Selling Yourself in Confrontation and Media Interviews 107
Some interesting examples
In the first presidential debate of the 2000 election, George
Bush threw a zinger at Al Gore. He called Gore’s plan “fuzzy
math.” Similar to “I feel your pain,” it was wonderfully effective
the first time, but he repeated it many times in that same debate
and it lost its edge.
Al Gore came back with, “His plan will only benefit the wealthi-
est 1 percent of Americans.” He repeated it ad nauseum. It wasn’t
even a strong example because the imagery was vague. No one
“saw” the wealthiest 1 percent.
I’m convinced that had Bill Clinton been the debate oppo-
nent, he’d have smiled and said, “Dick Cheney got a 60-million
dollar golden parachute from Halliburton, the oil giant. He’ll get
millions more from your tax breaks. That’s money you’re stealing
from the classroom.”
The audience would respond to that kind of word picture.One memorable image
I was scheduled to do a training program on a Sunday morn-
ing for the Leadership Conference of the National School Boards
Association. There was a Saturday session they called a “Con-
gress” and I attended it to learn about the current issues of con-
cern to school board members.
The topic was standardized testing. Everyone attending was
allowed a few minutes to deliver a prepared statement on the sub-
ject. As with any other controversial subject, there were people in
the room strongly for testing. There were people ardently against
it. And there was a large group that hadn’t made up its mind.
Lots of folks got up, buried their noses into the lectern, and
read—or rather droned—on and on. It was naptime. No one scored
many points for or against testing.
Finally, the chair recognized one man. He walked to the lec-
tern, took a long pause as his eyes surveyed the room, and he said,
“Folks, you can’t fatten a hog by weighing it.” He nodded, waited
for a reaction to set in, then walked back to his seat and sat down.
A few people started chuckling right away. Then others real-
ized what had just been said.