Rob Cottingham

Tag: barack obama

  • The State of the Union is social

    The State of the Union is social

    There’s a point I’ve been hammering for years now (and I do mean years): the rise of social networks and easily-shared media should mean a profound change in the way speakers and speechwriters approach our craft: at once both broader in scope and more conversational in approach. I call this approach the social speech.

    But there’s still surprisingly little uptake. Maybe speakers put their Twitter handle on an opening slide, or post their deck to Slideshare, but that’s often about it.

    Maybe that’s you. And maybe the thought of getting more social with your speaking (or speechwriting) has intrigued you before, but you weren’t really sure where to begin.

    If so, then have a look at how the Obama White House handled the State of the Union speech last week. (more…)

  • How Obama’s messy closet saved the State of the Union speech

    How Obama’s messy closet saved the State of the Union speech

    State of the Union speeches are often messy, sprawling things. Countless constituencies and interests — within and outside government — vie to hear their priorities reflected in the President’s words. And even without their lobbying, the scope of governing is vast, offering potentially thousands of agenda items.

    That’s why so many SOTU speeches (and their siblings in legislatures around the world) sound less like inspiring calls to action and more like grocery lists.

    Yet last night, President Barack Obama delivered a remarkably tight speech. Structured around four major questions for America’s future, it included very little of the obligatory box-checking that plagues speeches like it. There was a focus to it that practically guaranteed the ensuing news coverage would center around its key messages.

    Part of his success was a certain amount of ruthlessness in refusing to include a lot of content altogether. But there were several obligatory topics that would have been very conspicuous by their absence if Obama hadn’t included them.

    So he did — without dragging his speech off-course.

    To pull that off, Obama and his team relied on a speechwriting trick borrowed from generations of teenagers. I’ve used it for Throne Speeches, budget speeches and annual reports, and I call it the Messy Bedroom Closet. (more…)

  • Election night sketchbook

    My election night doodling. Just click for full-size images in glorious grey!

  • State of the Union high point?

    Sometimes the best part of a speech isn’t the one with the brilliant metaphor, the side-splitting joke or the devastating retort. It’s the part where the speaker makes a case plainly but eloquently, and where the drama comes from the clash of ideas instead of from cranked-up rhetoric.

    President Obama’s best moment tonight may have been this one. I don’t think it took anyone’s breath away at the time… but I’ll bet you see this language repeated in speech after speech by Democratic candidates and incumbents in the coming months:

    We don’t begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich. It’s because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference – like a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet. That’s not right.

  • Proud of your American friends? Here’s one way to tell them

    Last night, choked up and overwhelmed by the enormity of the moment, I responded the only way I know how.

    I created a Facebook group.

    If you want to make a simple statement, come on over and join Canadians who are proud of our American neighbors (I dropped the “u” in tribute to our Yankee amigas and amigos).

  • Un-inevitable

    Democratic Party front page, with large photo of Barack Obama and little photo of Hillary ClintonI’m going to save the screen capture I took of the Democratic Party’s home page a few minutes ago.

    And the next time I read some columnist pontificating about how the outcome of an election is a foregone conclusion…or hear a talking head pronouncing someone’s victory to be “inevitable”…or talk to a campaign operative who tells me their candidate is absolutely assured of winning, and I’d better be on the victorious side…

    …I’m going to pull this up on my screen, and laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

    Nobody in politics has a crystal ball. And the people who prognosticate with the highest confidence, at the highest volume, are the biggest bluffers in the business.

    Hurray for unpredictability. It’s a key ingredient of hope.

  • Bittersweetgate

    The news over the past few weeks – or, more accurately, over and over and over over the past few weeks – has been all about Barack Obama’s digitally-recorded comments about small-town working-class bitterness over economic insecurity.

    I’m torn. On the one hand, I can (with only a little stretch) take a certain satisfaction in being prescient:

    But Bittergate does serve as a key reminder of the Macaca Moment’s core communications lesson for 21st century campaigns:

    Digital recording devices – video recorders, audio recorders, cell phone recorders — are everywhere. All the time. They are small, discrete, often invisible – even when they are being used. And video and audio can be sent wirelessly from anywhere to anywhere, anytime – so that a comment made in San Francisco (or rural Virginia) may be instantly shown on national TV.

    Combine (1) this rule of Digital Omnipresence with (2) the rules of Off-the-Record/On the Record (i.e. – nothing is ever truly, reliably, off-the-record), then you’ve got Bittergate.

    Dan Manatt, techPresident.com, April 15, 2008

    …and…

    [P]oliticians telling people what they want to hear is an old story. But what’s new is the ability to catch them in the act. Video cameras are everywhere; many digital cameras can capture video and audio. But even more significant is the world of cell phones.

    Mobile phones are nearly ubiquitous, and a large and growing number of them can record video. Those phones are a lot less intrusive than a camcorder; it would be hard to imagine a better means of capturing unguarded moments.

    Like, say, a politician telling a voter something that contradicts something the politician had told a different audience the day before. An outrageous slur against an opponent. A career-ending* display of bigotry.

    It’s only a matter of time before a politician does something George Allen-esque in front of the watchful eye of a camera phone. And then the impact on politicians will be profound. Nearly every moment outside of their own homes (and inside, if they’ve done something that morning to tick off one of their kids) could find its way onto YouTube, Revver or any of a dozen other video-sharing sites… and onto the computers of thousands of their voters.

    Me on the Social Signal blog, February 25, 2007

    On the other hand, the thing that I should have anticipated is the way this magnifies the ability to take any but the blandest of phrases, strip it of context and nuance, and beat a candidate over the head with it.

    Gods… is there a technology out there that can’t be used to dumb down politics even further?