Unlike his most terrifying employee , George W. Bush is not a poet. In fact, one can only assume that during his tenure at college, public speaking 101 was not a required class. He stumbles, he mispronounces words, and he ums and errs his way through every speech he gives. Whatever his other qualities might be, our president is not blessed with the gift of political oratory.

Some say that his lack of speaking grace is what endears him to the American public. These apologists point to the deep rooted American distrust of intellectuals as the cause for our immediate affection for men in uncomfortable looking suits, struggling through a speech like a freshmen reading a “What I did last summer,” essay.

That’s not to say that the American public wants to be ruled by stupid people. Certainly, one might point out Bush’s incredible lack of verbal skills without drawing much ire from his supporters. They know that the president talks funny; but if one were to take the stance that he’s not all that bright, well, let’s just say it wouldn’t be a good idea. Anyway, Bush is no dummy. Sure, he’s not possessed of an Einsteinian level of genius, but he was smart enough to get elected, and that has to count for something.

So where did all this mistrust of the slick public speaker come from? It’s not that we distrust smart people per se, we just don’t like hoity-toity, better- than-us sorts of people; people who communicate their ideas clearly and compellingly.

Good public speaking is often dismissed as “slick talking,” a phrase which conjures up images of sweltering Southern courtrooms. In our own minds, we complete the phrase: “I may not be a slick talking, big city lawyer, but . . ."

In a country often divided up into “red states” and “blue states,” it pays to remember that we haven’t progressed very far from our conservative, agrarian roots. American literature is filled with scenes in which some bumpkin wanders into the big city to find his fortune and winds up getting taken in by some fast talking con man.

But all that American literature presents a distorted picture. The South has had a longstanding tradition of great orators, and rhetoric still plays a large (though diminishing) part in southern politics. But a great, southern orator is not somebody that the rural majority of our nation is likely to label a con-man.

As much as the urban elite might try to deny it, we are still a country of small towns. Our local shops might have been replaced by Wal-Marts (fast approaching an almost K-Martian level of distain amongst big city dwellers), but rural America’s attitudes haven’t changed much in the last hundred years.

Rural America still harbors a deep distrust of strangers. Rhetorical flourishes and New England accents put them on edge; worst of all, they don’t qualify as the “straight talk” much beloved by our agrarian lower classes. It’s not content that matters as much as style. If someone from Vermont were to show up in Texas and start giving speeches about cutting taxes, increasing military spending, and building a wall across the Mexican border, the average person’s first thought is still going to be, “He’s trying to put one over on us.”

Viewed in this light, an ineloquent southerner outranks a eloquent, eastern, establishment type with a bag of oratorical tricks. Again, it’s nothing to do with anybody being dumb: It’s just the fact that a fancy-talking Yankee is a stranger, someone who shouldn’t be trusted to look out for one’s best interests. Many of us are incapable of standing in front of a crowd and clearly elucidating our thoughts – we recognize ourselves in the folks project a certain attitude. “Well, I don’t know much about speechify-in, but I’ll just get on up here an tell ya what I think.” Of course, we wouldn’t presume to say that the election of George Bush Jr. was entirely due to his utter lack of verbal skills – we merely wish to point out that he’s turned it into a positive boon. And there are some ramifications we now have to deal with as a result.

Bush is the first president in living memory to have such a limp, uninteresting speaking style. Clinton, Reagan, and Kennedy will always be the towering figures of modern presidential oratory, but none of the other men who served in that post during the last 50 years were bad public speakers either.

Even Richard Nixon, as vile a man as they come, hit a few home runs in this regard. His “Checkers” speech saved his career. His resignation speech, while self-serving, is at least compelling. And while few remember much about Carter outside of the energy and hostage crises that took place during his tenure, one mustn’t forget that it was his acceptance speech during the 1976 Democratic National Convention that got him elected in the first place. Now, our nation enters a political landscape which doesn’t place as much emphasis on one’s ability to speak well in public; our current president confirms this. Even though what he says doesn’t always seem to come out the way he wants it, even though he gets visibly frustrated when he can’t find the right word or phrase (which is often), and even though he once called someone a “major league asshole” in public, the man somehow, someway, managed to get elected.

In spite of this, we shouldn’t be worried about the future of our democracy (if we ever really had one). A nation that withstood Harding and Carter should be able to withstand having anyone as president. No, we should be more concerned with the death of the significance of oratorical skills.

Political speeches, like poetry, are often tedious and empty of deeper meaning. But occasionally, they inspire us like no Power Point presentation ever could. Great public speaking is a tool which can deliver passionate devotion to a cause; it can calm riots; it can unite a people who, like most Americans, have almost nothing in common with each other. The loss of eloquent public speech may not be as disastrous as the loss of great literature, but it’ll hurt us in the long run.

We now live in a world where Californians might have to one day watch television news reports about governor “Ah-nuld.” A celebrity Governor would no doubt be foisted on the masses of other states as well – how could the media resist such a figure? We are talking about nothing less than the worst political speeches ever devised by man, being transmitted around the globe, causing enough cognitive-dissonance to wreck untold havoc and destruction.

Listen to his words, ye mighty, and despair. If twenty years of acting didn’t kill that goofy accent, there’s no chance elected office will.

-B. C. Silvia