How can a bright man—Gore was Magna Cum Laude at Harvard—be in politics his whole life and not have learned the most basic of political skills: communicating via
the spoken word? True, George Bush had a lead tongue and still got to be President, but does anyone think Gore's opponent will run as poorly as Mike Du-what-was-his-name?When I am not writing and
producing shows for TJWalker.Com, I am a speech coach to politicians, CEOs and authors. Here is the advice I would give to Gore if he were my client.
"Al, why do you shout when you try to communicate
emotion? There is a thing called a microphone that was invented many years ago. When you have a microphone, you don't ever have to shout, people will still be able to hear you."
"It's likely that
when you were four years old, you went with your father on campaign trips to small towns in Tennessee. Perhaps your father had to get up on stumps and shout to the crowd in order to be heard because there
were no microphones. This is an image that you will have to unlearn. Unless your house is on fire, it seems phony, contrived, and plastic to shout."
"Reagan was a great speaker. Do you ever
remember him shouting?"
"If you have to shout, raise your voice on only a few words, or at most, for one sentence. A shout in the midst of a normal voice or even a whisper will capture people's
attention. Shouting throughout a speech, as you do, merely makes people wonder if your underwear is too tight."
"Al, next we are going to watch a videotape of your latest speech. Notice the stop
watch in my hand. I am timing the pauses you make between each word. Please notice that you pause exactly 1.259683 seconds between each and every word you utter. This is the root cause of why you sound
wooden, even non-human. The only other time people hear a voice that has an equal pause between each word is when they go through the Atlanta airport and the computer voice tells them to get on the
tram."
"Al, when you and I talk in a normal conversation, your pauses vary, everyone's pauses very. Sometimes there is no gap between words—when you are speaking quickly. Other times there
are bigger pauses—when you are slowing down. This is the key to making a conversational speech—you must constantly change the speed of your delivery, constantly change the length of pauses between your
words."
"Al, when you start a speech, you put your mouth on cruise control and you go at the same speed throughout. Stop it. Use your brakes. Floor it once in a while. Act like a 16-year-old
behind the wheel again."
"Human conversational speech is a messy, stop-and start, loud-and-soft affair. Stop trying to starch and iron every word."
"The good news is you could be a
great speaker. You are not a genuinely stupid person, like Dan Quayle; you have bright ideas that are expressed coherently."
"Al, you simply have a few bad mechanical, technical habits that can
be overcome easily. Just do the following:
"1. Constantly vary the speed at which you speak.
"2. Constantly vary the length of the pauses between your words.
"3. Constantly vary your volume."
"Good luck Al. I look forward to helping you rehearse your first State of the Union Speech."
