Mccain vs. The Teleprompter: Bottled Hot Water for dehydrated babies?

Mccain vs. The Teleprompter: bottled hot water for dehydrated babies?
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Senator John McCain was performing relatively smoothly as he unveiled his energy plan.
He managed to limit the mechanical hand chops and weirdly timed smiles that can often punctuate his speeches. He delivered his lines with an ease that suggested a momentary peace with his longtime nemesis, the teleprompter. (He relied on a belt-and-suspenders approach, with text scrolling down screens to his left and right, and on a big TV set in front of him.)

But when Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, came to the intended sound bite of his speech — the part about reducing America's dependence on foreign oil — he hit a slick.

"I have set before the American people an energy plan, the Lex-eegton Project," Mr. McCain said, drawing a quick breath and correcting himself. "The Lex-ing-ton Proj-ect," he said slowly. "The Lexington Project," he repeated. "Remember that name."

In a town meeting in Cincinnati the next day, Mr. McCain would again slip up on the name of the Massachusetts town, where, he noted, "Americans asserted their independence once before." He called it "the Lexiggdon Project" and twice tried to fix his error before flipping the name ("Project Lexington") in subsequent references.

Mr. McCain's battle of Lexington is part of a struggle he is engaged in every day. A politician who has thrived in the give-and-take settings of campaign buses, late-night TV couches and town meetings, he now is trying to meet the more formal speaking demands of a general election campaign.

By his own admission, Mr. McCain is not a great orator. He is ill-suited to lecterns, which often dwarf his small stature, and he tends to sound as if he is reading his lines, not speaking them. His shortcomings have been accentuated in a two-man race, particularly because the other man — Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee — can often dazzle on stage.

Mr. McCain and his advisers know that Mr. Obama's ability to excite huge crowds will make for an inevitable podium mismatch for the older, softer-spoken Republican. "We're going up against a guy who is off the charts," said Mark Salter, Mr. McCain's longtime Senate chief of staff and campaign adviser. (In May, for example, he said of his opponent, "With his very, very great lack of experience and knowledge of the issues, he's been very successful.")

The more careful McCain, said by some to be overly scripted, has received some withering critiques. "His rhetorical style can best be described as 'tired mayonnaise,' " the comedian Stephen Colbert declared on "The Colbert Report" before inviting viewers to enter the "Make McCain Exciting Challenge."

Peter Spaulding, the chairman of Mr. McCain's campaign in New Hampshire, said he recently saw a McCain speech on television that was "just atrocious."

Mr. McCain and his surrogates appear to be taking a page from the primary campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, which made a point of praising Mr. Obama's speaking skills both to erase any expectation that she could match them and to imply that Mr. Obama was more of a performer than a leader. Nicolle Wallace, Mr. McCain's new senior adviser, said the campaign would focus on having the candidate interact face to face with voters, "not from a center stage in the middle of a stadium."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/us/politics/06mccain.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

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• NAFTA
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[igadevivas]

i think mccain is like bush but then older and ugly'r

[LSB2006]

he needs to hydrate that wrinkly vagina looking neck of his...

[lexxypexxy]

LOL @ 'vagina neck'

[NortherendProduction]

haha xD

[NortherendProduction]

is Shit a trademark? xD

[FUl0VECk]

muahahaha

: )

[BobbieandSteveDooley]

Mathews gets a tingle in his balls!

[DHWDeadlyDemon]

Haha You ignorant conservative, Obama won!

[thamistro]

LOL

[lilpinkchainsaw]

Well, they certainly take up less space.

[YOUzotzah]

Consider the source (Not Journalists ): Chris I Feel A Tingle Running Up My Leg Mathews, and Dan Lying Rather-Biased and they have the gall to put down John McCain. What a pair! Give me a break ! ! !