i've gotta agree with point number 3 in michael scherer's post. i've been looking on in amusement as the wingnutosphere harps on the teleprompter line. it's really a sight to behold. teleprompters have been around for decades and have been used by every president pretty much since they were invented. obviously using a teleprompter improves the speaker's delivery, that's why so many presidents have used them for their speeches. pointing out that obama's public pronouncements are better when he uses a teleprompter is like noting that a professional runner does better when he wears running shoes. it's such an unremarkable observation it borders on ridiculous.
but what really seems to be going on here is that the right is trying to spread the idea that obama isn't such a great communicator when he isn't reading off a script. except that to most people that's simply not true. while he sometimes stumbles or says "uh", on the whole obama is a lot more clear and coherent than most politicians when he speaks off the cuff. at least that's how i see it. and i think that's how most people see him as well.
the funny thing is that the teleprompter meme is really a replay of a tactic that was tried and failed during the presidential election. you may recall that just before the first presidential debate, they were spreading the idea that obama was gaffe-prone when he wasn't working off of a prepared text. at the time, i was a little mystified by the tactic as it suggested that the right didn't know how to play the expectations game. the idea is to lower expectations about your own candidate's speaking ability prior to the debate. by lowering the bar, your candidate can more easily beat expectations and be deemed the winner of the debate. last september both the mccain campaign and right blogistan seemed to have it completely backwards.
in any case, the gaffe-prone-guy-who-says-"uh"-a-lot just didn't catch on, at least it didn't outside the confines of mccain's own partisans. in the general population, obama was generally views as the winner of all three debates. to the extent the "bad speaker" meme was picked up at all, it probably helped obama because his performance in the debate clearly wasn't bad at all. as paul from powerline acknowledged just after the first debate: "Certainly, his performance should end the mantra of certain critics that Obama can't handle himself without a tele-prompter."
don't get me wrong, i'm not saying that rightwingers are lying when they keep returning to this bad speaker idea. i just think that they can't distinguish their own bullshit from other people's reality anymore. no matter what obama actually does, they will see what they want to see. if you hate obama and keep telling yourself he's a bad speaker without a teleprompter, every time you see him without one you will be able to convince yourself that he's speaking terribly. but the real problem (for them) is not just that they have convinced themselves of their own reality, but also that they can't seem to conceive that others see things completely differently.
which is why to me, from the outside, the "teleprompter" thing is so entertaining. it's not just a weak line of argument (to the extent it can even be characterized as an "argument"). to someone not already wrapped in the wingnut cocoon, all this teleprompter talk just looks a little crazy. i, for one, hope they keep it up.
