the background was actually filmed some other time, and her image (standing before a green screen that can digitally be made transparent) was superimposed.
3 Comments | Leave a comment
Trump is the master of using political 'clickbait' against his opponents. He knows to which shiny objects they cannot not react, like a cat seeing a laser dot or a toy slowly dragged along the floor.
The transitions of the speech were genius. He gets them to sit on their hands, stone-faced, looking petty for minute after minute while he recites a litany of good news -- jobs up, energy independence, trade deficit down, etc. -- and then gets them finally up and cheering for what? Themselves, heedless of their show of small-minded narcissism.
Likewise, he gets them to applaud little girls who survive cancer, and immediately segues to their side's cheering of infanticide in NY and VA. While still scowling over border security and The Wall, he presents them with the next of kin mourning their losses from Washington's indifference to illegal alien crime. He made them own all their most extreme positions.
His task was to appear as the responsible adult in the room who actually gives a fig about Main Street America, and he succeeded wildly.
When the platform of the D's is straight from the talking points of a loon like AOC, Trump looks like only adult in the room.
Trump is a master performer Decades of running his own show He has been in movies and tv shows He only plays one character , himself
As a public speaker doing off the cuff, he is very. very good. He got a lot of practice during the 2016 and 2018 campaigns He has quick wit and a comediennes sense of timing
His set pieces like SOTU he does very well He has a master sense of timing and how to gauge the audience. He managed to make the women in white cheer and chant USA
I also think his speech in Poland was a master in statesmanship. That was ignored by the MSM
Trump is a people person and knows how to set a stage and manipulate people. He can read a person very well He has charm and brusqueness when needed.
I though of a comparison of PT Barnum when he was running Trump knows marketing and branding He keeps to simple terms and sayas them over and over . He becomes the narrative