NO WONDER HIS SPEECHES ARE SO ROUTINELY AWFUL:

The crafting of Obama's Cairo speech to world's Muslims: The president worked with dozens but put his own delicate touch onto a blunt address that would grab global attention -- and some criticism. (Christi Parsons, August 2, 2009, LA Times)

Soon, scores of experts and advocates were sending memos, polling data and letters in hopes of influencing the speech.

One by one, the experts got calls from Pradeep Ramamurthy, an FBI terrorism analyst detailed to the National Security Council. Diplomats came to meetings under fluorescent lights in the West Wing basement. Think-tank experts streamed into the Old Executive Office Building in groups of a dozen or so.

One group of activists sent a letter urging that human rights get prominent play; the signers were invited in to talk. "We urged them to use the word 'democracy,' " one said.

Other experts warned of pitfalls.

Talking about 9/11 would feed the theory widely believed in the Arab world that the U.S. had staged the attacks to justify military action against Islam. Decrying unequal treatment of women could bring charges of hypocrisy because of U.S. friendship with the likes of the Saudi royal family.

One especially emphatic warning came from a couple of Middle Eastern scholars. Beware of quoting the Koran, they said; the president might sound like he is pandering.

Worse, the complexities of Koranic interpretation might open Obama to ridicule by hostile clerics. Obama would "be playing on the turfs of the religious authorities," said one person who was present. "And then who are people going to believe -- the president of the United States, or the sheik?"

One member of the team would later refer to the group as "the Cairo cell." With the deadline at hand, they had a well-researched, meticulously vetted text. The State Department had blessed it. So had Axelrod and Emanuel.

Everything seemed on track -- until Obama announced his disappointment.

One attendee remembered something curious: At a certain point, Rhodes had stopped scribbling notes and just focused on the president's face.

Later, a friend bumped into the young speechwriter. "He looked relieved," the friend said, "even liberated."

So many voices had been urging caution that, as one team member described it, "we were putting the brakes on ourselves." Freed from those inhibitions, they tackled Obama's detailed edits. Some were line changes. Others, mostly on the backs of pages, were exact text to insert.

The structure itself changed. Instead of flowing prose, they made it read more like a list, with topics dealt with in bullet form -- violent extremism, nuclear disarmament, religious freedom.

That changed the message. It put women's rights on par with the speech's other main points, instead of making it a "throwaway line in the passage about democracy," as one staffer put it.

Democracy got its own bullet point for emphasis.

He thinks turning them into PowerPoint presentations improves them? Democracy isn't a bullet point--it is the entire point.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 2, 2009 8:40 AM