Monday, April 04, 2005, 14:37 GMT
I'm an American who definitely finds that Bush sounds uneducated, but it really doesn't have much to do with his foreign policy (of which I'm certainly not a fan). The way he talks, to me, simply is not becoming of a major world leader. It has nothing to do with dialect--Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson all had thick southern drawls, but all sounded quite eduacted and articulate. Bush says things like "nucular" and his grammar is appalling.
It's also, to be fair, an issue with body language with him. Legendary Russian drama teacher Stanislavski often stated that the two most important principals in acting were "relaxation" and "relation." Meaning that in order to effectively communicate on stage or anywhere else, your body has to be completely free of tension, and you have to feel completely "connected" to whatever words are coming out of your mouth. While I wasn't all that crazy about Clinton, I think he was such a popular president because he so followed those two rules to a t. Bush on the other hand, always looks stressed and slightly worried when speaking publicly, and never seems to understand anything that his speechwriters have written for him.
One last note: part of my issue with Bush's accent is that, knowing his history, I find it very affected. He was born in Connecticticut, went to New England private schools, attended Harvard and Yale, and speaks with a folksy Texas twang? Not buying it for a second.
It's also, to be fair, an issue with body language with him. Legendary Russian drama teacher Stanislavski often stated that the two most important principals in acting were "relaxation" and "relation." Meaning that in order to effectively communicate on stage or anywhere else, your body has to be completely free of tension, and you have to feel completely "connected" to whatever words are coming out of your mouth. While I wasn't all that crazy about Clinton, I think he was such a popular president because he so followed those two rules to a t. Bush on the other hand, always looks stressed and slightly worried when speaking publicly, and never seems to understand anything that his speechwriters have written for him.
One last note: part of my issue with Bush's accent is that, knowing his history, I find it very affected. He was born in Connecticticut, went to New England private schools, attended Harvard and Yale, and speaks with a folksy Texas twang? Not buying it for a second.