I do not believe George W. Bush is an effective communicator.  Can you
find me evidence to support that?

skribble: Easy. 1) His taking charge after 9/11. The overwhelming
majority of Americans...NOTE THAT...Americans, supported him. 2)
Congress after 9/11 overwhelmingly supported his invasion of Iraq,
including Kerry.
  Now, if you believe otherwise, why, help yourself.
monroe22

I believe evidence of Mr. Bush's effectiveness as a communicator will
be quite apparent in November.

skribble: By the way, are you so cheap that you can only offer $2.00
for an answer? Why not $200, if you are so convinced you are right? If
you are satisfied with a $2.00 answer, that speaks for itself.
monroe22

pink: You said it perfectly!
monroe22

Too bad there have yet to be a professional reply, quite alarming that
a GA gave their opinion. The question did not ask for an opinion but
evidence.

Here's the evidence!

I phoned him up the other day and couldn't understand a word he was saying.

lufty-ga: Oh, come off it. How can one supply *evidence* for a subjective issue
such as *effective communicator*? skribble in fact asks two questions,
involving leadership and communication...can't even organize his or
her thinking. Why should a GA researcher bother with such a nebulous
question for a measly $1.50? Cheapskate questions are ignored unless
they are provocative or interesting. You and skribble want an
anti-Bush diatribe. Write it yourself.
monroe22

I maintain that the most meaningful "evidence" will come in November.
If Bush is an effective communicator, he will win the election. If
not, he will lose. Until then, discussion of his communication skills
is essentially speculation, not evidence.

I'm voting for Bush but I understand your question.  I don't think he
is the most effective communicator (say for instance like Rudy
Giuliani).  Bush may not be the most perfect communicator but he has
the sense to surround himself with people like Condoleezza Rice and
Colon Powell who are in the league with the best.  He knows what
loyalty is and he practices it as well as demands it from others.  So
he's not perfect on the communication spectrum...

Hello skribble57-ga,

The Septermber 13, 2004 issue of The New Yorker has a wonderful
article on ?Bushspeak: The President's vernacular style.? It presents
some convincing arguments that Bush is a better communicator than his
verbal mistakes would lead you to conclude.

Philip Gourevitch's article is excellent and may give you pause about
your evaluation of the President?s effectiveness as a communicator.
Here are a couple of snippets to whet your appetite.

"Bush campaigns with the eager self-delight of a natural ham. There?s
an appealing physicality about him. When he says he wants your vote,
he does not just mouth the words but follows them through with his
entire body, rising to his toes, tilting toward you yearningly."

"Bush is said to be charming, and polls show that Americans tend to
find him more likable than his policies, but one does not even have to
like him to admire how truly at home he appears in his body."

"He is grossly underestimated as an orator by those who presume that
good grammar, rigorous logic, and a solid command of the facts are the
essential ingredients of political persuasion, and that the absence of
these skills indicates a lack of intelligence. Although Bush is no
intellectual, and proud of it, he is quick and clever, and, for all
his notorious malapropisms, abuses of syntax, and manglings or
reinventions of vocabulary, his intelligence is?if not especially
literate?acutely verbal."



You can look up the article online and draw your own conclusions.

http://www.ocnus.net/artman/publish/article_13846.shtml
Bushspeak
By PHILIP GOUREVITCH, New Yorker 13/9/04
Sep 9, 2004, 09:02

Enjoy!

~ czh ~

Skribble --

CZH recommends a good resource -- one with several updated stories
analyzing the campaigns this week too:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/?040920on_onlineonly01

One article in this week's issue isn't online: it's about Bob Shrum
(Kerry) and Karl Rove (Bush) profiles the two campaign managers.  Any
analysis of the candidates' communications ability has to separate the
carefully-scripted campaign "events" that show up on TV each day with
carefully controlled crowds, which is difficult.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Dear monroe22-ga,

May I reply to you that this is not the forum to give personal
political comments. It's too bad that there are so many people that
wish to put there two cents worth. This is not the place for people to
add there comments. I stated that it's VERY SAD when a Google Answer
even addes there comments. It's not there place to do this.

SORRY BUT I'M ABOVE STOOPING TO YOUR LEVEL.

Have a pleasent day.

lufty-ga: Thanks, I shall. By the way, there is something called a
dictionary which may help you with your spelling problem.
Regards,
monroe22

Dear monroe22-ga,

That is how us dumb family breeding folks speell.

