Last night I watched (by default) part of the State of the Union Address. I just want to make a quick comment on how big of a joke politics has become in the US. I heard afterwards that GW was interrupted over 40 times by clapping. The guy could hardly get out a sentence without being clapped for. I mean, he could have said, "I love yellow labs" and the crowd would have given a standing ovation. It made it excruciating to watch. Politics hasn't always been like this. If you go back and read some of the presidential speeches and debates from the past it wasn't always such a show. They actually made intellegent comments about where they thought the country was heading and what we needed to do in order to get there.I long for the day when we have a president who thinks what he is going to say is really important and asks the audience to hold their applause until the end. Just my thoughts. Did you watch it? What did you think?
2 comments:
I totally agree Ryan. I counted, they stood up at least 16 times during his one hour speech. After I reached 16, I stopped counting, and I don't even know how many times they clapped. I'm with you on hoping that one day we will have a political leader who cares more about how to make change than to get his ego stroked. Thank God it was his last speech.
I should probably care more about politics than I do. But the national candidates are all about perception and image and not about substance. Obama and Bill Clinton were giving speaches in Denver on the same day last week, and from what they showed on TV it was impossible to tell what they really stand for. They all promote "change" - but from what and to what? It's so easy for them to make huge and unsupportable promises to make things different, without giving any details on how they would really get there and what the finish line would look like. I think I'd vote for someone who came out honestly and set some realistic expectations and didn't over-promise. In most careers if you made tons of promises you couldn't keep you'd be out of a job in a hurry.
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