Body Language

I’ve said it before – I’m an oratory geek.  It’s the family business; Dad was a speech teacher for most of four decades, and has actually had a longer radio career than me (he’s been doing weekly editorials at KDSU, a public station in Fargo, since the eighties).  And of course, I’ve noodled around the trade a bit.

I was watching Palin on the closed-circuit last night from Radio Row.  And for most of the speech, she was in control.  Unlike most political speakers – who are slaves to the teleprompter, and who are largely terrible in front of crowds – Palin radiated confidence and control.

She has some gestures when she speaks; a few times, when she wanted to throw in some subtext, she had a little wink she’d toss off.  A little gesture, but one that says “this is my house, and I’m just getting started”.  She radiates cool unflappability; I’m looking forward to all of that going up against the Joe Biden we’ve seen in all of those Senate hearings – the endlessly-yammering self-adulating blowhard Biden that’s made such a caricature of himself.

If the Sarah Palin we saw last night shows up against the Joe Biden we saw in the Alito and Edwards hearings, the Democrats are in huge trouble.
I really need to watch the whole thing again.

5 thoughts on “Body Language

  1. I was thinking the same thing. Things are happening so fast, I was worried that the final version of the speach was completed yesterday afternoon and she would be reading it.

  2. I love how she sets her own pace… usually a very good sign.

    And some folks simply cannot look around the room and speak to folks. It looks too stagey. She knew where the camera was, but felt no need to speak only to the camera.

    She knows when to linger, move on, change it up, emphasise, and where the heart of the text is in the speech.

  3. It turns out the teleprompter malfunction and did not stop for the applause lines. She knewe her speech, or did a superb job of compensating.

  4. Great observation Mitch. My wife and I were thinking the same thing last night as we watched. He body language didn’t just emulate confidence, it served to portend a crescendo of same, which was then manifested in escalating jabs at the “opposing candidate”, also a nice move in that she rarely mentioned him/them by name.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.