Thanks for your comments, I'll be sure to get one of those fancy books
once I get a job 'cuz your president put me out of work.

Now go back to work to support the unemployment insurance fund, so I
can sit on my fat butt and collect your money.

By the way I also need a new computer, I'll just go to my state job
training center and get a new one. As a foreign born person with no
job, ain't this country great!!  Just set home and get money. Thanks
Mr President and monroe22, love ya.

I think it's time we sstop with the 'excuses' of Mr. Bush's syntax and
his likeable style..we can watch 'SNL'..and MadTV all we want. The
bottomline; he's been a cheerleader and a well trained 'business man'.
He runs the White House like JR Ewing (w/o the girls)..but happens to
have the charisma of an 'oil man', with a Harvard MBA. -- On 9-11
--his father (George Sr) head hauncho @ the Carlyle Group --was
entertaining a meeting with 'members, executives, et al--including
Osama Bin Laden's brother ..shortly after the disaster --the Bin
Laden's were flown out of the country --(private jets)..to ensure
their safety back to MidEast. If the Bush's are 'american
royalty'..and their self-serving interests remain in the 'oil
business'..they need to leave the White House and go back to Texas.

Not a personal opinion, merely observation from across the water which
might be regarded as evidence -- relevant since the rest of the world
constitutes the major part though the USA is the power (at the
moment).

Bush might be considered to be an effective communicator, having
convinced nearly the majority of US voters to vote for him. He
communicates extraordinarily well to the converted, but that which is
perceived by the bulk of the intelligentsia (which includes literary,
engineering, scientific, the urbane etc) is that he panders to the
more primitive facets of our nature and is only saying what they want
to hear. ?Convince a slave they are free and they will fight for their
slavery.?

Thatcher, J Edgar Hoover, McCarthy, Hitler etc were all great
communicators, to those disposed to be receptive to the message,
albeit laughably transparent. But so too were Gandhi, Mandela,
Oppenheimer, and these great people were met with deaf ears from many.

What is communication though? One definition might be the ability to
impart information known to him / her to those ignorant of this
information. Implicit in this is that he / she does actually posses
information unknown to the receiver. Weapons of mass destruction? When
the wall came down it was wondered what the next whipping boy would
be.

Further definition of communication is by action. Again though, the
intent behind the action may either be approved of or seen as
simplistic, depending upon ones intellectual development. A bully in
the school ground demonstrably conveys his message.

So on a global nature, Bush appears to communicates ?his message?
effectively only to a narrow minority. The rest either don?t bother or
get a different message from the one he is selling. His harking to the
unspeakably horrific 9/11 rather than 11/9 exemplifies on a trivial
level why there is such resentment towards the US from those who are
determined to feel marginalised, and Bush is seen as the embodiment.
And nor does having god exclusively on his side help. So no way he is
going to communicate anything to most, other than opposite of what he
(presumably) intends. The message is perceived (not altogether without
justification) as hypocrisy, jingoism and state terrorism.

But there is an element ?over here? to whom Bush does communicate.
They tend to be of the ?Nuke the towel heads? brigade. I doubt that
this is a very healthy perspective. Not, one would hope, that this is
Bush?s sentiment.

Perhaps Bush has no desire to communicate effectively with the rest of
the world but could if he desired to. This is a reneging of
responsibility. On the other hand, the world majority view appears to
be that it is far more likely that there is indigenous plant life in
the USA with a better grasp of foreign affairs than he does.

Please don?t read this as in any way anti-USA. People are essentially
the same the world over.

It is very difficult to divorce opinion from evidence but wider and
generally more balanced perspective may be gleaned from perusing non
US newspapers on the web.

Best

"Can you find me evidence to support that (George W. Bush is an
effective communicator)?"

effective:
able to accomplish a purpose; functioning effectively
(http://www.onelook.com/?w=effective&ls=a)

communicate:
to transmit information, thought, or feeling so that it is
satisfactorily received or understood
(http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=communicator)

Here's a bit of effective communication as defined above:

"I believe every child can learn and every school must teach.
(Applause.) I went to -- I went to Washington to challenge the soft
bigotry of low expectations. I didn't like a system that had low
expectations and just shuffled kids through school year after year,
grade after grade without teaching the basics. That's not right."
From http://www.georgewbush.com/News/Read.aspx?ID=3669

Please send the 2$ to:
http://www.georgewbush.com/Donors/


-RR