NYT: --this is NEWS!! Obama Adding Detail to His Oratory

[rodeodance]

Forum Name General Discussion: Primaries
Topic subject Obama Adding Detail to His Oratory
Topic URL http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4635933#4635933
4635933, Obama Adding Detail to His Oratory
Posted by babylonsister on Sun Feb-17-08 08:41 PM

Obama Adding Detail to His Oratory
Rick Bowmer/Associated Press

Barack Obama, shown at a rally Saturday in Wisconsin, is injecting more specifics into speeches.

By JEFF ZELENY
Published: February 17, 2008


EAU CLAIRE, Wis. — If he does say so himself, Senator Barack Obama delivers a fine political speech.

“Don’t be fooled by this talk about speeches versus solutions,” Mr. Obama told a crowd of Wisconsin voters. “It’s true, I give a good speech. What do I do? Nothing wrong with that.”

To that confident strain of self-assessment, the audience roared with approval.

A shrug of the shoulders and a few deadpanned retorts, some of which stop just shy of mocking his rival, is the latest approach Mr. Obama has taken to respond to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s criticism that his words offer more poetry than substance.

Yet as he traveled across Wisconsin last week, Mr. Obama seemed to have let loose a little more of his inner-wonk, which his strategists had once urged him to keep on the shelf.

Even as he was dismissing Mrs. Clinton’s criticism, he appeared to be taking it at least mildly to heart — a suggestion that as a line of attack, she might be on to something.

Suddenly, he was injecting a few more specifics into his campaign speeches. Giant rallies that had sustained his candidacy through a coast-to-coast series of contests on Feb. 5, notable for their rhetorical flourishes and big applause lines, were supplemented with policy speeches and town-hall-style meetings, complete with the question-and-answer sessions he abandoned as he roared out of Iowa and into New Hampshire. (In hindsight, he conceded as he reviewed a defeat to Mrs. Clinton, that was a mistake.)

By every indication, this was not a random change in the Obama style. The senator decided to clue in his audience to the shift on a recent morning in Janesville, Wis., where he presented an economic proposal to create seven million jobs over the next decade.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/us/politics/17obama.html?em&ex=1203397200&en=e698d6284630976f&ei=5087%0A

[displacedtexan]

1. Not a single report of "specifics" in that stroy, however.

Hm. A story about Obama adding specifics to his speeches, but no specifics.