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By J. Scott Orr Edwards, a 24-year-old single mom, rose from the crowd at a town hall meeting here to ask the front-runner for the
Democratic presidential nomination what his presidency would do for people like her who make too much money to qualify for
welfare, but are barely getting by. "People are just treading
water," the Illinois senator said, shifting a microphone smoothly from one hand to another while gesturing inclusively
to the rest of the audience. "The problem that we've got today is everyone is supposed to be working . . . but we
haven't seen increasing opportunity for those who are working." Obama went on to talk about lowering taxes and increasing employment and educational opportunities for the working
poor. Afterward, Edwards sounded smitten. "Very good. Very,
very good. I'm just trying to get to the middle class and he understands that," she said. She wasn't quite sure how Obama would help her, but was confident that, if elected, he would somehow improve
her lot in life. His rival for the nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton
of New York, may mock him for his soaring rhetoric, for being the candidate of words rather than action. But Obama showed again yesterday how he can speak to one person and connect with thousands
at the same time — a skill made famous by Clinton's husband, Bill, during two successful campaigns for the presidency.
"I felt sort of like it was just me in the room with him, like he was in my living room," said Vera Rivera, another
Austin resident at the rally, who wore a T-shirt proclaiming herself an "Obama Mama." Her three kids, she said,
are joining her in voting for Obama. There hasn't been a primary
anywhere for more than a week — which feels like forever at this point in the campaign — freeing Clinton and Obama
to stampede across Texas delivering their messages in border towns and big cities, at college campuses, pro-sports arenas
and high school gyms, from El Paso to Dallas to Brownsville. While
Obama pleads for votes at every turn, it is Clinton who may not be able to continue without some Texas-size victories in Tuesday's
crucial primary voting here and in Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont. No less an authority than her husband the ex-president
has said so. With each convert won over at his arena-size rallies
and town hall meetings, Obama has chipped away at Clinton's once dominant double-digit lead in opinion polls, reducing
it to a virtual tie going into the final weekend of campaigning. One
such convert is Coke Dilworth of Austin, a 72-year-old retired architect who describes himself as a "yellow dog Democrat,"
a species once prevalent in LBJ-era Texas who, it is said, would rather vote for a yellow dog than a Republican. After flirting with the candidacy of Arizona Gov. Bill Richardson, Dilworth was drawn
to Obama "more as a person than anything else." Still, he said, he was not seduced by charm or style but by the
prospect of real change in Washington. "It's not that he's
charismatic or handsome or uses high falootin' language; it's the things that he talks about. He talks about change
and Lord knows we can use some of that. I think Hillary comes with some baggage that will be difficult to overcome,"
Dilworth said. Then there's Claudia Baba, a 41-year-old independent-minded
Democrat and self-described political junkie from Houston, who happily waited almost five hours to hear Obama speak at one
of his recent arena events. "I don't necessarily identify
myself as a Democrat on all issues and I would not be opposed to voting for a Republican that was more moderate, or centrist,"
she said. But especially after her encounter with Obama's oratory, along with some 20,000 others at Houston's Toyota
center, she is solidly in the Illinois senator's corner. "I
think the message, his message, is distinct from all the other candidates in that it is an optimistic, positive message that
looks to the future. American politics in the last 10 to 15 years has been weighed down with all sorts of negativity,"
she said. Like Ohio, Texas holds open primaries, meaning independents
can vote in either the Democratic or Republican races. That could favor the Illinois Democrat, who has been popular among
independents and attracted some Republicans, the so-called Obamacans. Also
working in his favor is a complicated system for awarding delegates that favors areas with high voter turnout like urban regions
of Houston, Dallas and Austin, where Obama is expected to do well. The rules also allow those who vote in the primary to participate
again during caucuses — forums that have befitted Obama — that decide one-third of the state's delegates.
Clinton's strength? The Hispanics who make up one-fourth of
the electorate and with whom she has had ties since registering Latino voters in West Texas during the 1972 election. Those
ties run deep, yet pollsters have found younger Hispanics bolting the Clinton camp for a candidate they see as being closer
to their generation. Obama has won 11 straight primary or caucus
victories since Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, when Clinton outpaced him in electoral-rich states that will be critical to either
Democratic candidate come November: New Jersey, New York, California and Massachusetts. Here in Texas, Clinton has seen her lead diminish from double digits to a statistically insignificant lead of a few
percentage points in most polls over recent weeks. Through the end
of January, Obama had raised $3.5 million in Texas, compared with $5 million for Clinton statewide, according to the Federal
Election Commission. With a stampede of speeches, Obama's
got Texas talking
AUSTIN, Texas -- Adria Edwards had a
conversation yesterday with Barack Obama. So did several thousand others.
