Obama's Safety Net

[Stentor]

Originally Posted by Excaliber

Teleprompter? Name one President that HASN'T used notes while making a speech in the last 100 years? Paper or electronic, principle is the same.

Myself, I prefer "Notepad" in Windows over sticky notes, but both have their place.
Ernie

Ernie,

I think you are missing key points from the original article to which the link was posted. Yes, other Presidents used notes or teleprompters for big speeches (e.g., State of Union). What makes BHO an outlier is his extreme reliance on the teleprompter--everywhere he goes.

The link still works; here are some excerpts you might find of interest:

President Barack Obama doesn’t go anywhere without his TelePrompter.

Obama’s reliance on the teleprompter is unusual — not only because he is famous for his oratory, but because no other president has used one so consistently and at so many events, large and small.

“It’s just something presidents haven’t done,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a presidential historian who has held court in the White House since December 1975. “It’s jarring to the eye. In a way, it stands in the middle between the audience and the president because his eye is on the teleprompter.”

Obama has relied on a teleprompter through even the shortest announcements and when repeating the same lines on his economic stimulus plan that he's been saying for months — whereas past presidents have mostly worked off of notes on the podium except during major speeches, such as the State of the Union.


He's charismatic and a good presenter when he has a teleprompter in front of him. Take away the teleprompter and things can get ugly pretty quickly.