Why the President’s Libya speech bombed

President Obama’s March 28 speech about U.S. military involvement in Libya failed to move the needle of public opinion.

Americans aren’t happy about the U.S. going to war in yet another Middle Eastern country, and neither are many members of Congress from both sides of the aisle. So the President marched to the lectern to use his prodigious public speaking skills to swing attitudes back in his favor.

It didn’t work.

If you’re wondering why he fell short, go back and take a look at the video of his presentation. What’s evident is that his people didn’t serve him well with the choice of venue or their decision to have the President simultaneously address a live and televised audience.

The venue was National Defense University in Washington, D.C., where Mr. Obama was surrounded by an audience of friendly dignitaries such as Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and many other political and military honchos of his choosing.

Meanwhile millions of Americans were viewing from their living rooms. It was the television audience that President Obama needed to connect with. Whether he realized it or not, Obama was playing to the live audience, the one he didn’t need to persuade.

How do I know the President was more cognizant of his live audience than television viewers? Because he spent much more time reading from the teleprompters on his left and right flanks rather than the one in front of him, the teleprompter positioned in front of the primary camera beaming his speech to U.S. homes.

When the President did use the center teleprompter he was staring directly into the camera, right into the eyes of television viewers. There was a definite connection on those occasions. Yet he spent far more time reading from the teleprompters to his left and right, the ones that played more to his live audience, spreading his attention among the horizontally formatted auditorium. That left TV viewers feeling more like eavesdroppers than the principal target of the President’s arguments.

It was a big mistake. The potency of the President’s comments was severely diminished.

President Obama would have been far better off making his address from the White House Blue Room or some other magisterial environment, seated in a low-back chair (to accentuate his height), legs crossed, hands calmly folded on his lap and his eyes staring directly into the camera, speaking right at the American citizens he was trying to persuade. The connection would have been pure, the opportunity to influence far more significant.

That intimate format would have been redolent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legendary and influential fireside chats.

That is not to say a more piercing speech would have magically swung public sentiment in favor of U.S. operations in Libya. It is to say, however, that President Obama’s address to the nation didn’t come close to living up to its potential, based on a poor choice of venue and two teleprompters too many.

It’s a lesson from which we can benefit.

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