Message
Bush laid out bold themes for his second term, including ending tyranny around the world, creating peace in the Middle East, and reforming Social Security. Whether you like these issues or not, they are big, big issues (no second-term snooze-fest here).
Continuity
Bush had several major and well-developed themes, but he also threw in some ad-hoc stuff about HIV-AIDS, Pell Grants, and wanting to help young people get out of gangs. The last had a “midnight basketball” flavor to it.
Courageousness
Bush commented that others had considered raising the age for receiving Social Security, means-testing benefits, reducing benefits, even raising taxes. Then he said that all of these ideas are on the table in his administration. That took guts.
Quotable Moments
Bush expertly repositioned a perceived weakness, his occupation of Iraq, into strength with his quoting of an Iraqi woman who told him, “We were occupied for 35 years by Saddam Hussein, that was the real occupation!” That’s good spin.
Speech craft
Bush avoided the blunder of abstraction. He gave great real examples involving actual people and their stories. Whether it was the Iraqi woman or the sergeant’s parents next to the First Lady, Bush did a great job of connecting his ideas in a meaningful way to real people, thus making his points more memorable and powerful.
Mechanics
Bouncing off of a strong inaugural address, Bush continued to show impressive presentation mechanics. His press office said he practiced reading from the TelePrompTer at least five times and it showed. Not a stumble or bumble in site. No new chapters in “Bushisms” will be gathered from this State of the Union Address. Bush’s body language was comfortable, he occasionally gestured with his hands, and his smirk was mostly hidden. Minor point: Bush still squints and furrows his eyes slightly when reading the TelePrompTer. He’s not horrible about this, he’s just not 100-percent natural looking yet. One very, very minor point: Bush was flipping his pages over when done with them. He should have followed the example of Ronald Reagan who knew it was always better to slide a page over when finished–thus causing less attention to a script.
Bush’s timing has gone from awful to excellent in a few short years. He now knows how to pause effectively. He never races to an inglorious finish anymore. His long pause as he looked respectfully at the women embracing next to the First Lady was quite touching. In previous years, the lesser-experienced Bush wouldn’t have pulled this off as well.
Awkward Moments
Bush can’t be faulted for this, but Dick Cheney lost his normal grim and sour look only once. When Bush called for the U.S. to end its dependence on foreign energy (oil), Cheney broke into a huge grin and looked happier than I’ve seen him in years. (Is Cheney trying to send script ideas to Saturday Night Live?)
–T. J. Walker, author of Presentation Training A-Z, is the president of Media Training Worldwide.