Running in style: In the presidential race, appearances count
By J. Scott Orr
STAR-LEDGER WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON --This fall’s presidential election will likely hinge on pressing national issues like war and the economy, but in a race that could be close, there are still voters who will focus on the candidates’ personal characteristics, from their styles to their smiles.
In Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, they have a choice between a pair of polished candidates whose personal styles are reflections of their more substantive selves.
Of course there are elements of personal style the candidates cannot change: Obama is a tall, 46-year-old African-American, while McCain is quite a bit shorter, 71 and white. But it is what candidates do with those natural attributes that can make a difference.
Denise Bostdorff, a professor of communication at the College of Wooster in Ohio and author of “The Presidency and the Rhetoric of Foreign Crisis,” said McCain and Obama have different strengths in their speaking styles.
“Voters need to be able to look at candidates and say to themselves, ‘Yes, I could see this person being president’ — and part of that is the way that they speak. They both have presidential speaking styles, but in different ways,” Bostdorff said.
“The verbal style of John McCain is very straightforward; what you see is what you get. He speaks in short sentences and in very realistic terminology. This realistic style goes well with the kinds of serious issues he discusses. It conveys that he knows the world as it is and he is going to give it to us,” Bostdorff said.
“Obama has a style that is more transitional,” she said. “He’s not just going to tell us what the facts are, but he goes beyond that to talk about higher principles. He describes the world as it is and then goes on to describe how it could be.”
When it comes to body language, Obama has an advantage, said Ginny Pulos, a New York media consultant and expert on the subject. But McCain has improved dramatically with experience, she said, losing some of the rigidity and a phony-looking grin that detracted from his presentations in prior years.
"He has obviously had some coaching. He's come a long way," Pulos said. McCain seems more at ease than in the past, but still sends off signals that can subconsciously lead voters to question his sincerity, she said.
"He often has his hands closed tightly like he's being a good boy in school. This shows he is trying to control the situation by bottling up his energy," Pulos said.
"He seems to be constantly trying to edit his words before he speaks, and he often looks to the side rather than directly at people, which conveys that he is searching for the right words rather than speaking naturally," she added.
"Credibility is established when our words, the tone of our voice and what we are doing with our body are all in alignment, all working together. Obama has that mastered," she said.
"If you watch what he's doing with his body as he speaks, his hands are outstretched, his palms open, so you get a feeling of sincerity. Sometimes he touches his chest, which signals that he is talking from his heart," Pulos said.
Irwin Smigel, a New York cosmetic dentist who has enhanced the smiles of countless celebrities, including designer Calvin Klein and actor Johnny Depp, said Obama and McCain have smiles that suit them. McCain's, he said, is "not the smile of youth, but . . . it goes with his age. It shows that he's not trying be something that he's not."
"Obama's smile is also good for him at his age. The teeth are long and strong, but he's younger and he can get away with it," he said.
If the clothes make the man, Martin Greenfield is the man who makes the clothes. A Brooklyn clothier who has been making suits for presidents since the Eisenhower administration, Greenfield said Obama and McCain are sticking to the traditional candidate uniform.
"There isn't much outstanding on either side. They basically both wear conservative dark suits, usually a banker's gray or navy," Greenfield said recently from his Brooklyn factory.
McCain, he said, has learned over the years to dress for campaign success: "His shirts used to look always tight around the collar. Evidently, somebody has dressed him, and he now wears a nice- fitting shirt and tie," he said.
During his early years in the House and Senate, Greenfield said, McCain dressed like a congressman, sometimes wearing ill-fitted, rumpled suits. Now he dresses in more presidential styles that are crisp and suitable for his age.
Obama, Greenfield said, wears suits that fit his athletic physique perfectly, but are still conservative. Sticking to conservative suits, he said, is a strategically adept move for a candidate who wants to appear youthful, but still moderate and grounded.
Greenfield said Obama has been a sharp dresser at least since he emerged on the national stage.
"I didn't pay a lot of attention to Obama until the campaign started, but I dress a lot of senators, and he has the right look. It's important that candidates look presidential in their clothing," he said.
There's more than style involved when candidates wear plain dark suits. Suits with bold pinstripes or unusual colors tend to stick in the minds of voters and can draw attention if they are worn often. Candidates don't want to their clothes to detract from their messages, so the plainer, the better, Greenfield said, noting that Al Gore's 2000 campaign suffered when he switched to earthier tones in his suits.
