Obama Adding Detail to His Oratory

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Obama Adding Detail to His Oratory
By JEFF ZELENY
Published: February 17, 2008

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. — If he does say so himself, Senator Barack Obama delivers a fine political speech. “Don’t be fooled by this talk about speeches versus solutions,” Mr. Obama told a crowd of Wisconsin voters. “It’s true, I give a good speech. What do I do? Nothing wrong with that.” To that confident strain of self-assessment, the audience roared with approval.

A shrug of the shoulders and a few deadpanned retorts, some of which stop just shy of mocking his rival, is the latest approach Mr. Obama has taken to respond to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s criticism that his words offer more poetry than substance. Yet as he traveled across Wisconsin last week, Mr. Obama seemed to have let loose a little more of his inner-wonk, which his strategists had once urged him to keep on the shelf. Even as he was dismissing Mrs. Clinton’s criticism, he appeared to be taking it at least mildly to heart — a suggestion that as a line of attack, she might be on to something.

Suddenly, he was injecting a few more specifics into his campaign speeches. Giant rallies that had sustained his candidacy through a coast-to-coast series of contests on Feb. 5, notable for their rhetorical flourishes and big applause lines, were supplemented with policy speeches and town-hall-style meetings, complete with the question-and-answer sessions he abandoned as he roared out of Iowa and into New Hampshire. (In hindsight, he conceded as he reviewed a defeat to Mrs. Clinton, that was a mistake.)

By every indication, this was not a random change in the Obama style. The senator decided to clue in his audience to the shift on a recent morning in Janesville, Wis., where he presented an economic proposal to create seven million jobs over the next decade. “Today, I want to take it down a notch,” said Mr. Obama, of Illinois, standing on the floor of a General Motors plant. “This is going to be a speech that is a little more detailed. It’s going to be a little bit longer, with not too many applause lines.”

After raising more money, winning more states and garnering more votes than Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama has demonstrated a new air of certainty. But advisers said despite his questionable flares of confidence — acknowledging to audiences, for example, that he believed he did in fact give a good speech — he was mindful of being too sure of himself at this unfinished moment in the Democratic nomination fight. And clearly the criticisms by Mrs. Clinton — and, not incidentally, by Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee — that Mr. Obama is a candidate with more flash than substance are being taken as something of a warning shot....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/us/politics/17obama.html

[NastyRiffraff]

1. Good.

He's finally catching on that there are more voters than the breathless, wide-eyed people who hang on his every word, no matter what he actually says. I hope it continues. Some of us want meat, not just dessert.

[THUNDER HANDS]

2. he's always had detail

some people just refused to admit it was there.

To most people, boring = detailed.

[TexasObserver]

3. He's always had details. Hillary's meme is a LIE and always has been.

But then, when does she tell the truth?