Asa Jay's weblog

If I were elected President of the United States of America, I pledge that during speeches I will not use a teleprompter, nor will I give speeches with a horde of people behind me.

If I can’t speak from the heart or my notes, I have a problem.  Yes, I may write out my speech, massage it, edit it and make it as perfect as I can.  But if I’m reading it verbatim, I won’t do so from a monitor that gives people a false sense that I’m paying attention to them directly at that moment; I’d rather be genuine and a teleprompter doesn’t help.  If I find some kind soul in my administration has thought better of it, and placed teleprompters so I might use them “just in case,” I will not begin speaking to the people until the teleprompters are removed and that invisible barrier no longer exists between me and the people I am trying to reach.  There is nothing more distracting as a viewer than to watch a speaker look in only two directions and never at the audience in general.  Connecting with an audience is imperative.

If I’m going to give respectful words of potential wisdom to constituents or those I’d like to be my constituents, it makes no sense to have them standing or sitting behind me.  I don’t think it lends any more or less credibility to the speaker, but as a listener, it’s downright distracting.  I don’t care if they are military, firemen, policemen or other working citizens… they don’t need to be behind me, they need to be in front of me, so I can see them, so I can connect with them, so they can connect with me.  Putting bleachers full of people behind me gives a false and disingenuous appearance that those people support what I’m talking about, when in reality they may not and would rather engage in intelligent discourse; I’m certain if they don’t agree with me they don’t want to have the “appearance” that they do.  And if some “handler” tells me it’s better to have a bunch of people behind me… they’re fired on the spot.

Honesty, integrity, Truth.Asa Jay for President

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2014 at 09:01 and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.