Why plain-speaking McCain can still throw up questions for suave Obama

Washington: If the US presidential election were decided by speeches alone, it would be over already.

Barack Obama soars, John McCain struggles. Obama beams, McCain grins at the wrong time.

Obama looks off into a heavenly distance and then right at you.

McCain pivots his head in three positions - left, centre, right, centre, left, centre, right. He may be speaking to "my friends" but he is looking, quite obviously, at a projected script.

Both use a teleprompter, but you can only tell with one of them.

When McCain is on stage making a big speech, you can imagine yourself in his shoes, as if you're in a panicky dream that traps you some place you don't belong, with all those eyes on you.

Evoking empathy

His discomfort makes him authentic and that's one reason it's not game over.

McCain shares certain qualities with candidates of the past. Like Al Gore, he can be clunky on the stage; funny, charming and sharp-witted up close, and able to give an informed opinion - like it not - on any topic, off the top of his head.

Gore, of course, lost. But the oratorically unadorned war hero Dwight Eisenhower prevailed over opponents of lyrical prose and resonant voice. So did the plain-spoken Harry Truman.

Like Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, McCain acknowledges Obama's superior ability to grip a crowd. He counters the same way Clinton did - by saying they are just pretty words.

What makes Obama so good at the scripted speech? And what to make of McCain's stilted delivery?

Wayne Fields, director of American culture studies at Washington University in St Louis and author of Union of Words: A History of Presidential Eloquence, said of Obama: "The rise and fall of Obama's voice, the judicious repetition and the seamless interplay between words, expressions and gestures can keep people captivated longer than normal for a political speech.

"There's something that makes us unaware." All to Obama's benefit? Not necessarily.

"We're afraid we might be seduced," Fields said. "We're sort of suspicious of eloquence, yet at the same time we desire it." As for McCain, he said, what you hear is what you get.

McCain's style conveys, "I'm not saying anything fancy. There's nothing here that's very difficult. It's just the way I am."

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Centre at the University of Pennsylvania and author of 15 books on politics, including Unspun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation puts it down to the conviction Obama conveys. "Senator Obama's strength as an orator is his ability to deliver scripted texts in a way that expresses a sense of lived conviction."

"Audiences are unaware that he is delivering from a teleprompter. By contrast, the audience is painfully aware that Senator McCain is using a teleprompter."

Take away the script and the arena, substitute an uncontrolled exchange with voters close up, and it can be a different story.

On par with Reagan

"Senator Obama does not as readily or as convincingly express empathy in these environments as does Senator McCain. Senator Obama seems detached, analytic, and professorial at times. Senator McCain has a quick wit."

Jamieson puts Obama on par with Ronald Reagan in their delivery of formal speeches, and says his windups are something to behold.