"People look at candidates and they sometimes take away impressions without even realizing it," he said.
Small-town Tar Heels go on a frenzy of vote-hunting
By J. SCOTT ORR
APEX, N.C. -- Leona Whichard sits on an outdoor deck on a cool, comfortable evening in this central North Carolina town, a breeze slightly ruffling her short, tidy hairdo, which is a bit more salt than pepper these days. She holds a cell phone to her ear.
"So can we count on you to support Barack Obama on Tuesday? Great," she says, a smile creeping across her face, like a kid receiving a surprise gift. She pushes further: Would you like to contribute? Would you like to volunteer?
The responses to those questions are not as enthusiastic, it seems — but what the heck, a vote is a vote and much better than being hung up on.
Whichard, 66, is one of a diverse group of about 15 volunteers working a cell phone bank at a neatly appointed home in a largely white subdivision like so many that have cropped up in this once-dirt-road-poor section of Wake County.
"I'm here because every vote is so important. These calls can make a difference. This is such a great opportunity," said Whichard, who is a retired scientist and wife of a former state legislator and Supreme Court judge. She has participated in campaigns only occasionally over the years despite her husband's long experience as a political insider.
All across the state, similar grassroots organizers are working furiously on behalf of both contenders for the Democratic nomination at phone banks, meet-ups, fundraisers, happy hours and other gatherings going into the final weekend before Tuesday's critical primary.
Obama and Hillary Clinton were both in North Carolina earlier in the week, including Obama's stop in Hickory, where he broke with his longtime pastor Jeremiah Wright, whose divisive remarks have dogged the Illinois senator's campaign for weeks. Both were in Indiana, Tuesday's other primary prize, yesterday but were slated to return here this weekend.
Apex, a rapidly growing municipality of 34,000 about 25 miles south of Raleigh, is the kind of smaller battleground community that could hold sway Tuesday. It was the first stop on former president Bill Clinton's small-town tour on behalf of his wife Wednesday.
"If you vote for her, you'll make her the next president," he told several hundred supporters at an early-morning rally at the town community center.
Obama, the senator from Illinois, has seen his once comfortable double-digit lead in North Carolina erode in recent days as the controversy over Wright's remarks has simmered, down to single digits in poll averages compiled by RealClearPolitics.com.
As in other states, Obama has outraised Clinton in North Carolina, picking up $2.1 million from donors to Clinton's $1.3 million, and he is reportedly outspending the senator from New York 2-to-1 here.
Obama is counting on an unprecedented turnout among the state's African-American voters, who could make up as much as 40 percent of Tuesday's vote. Recent polls have shown nearly 90 percent of African-Americans favor Obama, as do majorities of better-educated whites.
Clinton, meanwhile, is expected to do well among women and blue-collar and rural voters, as she has in other primary states.
"That would fit this county pretty well," said Patricia Kehoe, a Clinton supporter who lives in Franklin, a community of 3,500 in western North Carolina's rural Macon County, where livestock, farm acreage and Protestant churches outnumber residents.
A 69-year-old retiree, Kehoe said she is drawn to Clinton's experience and grasp of policy and issues.
"For one thing, her health care program seems better than his. I think she is superior on homeland security and international affairs. She has a better grip on the economics. The issues that she does bring up are things that she's very capable of handling. It's not just fluff talk; she has a plan," said Kehoe.
Kehoe said Democrats in her Smoky Mountains community have been turning out in numbers to cast early votes and she has a feeling her region will break strongly for Clinton and perhaps contribute to a statewide upset. "I see a lot more Clinton signs around here," she said.
'AGGRESSIVE VISIBILITY'
You can see a lot of signs down south in Charlotte, especially if Kevin Brummel and other Clinton backers are holding one of their "honk4hillary" events at busy intersections during rush hour. The 31-year-old doctoral candidate said the group has grown from about a dozen at its first event to 100 at its ninth. The 10th gathering is scheduled for tonight, in front of a sub shop.
"We're the only grassroots group in North Carolina that has been doing this kind of aggressive visibility efforts. The response has been very favorable," he said.
On television, it has not been the ads run here by the Clinton or Obama campaigns that have drawn the most attention, or the most criticism. The North Carolina GOP has helped keep the Wright controversy in the public consciousness with an ad that features some of the preacher's most incendiary remarks, then attacks the two Democratic candidates for governor — Bev Perdue, the lieutenant governor, and Richard Moore, the state treasurer — for endorsing Obama. "They should know better," the ad says.
