Face Palm

I'm reminded of the phrase of a friend who, when we saw someone out wearing an amazingly bad outfit -- not a poor or lazy outfit but one the wearer spent time unintentionally creating something awful, would snark, "What kind of friends let you go out in public dressed like that?"

What kind of advisers let you say this:

"People out there are still hurting very badly, and they are still scared. And so part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared," Obama said at a Democratic fundraiser Saturday in Boston. "And the country is scared, and they have good reason to be."

Barrack Obama, October 16, 2010 stump speech.

Obama may not be able to express the sincerity to pull off a classic line like:

I feel your pain.

Bill Clinton, Response to AIDS activist Bob Rafsky at the Laura Belle nightclub in Manhattan (March 27, 1992)

But he certainly can deliver more substantial and effective remarks like this:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.

More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

Franklin Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address

Or:

The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are; but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world. The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.

Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right; not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.

JFK's Cuban Missile Crisis Address

It's an unfortunate refrain of the Obama Administration that no administration has faced such a difficult task as his, and perhaps even no man is capable of a great Presidency under today's circumstances.  Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address seems to describe a time far worse:

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.
...
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

An authentic voice is necessary, understanding pyschology is necessary, but condescending the people you're trying to win the support of is not, nor is using a speech to teach background material. Speeches are not lectures, organizers and websites can explain the pyschology as they teach party activists the skills of how to address the concerns of their neighbors. Obama should not be looking towards H. Ross Perot for lessons in giving speeches -- people want inspiration and a simple story, not expository material explaining facts. Multi-media presentations could have a role in politics -- but only with teams as brilliant as those who prepared Steve Job's recent keynotes. You'll note Jobs didn't explain how the iPhone's screen worked -- he just showed what it could do.