SPEAKING LIKE A PREZDENT. The years of George Bush's presidency have changed our expectations about the way presidential candidates should speak. This is why I listened to the Democratic candidates' speeches in the Take Back America conference from a different place than the usual angle of taking down the points they covered and the points they decided not to cover. This time I listened from the heart, the way Chris Matthews so often seems to do in his attempts to find what makes a candidate truly "presidential". Sadly, I didn't get close enough to sniff at the candidates for the right kinds of smells (leather, cigar smoke, traces of ancient blood from duck hunting?) but I was able to judge both the visual and the aural impressions. The visual impressions I'm going to save for a later piece I'm working on, but the candidates managed to achieve a great level of aural energy, those waves of intense emotion that connect to the great throbbing progressive heart! Never mind connecting to the brain. I was asking the important questions: Would I like to have a beer with this person? Does this person remind me of my mommy or my daddy or of the obnoxious teen next door? Is this person... (yes, here comes the frightening word) authentic? In short, I let myself be carried away by the emotions in the room the candidate managed to evoke. So how did the three top candidates fare in the struggle for my heart?
