July 15, 2015

One thing Jeb Bush got right

Sam Smith - When Jeb Bush complained about Obama using "big words" the liberal gradocacy threw a little fit. But the truth is that, from the start, Obama's big problem in reaching the American public is not his blackness but his pedantic professorial approach with which he speaks to it. He lectures rather than talks and, not surprisingly, many Americans don't appreciate this.

As noted here before, one of the biggest changes in Washington over past decades has been the rise in the influence of products of graduate schools like law, business and economics. When I started out as a reporter, even the lawyers on Capitol Hill tended to be hometown attorneys who knew how to speak with citizens.  They used terms like "public works" instead of "infrastructure." They were literate but also easy to understand.

As my high school math teacher used to tell us when we mispoke or weren't clear: "Speaka United States."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is a big reason for Trump's success - his plain speaking and not overly parsing words such as we've seen with Obama and Hillary.

It may be rough and coarse and insensitive but it rings true with many people as opposed to legalese-speak hiding behind such con-jobs such as Obamacare and TPP.