Saying and Doing

If you’re at all into the news you’re spending this morning wading through various piles of punditry – plus a few polls – tackling the thorny issue of how average Americans did or will react to the president’s speech last night. Take it with salt.

We at ABC quit producing instant speech-reaction polls several years ago. Good sampling’s a bear in this kind of thing, but there are two equally basic problems: Speech watchers tend to be favorably inclined to the speechifier in the first place (those who can’t stand him are unlikely to watch); and speeches are crowd-pleasing (even platitudinous) by design (e.g., let’s cure cancer).

While viewers may get caught up in the moment, a single speech in and of itself is very highly unlikely to change any fundamental attitudes. Events on the ground do that. People do listen to what our leaders say – but above all, we watch what they do.