Chris Hayami, who hosted the Apex phone party that drew whites, African-Americans, men, women, teens and grandparents, said she believes the Wright controversy was fueled by intense media coverage and will probably die down before Tuesday, especially after Obama's strong repudiation of the Chicago preacher.
A backer of former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) when he was running for president, Hayami, a youthful 57-year-old widow and mother of three grown children, said she is now strongly behind Obama, who captured her imagination with his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
THE WORDS BEHIND THE MAN
Bush likes ‘Americans,’ but ‘crime’ not so much
By J. SCOTT ORR
WASHINGTON -- President Bush will undoubtedly begin his seventh State of the Union address on Tuesday with some variation of these words: “Madam Speaker, Vice President Cheney, members of Congress, distinguished guests and fellow citizens . . .”
That will bring the total number of words he has spoken during these annual speeches close to 29,700, and the number of sentences he has uttered to 1,963. His first six addresses took five hours and 22 minutes to deliver (about 54 minutes, on average) and received applause 360 times.
The full text of the president’s speech on Tuesday is still a closely guarded secret, but online text analyzers like those at www.online-utility.org and www.topicalizer.com offer all kinds of interesting details about what Bush has said about the state of the nation over the course of his tenure.
For example, Bush used words related to “terrorism” just once in his 2001 address, the only one that preceded the 9/11 attacks. Since then, he has said “terror” 45 times, “terrorists” 44 times, “terrorist” 25 times, “terrorism” eight times and “bioterrorism” three times. He said “war” 43 times, and “peace” 40 times during the six speeches.
While fugitive terror mastermind Osama bin Laden was mentioned only twice, Saddam Hussein got mentioned 25 times over the years. While Bush did tend to mention his enemies a lot more than his friends, Bush said his wife Laura’s name four times.
The two foreign nations mentioned the most in Bush’s addresses were — no surprise here — Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq, or variations like Iraqi, was mentioned 91 times, while Afghanistan was mentioned 28 times. Other countries mentioned: Iran, eight times; Korea, seven; Britain, three.
The president’s most frequently used words were the obvious ones — “the,” “and,” “to” and “of” — which accounted for 4,687, or nearly 16 percent, of his total. Among more meaningful words, he said America, Americans, American or America’s 225 times.
On the domestic front, Bush mentioned “taxes” or “taxpayers” 92 times, “wealthy” or “rich” three times, “poor” three times. He said “Social Security” 42 times, “health care” 31 times, “Medicare” 27 times, “Medicaid” twice, “education” 16 times, “schools” 24 times and “crime” seven times.
Bush said “family” or “families” 23 times, “values” 14 times, “God” 11 times. He said “women” 38 times; “men,” 34 times. He said “me” 27 times and “you” 144 times.
When it comes to four-word phrases, “weapons of mass destruction” topped the list with 14 uses. He used “the war on terror” and “in the Middle East” nine times each, but said “United States of America” only six times.
He did say “the United States” 33 times, easily out pacing other top three-word phrases like “members of Congress,” 18 times, and “September the 11th,” 13 times. Bush said “we must,” 93 times; “we will,” 90 times; “the world,” 65 times; and “our country,” 49 times.
The State of the Union message is required under Article II of the Constitution, which states that the president “shall from time to time give to Congress information on the State of the Union and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”
A Web site called stateoftheunion.onetwothree.net gives all kinds of history on the speech, including a rundown of the most frequently used words for every address going back to George Washington’s first. (There have been 214 in all.)
George Washington and John Adams delivered their State of the Union messages as speeches, but Thomas Jefferson broke with tradition and began delivering his thoughts to the Congress in written form. The written form persisted until 1913 when Woodrow Wilson brought back the oral presentation, a trend that has been followed by most presidents since.
Washington’s first address in 1790 was one of the shortest at 1,005 words, and he didn’t repeat himself very often. He used the word “render” three times, but he used no other significant word that many times.
The stateoftheunion.onetwothree.com site also uses a word and sentence analysis system called Flesch-Kincaid to rate the readability of each speech. According to the analysis, today’s addresses are far easier to understand than those of the founding fathers.
To read and comprehend Bush’s 2001 speech, for example, a listener would need only an eighth-grade education. Early presidents routinely used language that would require 20 or more years of schooling, including James Madison’s 1815 speech, which gained a record readability score of 25.
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