Not So Tough Without The Teleprompter

The Hill has a post, Obama switches off his teleprompter and the upshot is Obama is the President thinks he can be more intense if he appears to speak to his audience instead of reading to it. As a campaign aide said, it's “less to do with image and more to do with upping the tempo”. Obviously it's not about image. The teleprompter allowed Obama to read his speech writers' more or less intelligent prose in a measured, detached and somewhat aloof manner that seemed to project a serene coolness. Now the public sees the up tempo Obama and it is a disaster.
Andrew Malcom has a post at Investors Business Daily describing the orator's now infamous Roanoke speech.
President Obama was -- what else? -- campaigning for reelection in a warm, muggy Roanoke, Virginia Friday. He was going on and on, as he seems to do more and more these days. Suddenly, members of the crowd of about 3,000 began toppling over like flies, no doubt overwhelmed by the voice and words of the Real Good Talker. "This happens at every event," the president of the United States said modestly. Spotting his audience collapsing in the heat, Obama didn't wrap up his remarks. He had more to say. Instead, he began offering medical advice about how people should stand in the heat, you know, bend your knees, drink lots of water, etc. He also reassured them that "paralegals" were on the way to offer help while he finished talking. Then, of course, with the crowd laughing at his latest malapropos, the president of these 57 states caught himself, laughed and said, "Paralegals? You don't need lawyers."

Paralegals, paramedics whatever. When Obama bares his mind it's almost an act of indecent exposure. I viewed the entire video of that speech. Obama was the third speaker following Senator Mark Warner and wannabe Senator Tim Kaine and the crowd had been in the sweltering heat for along time. People weren't fainting at the rapture of being in his presence as he seems to suggest " This happens at every event ", they were suffering heat exhaustion. No matter. I will say that these Virginia Democrats have more endurance than I have. If I had to sit through speeches by Warner, Kaine, and Obama I would be in a coma.
Everyone knows Obama does especially well with the low information voter but even a crowd of heat drenched Democrats surely picked up on his falsehood that extending the tax cuts for those making more than $250,000, whom he identifies as the top 2 percent, would cost a trillion dollars.
 
When a candidate screws up his own stump speech it's almost like missing a lay up. There was no trick question. There was no surd debating point made by an opponent. There was only Obama and his rapt audience when in the thrall of the sound of his own voice he recalled a point made by a Cherokee squaw from Harvard, Elizabeth Warren, godmother of the Occupy movement, and out shot the "you didn't do it yourself" but for the love of government you would be parking cars instead of owning a factory. In less than half a minute he managed to undo so much of the damage $100 million in campaign ads had done to Romney and left half of the country wondering why anyone would vote for a teleprompter president.