Well it seems like there was plenty of back on forth: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/o...es/speech/173/

I'm really SHOCKED that you ikes would call some argument irrelevant based on some minor dissimilarity that you arbitrarily decide. Really that's so unlike you.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_442331.html

Yeah how could those kinds of off-the-cuff responses to questions/attacks from republican congressmembers ever translate to doing well in a debate with a republican presidential candidate? The two are completely dissimilar. I mean he's higher up than them, in a debate with Newt they'd be standing on the same level. Totally. Different. Animals.

Minor things like Obama getting 90-95% of the time aren't minor suzzer. It's not like there aren't, you know, ACTUAL debates to look at. **** it dude, why look at those amirite?

I get how they can tell how many people are employed. I get how they can tell how many people are unemployed and drawing UI. But how can they tell how many people have given up looking for work? Where does that number come from? Is it anything more than a guesstimate? Extrapolation from surveys of people who've taken surveys admitting to such? Or something else?

pretty sure its all the same survey.

Do you have a job?

If no, are you looking?

Sure ikes, only in your world does walking into a republican retreat, delivering a speech blasting their policies, then taking on all comers = operating from a "bully pulpit". Only in your world.

Look, call it whatever you want. I don't give a ****. It's not a debate and idiotic to bring it up in this context. Obama struggled against HRC. He was not world beating against McCain. The event you described is very, very, different from a debate for many obvious reasons.

Obama has been a great public speaker as long as I have seen him in the public light. Don't get that confused with actual debating.

See the quotes I posted. You don't think that would play well in a debate? You think Obama is going to freeze up on a neutral stage vs. Newt when he could deliver those in an extremely hostile environment?

Re: Debate Prowess

Obama's good. But it's not like he's Jed Bartlet or something. I don't think that he is going to be better enough than Romney or Gingrich to really make a difference. However, the main reason for this is the format of the debates.

The way they're set up, they're not actually winnable. They're just losable. Obama's good enough not to lose. So are Romney and Gingrich. The result will be a handful of presidential debates where there's no clear "winner" unless someone unexpectedly pulls a Perry.

I think it's ****ing dumb to say he's world class when he hasn't been world class in actual debates. Read man read!

Link was posted a little ways up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1-jasxb7NY

cliffs is Obama getting hostile prepared Qs from GOP, swatting them away like flies

qfsuzzer

I'm a lot more worried about Romney vs. Obama in a debate because he won't ever really say anything but platitudes and deflections. Newt will actually try to engage on the issues, where I think - at least with the military, Obamacare, and all this debt ceiling/payroll tax stuff - Obama will do well. Plus Newt has I'm assuming pretty much infinite choice quotes from past speeches back when republicans espoused stuff like insurance mandates, it should be fun.

Eloquence and intelligence are not the same thing, as much as the average person seems to have been indoctrinated into believing so.

Ron Paul does not come off well to the majority in debates, but I don't think there's much doubt that he's a bright, knowledge, well-read person. Mike Huckabee is way better at debating than Paul is and doesn't strike me as very bright at all. You're drawing way too much of an inference from the comparison being made and adjudicated.

But this is nothing like a debate. Completely different skillsets. Move along.

Obama does not beat Romney or Paul. I liked the other candidates but when you consider the EPA the most evil thing in the world I think they need their brain examined. There are even some of these right wing groups that want to put lead back in gasoline. The see no problem is giving away public lands so someone can install a Keystone pipeline, but if they use imminent domain to want 20x more than asking price and they don't get it they freak.

Paul has one problem he talks about tort to solve environmental problems but if you try to sue a doctor he freaks. do you really want 100,000 Erin Brokovichs running around suing everyone as long as the jury agree they might get $100,000,000 for lead paint.

Being able to speak extemporaneously to a huge variety of issues with clarity and sophistication reflects on one's own intelligence. That is how I approach rating debate ability but others may have their own measure (and Huck would do better in their criteria than mine)

The skill of debating live on a stage is an extremely small portion of human intelligence. There's really no debate around that imo. Plenty of extremely intelligent people would fall into pieces in a similar spot.

I mean, political debates in the modern sense encompass those things you named, but there's a lot of other stuff too. Lots of more cynical things like "how to dodge an inconvenient question" and "how to manipulate the public into thinking that you're not bull****ting them."

Plus there's just a perpetual charisma factor to the whole thing that is mostly innate.

I just think the correlation between debating and intelligence is way too loose to draw a really strong connection.

Uh, no. Newt's greatest strengths are not being Romney, not being as horrible a debater as Perry, not being as odious as Bachmann and Santorum, not being as snarky at the base or as unknown or as tied to Obama as Huntsman, not being as far out of the main stream as Paul, more willing to keep "campaigning" on anniversary trips to Hawaii than Pawlenty, and having his sex scandals be known quantities unlike Cain. Newt's been nothing but a terrible candidate this whole campaign. He's just lucky that everyone else has been even more terrible.

The only reason why we're talking about Newt is because of Cain's sex scandals. And the only reason why we're still talking about Cain's sex scandals is because Perry is an incompetent debater. Cain is the one who rose to prominence because of the debates. Newt is just the guy who didn't fail too badly and is now left over.

lol that's a pretty epic sum-up of Newt's performance wook.

Yeah, I think that if TLAWL had stuck it out, not stuck his penis anywhere a church lady wouldn't approve of (or suggest that he'd like it to be in such a place to someone who'd talk), and been at least half the debater Newt's been, I think we'd be talking about the Tim Lawlplenty miracle comeback about now instead of Newt.

1. Intelligence and eloquence are correlated. Most (but not all) intelligent people that practice it can develop it. Politicians, of all people, have great incentives to develop this skill (and most can afford the best possible coaching), so the fact that a particular politician is ineloquent, in many cases is reflective of his intelligence.

2. The reason why Ron Paul doesn't come off well is not because he lacks in eloquence. He generally has no problem clearly articulating his points in a fairly compelling way.

Well, he articulates them in a way that is compelling to me. I think there's a skill to articulating things in a way that the masses will eat them up, and he doesn't have that or doesn't employ it.

I think the problem there often lies in the points themselves rather than how he presents them.

If so, why all the claims that this latest number is bogus because more folks have stopped looking? BLS statistics show that the "discouraged workers" category is down 8% versus a year ago.