Trump preaches to the choir but his speeches don’t seem to be geared to capturing any part of the rest of America. From Dr. Naomi Wolf at naomiwolf.substack.com:
This is one of those “essays I fear to write.” I fear that those who are passionate admirers of President Trump will take umbrage at my notes about his recent speech at CPAC; and that those who are appalled at the mere mention of his name, will be even angrier at me than they usually are — as in this essay I treat him seriously as a Presidential candidate.
As many know, I used to be a political consultant — for President Clinton’s re-election campaign in 1996, and for Vice President Gore’s 2000 Presidential campaign.
Before I was a consultant, I was a White House spouse; my then-husband was a speechwriter for both President Clinton and for Mrs Clinton. I became familiar, from an observer’s distance, with the intense cycle of Presidential speechwriting and revision.
Then I became a consultant, and a participant in observing the speechwriting process myself.
Though I signed NDAs, and thus can’t discuss the details of my work for either campaign, I can speak generally about what I learned; about what can be helpful for a candidate for the Presidency, and about the common stumbling-blocks that face all candidates for that US office.
I also learned from both roles about the “message” process: this is the daunting task that a team of media specialists undertakes, of getting the press corp to cover what is actually in the speech — ideally focusing their stories on the policy centerpiece of the speech — rather than running stories that elide the speech altogether, to focus on some random “clickbait”.
(It was extraordinary for me to learn how often the national press corps simply does not report on the contents of a President’s or a candidate’s speeches, no matter how important the content is, or even run a link to the transcript, but will rather run stories “about” the speech “occasion,” that are really about the audience, or a recent scandal, or a poll, or whatever the First Lady was wearing.)
For a speech by a US President or Presidential candidate to be successful — that is, covered accurately in the media, with the main points highlighted, and, ideally, to push the agenda or polls, and to be remembered positively by posterity — the message team must also follow certain methodologies in the production of the speech and its distribution to the press.
Unable to get to the rest of her article via SLL’s “Continue,” I linked to her speech on the internet.
I wish every Trump supporter (I am a reluctant one) would read her words. She provides, without actually trying to do so, why Trump is NOT the answer to what confronts us!
I remain “hopeful” that those who might come to occupy power in his administration, should he win, will – in spite of his ignorant pragmatism, move “us” in better directions than we have metastasized into.
While “hope is a good thing,” as the hero states in The Shawshank Redemption, it offers little in the way of results. Alas, there seems little else for which to vote……….
Thanks for letting me know that I forgot to put the link on the Continue Reading. I fixed it.
He finally realized that one half of the population wants to obedience muzzle their way to bugs and pods?
We’ll let them eat…chitin.
The fact that making a former republic great once more triggers that half, is all you need to know.