It's how you say it!

I'm off to the polling station soon....."to exercise my franchise!" as we quaintly put it.

 Everybody has talked about how close the polls are and maybe a lot of that is just down to a lack of understanding of what is in store for us. We've had the TV debates...but I for one was still not clear what Dave, Nick or Gordon are planning for us. I thought maybe an outside view from The New York Times would help.

Well it's enlightened me!! Particularly about the scale of our financial problem summed up in an off the cuff quote attributed to Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England when saying “whoever wins will be out of power for a whole generation because of how tough the fiscal austerity will have to be.”
The article then goes on to suggest that "When these issues have been discussed at all in the campaign, it has usually been in the context of which of the parties could get away with being most evasive in setting out deficit-reduction plans that economists say fall far short of the cuts that will be needed."
So where will that leave us when we inevitably reflect back on the election campaign. We have had innovation in the form of those wonderfully entertaining TV debates which pitched Nick Clegg from chorus line to super-stardom! We were treated to the brilliant personal brand campaign - "Dave!"  Beginning with his "jogging to front door" the morning the election was called...and steadily building through to his 36 hour marathon vote catcher the day before polling. And just to show you don't have to stage things and spontinaeity works best...we revelled in Gordon's brief encounter with Mrs Duffy on the streets of Rochdale!!
And all of that... just so they could be evasive and not tell us what they really needed to???

But then that is the particular nature of politics. It's not what you say but how you say it!
Barak Obama was once accused of delivering "empty rhetoric" by one political pundit...yet he is widely accepted as being a great speechmaker.
Audiences respond to charisma and congruent delivery. These presentational qualities register subconsciously.  The persuasive language techniques used also register in the same subconscious way.  The audience intuitively feel good with the messenger and with the message.
But stay clear of empty rhetoric otherwise you could sound like this hilarious Peter Sellers' "Speech in the House" recorded back in 1958 http://tinyurl.com/29xf3ul
Right then. Time to go and vote. So who does it for me on charisma and congruence?