![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
i'm a frustrated political strategist
Feb. 25th, 2004 09:35 amSaw Gavin Newsom on TV for the first time last night (on Nightline), and he has my wannabe-political strategist buttons working overtime. Not just because I think he's right, or because I think he has balls and a half for doing this, but because his performance was excellent despite there being a lot to critique there.
He spoke incredibly fast, although clearly, and not in excessive volume. But he had a lot to say, and he was damn well going to get it all in. He was clear, precise, didn't bobble the language or say "um", and came off as nearly exhaustingly inteligent -- big turn on for me, gold (although frustrating gold) for a reporter, not necessarily what the average American it up to coping with on a late-night news program.
He hit all the right buttons, making this a constitutional and civil rights issue, playing-up monogamy and responsibility, and talking about his own heterosexual cred.
Working against him? That fact that he's quite nearly too attractive (it's the sort of thing that make John Edwards seem too young, and to many people probably makes Newsom seem too gay despite how clear he is about his wife and so forth -- he's a very manicured man. I've also noticed in various stills of him, and also on the air, that he has very fine eyelids and with the wrong lighting it gives him a blueish tinge around the eyes, which can unfortunately make him either look creepy or like he's wearing makeup -- someone needs to get the man some concealor, now.), and that he tends to lean forward and back constantly while making a point -- it's small, but it's a habit he needs to be broken of ASAP, or else he looks like a kid bouncing up and down in his chair.
Anyway, it was a find performance, and I think this guy will be huge. If he can land on the national stage again when this sorts itself out for something less controversial but with an equally revolutionary approach... he'll be absolutely fucking huge.
It was really fun viewing. And that's the necessary crux right there.
My bet for the Deomcratic National Convention? He'll be given a speech slot, just out of prime-time -- how he navigates that will be telling. Speech slots are as often prizes as they are intentionally provided opportunities for people to shoot themselves in the foot. Evan Bayh's awful nominating speech is probably the best recent example. Bayh is known to be a great orrator -- what happened in 1996? Gore's people, supposedly believing Bayh to be a threat (that was _the_ onsight gossip), changed the text of his speech at the last minute, inflating its length and providing masses of unrehearsed, dense text. Bye bye Bayh.
(For the record, the best speech I saw at the 1996 Convention was one at two in the afternoon by a member of the House who ran for the seat because he was telling the kids in his mostly immigrant (I think he was from Texas) class, that in America you can be anything. They didn't believe him, and challenged him to run, to prove it. So he did, and drove 80,000 miles back and forth across his very spread out district in his pick-up truck. And won. Reporters swarmed him after the speech. It was ferociously, stunningly delivered, but he was some random rep from an unglamorous place, and it got an infintessimal amount of coverage, if any.)
He spoke incredibly fast, although clearly, and not in excessive volume. But he had a lot to say, and he was damn well going to get it all in. He was clear, precise, didn't bobble the language or say "um", and came off as nearly exhaustingly inteligent -- big turn on for me, gold (although frustrating gold) for a reporter, not necessarily what the average American it up to coping with on a late-night news program.
He hit all the right buttons, making this a constitutional and civil rights issue, playing-up monogamy and responsibility, and talking about his own heterosexual cred.
Working against him? That fact that he's quite nearly too attractive (it's the sort of thing that make John Edwards seem too young, and to many people probably makes Newsom seem too gay despite how clear he is about his wife and so forth -- he's a very manicured man. I've also noticed in various stills of him, and also on the air, that he has very fine eyelids and with the wrong lighting it gives him a blueish tinge around the eyes, which can unfortunately make him either look creepy or like he's wearing makeup -- someone needs to get the man some concealor, now.), and that he tends to lean forward and back constantly while making a point -- it's small, but it's a habit he needs to be broken of ASAP, or else he looks like a kid bouncing up and down in his chair.
Anyway, it was a find performance, and I think this guy will be huge. If he can land on the national stage again when this sorts itself out for something less controversial but with an equally revolutionary approach... he'll be absolutely fucking huge.
It was really fun viewing. And that's the necessary crux right there.
My bet for the Deomcratic National Convention? He'll be given a speech slot, just out of prime-time -- how he navigates that will be telling. Speech slots are as often prizes as they are intentionally provided opportunities for people to shoot themselves in the foot. Evan Bayh's awful nominating speech is probably the best recent example. Bayh is known to be a great orrator -- what happened in 1996? Gore's people, supposedly believing Bayh to be a threat (that was _the_ onsight gossip), changed the text of his speech at the last minute, inflating its length and providing masses of unrehearsed, dense text. Bye bye Bayh.
(For the record, the best speech I saw at the 1996 Convention was one at two in the afternoon by a member of the House who ran for the seat because he was telling the kids in his mostly immigrant (I think he was from Texas) class, that in America you can be anything. They didn't believe him, and challenged him to run, to prove it. So he did, and drove 80,000 miles back and forth across his very spread out district in his pick-up truck. And won. Reporters swarmed him after the speech. It was ferociously, stunningly delivered, but he was some random rep from an unglamorous place, and it got an infintessimal amount of coverage, if any.)
