shakran

Well in this case it should. We're talking about the President of the United States. A large part of his job is to project a solid and intelligent image of America to the world. If the man can't string 5 phrases together without stumbling or inventing new words, then he's not doing a very good job. There has not been one single elected president since the advent of radio and television broadcasts that was a terrible public speaker (Note, I said elected, so Ford does not count). Most of them have been pretty damn spectacular public speakers - we're talking FDR, Kennedy, Clinton, Reagan, hell even Nixon came off brilliantly in his "checkers" speech. Public speaking skills have been a big part of most of our presidents. There's a reason for that.

I couldn't stand Reagan myself, but one thing I always gave him credit for was his speaking ability and to make even the most asinine proposals sound pretty damn good to his audience.

Now we've got a guy who, whether he's intelligent or not, sounds like a bumbling fool every time he opens his mouth - especially when it's not scripted as in the Q/A session of the PC. What kind of image does that project of the administration, and of America itself to the rest of the world. When the leader makes an ass of himself, the troops get nervous, and the other side loses respect for you - not that we have much chance of having respect - we lost that pretty well with Bush's handling of post-9/11 foreign policy.