Here is what the New York Times wrote about him: “Presidents have been using teleprompters for more than half a century, but none relied on them as extensively as Obama has so far. And I actually like my speech better without teleprompters.” He then grabbed one of the transparent boards and broke it.ĭuring a recent speech, President Joe Biden mistakenly read out “end of quote” off the teleprompter, which was meant as a helpful note to him.īut the US president who relied the most on the teleprompter, to the point of being frequently mocked by Republicans, was Barack Obama. The teleprompter once failed the governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2004.ĭuring one of his campaign speeches in 2016, Donald Trump stopped, pointed at the screen, and said: “By the way, these teleprompters haven’t been working for the last 20 minutes. In 2008, Sarah Palin improvised admirably when the teleprompter broke during her vice presidential speech. George W Bush used to be visibly uneasy and nervous while speaking off a teleprompter. He waited for the right one to be loaded. Bill Clinton once arrived at the lectern for the State of the Union speech and found that the wrong speech was uploaded. Ronald Reagan was very comfortable reading his speech off the dual screens of a teleprompter.

He was once heard scolding the machine for moving too slowly during his speech. Which is why every world leader relies on the teleprompter.Īmerican Presidents, for instance, have a chequered history with teleprompters.ĭwight D Eisenhower was the first US president to address the nation with a teleprompter during the 1952 presidential campaign. Policy or diplomatic speeches at global events require the cold accuracy of facts and figures, unlike election speeches which run on the steam of rhetoric. Modi was absolutely right in stopping his speech midway when the teleprompter failed. The Opposition must identify his weaknesses and focus on those instead.Īlso, attacking the prime minister on a speech interrupted by a technical glitch is only going to reopen the treasure pit of Rahul Gandhi’s oratorial blunders. Modi’s core strengths like a clean image or brilliant oratory are unassailable. Whether they like Modi or not, Indians can readily pull out of the archives of their memory dozens of his spontaneously devastating speeches, some of them made in Parliament. Just like its ‘chowkidar char hai’ campaign to convince the nation that Modi is corrupt badly backfired in the 2019 elections, it will be enormously dim to take on the PM over his oratory. A teleprompter failure during an international event is not going to dent the prime minister’s reputation as an outstanding orator. There is something that the Congress’s IT cell, which has gone on overdrive, must remember. His supporters, who regularly make fun of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s speech bloopers, are embarrassed. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s teleprompter malfunction during his World Economic Forum speech in Davos has set off quite a kerfuffle. And when the machine in question is a politician’s teleprompter, it becomes a political event in itself. It conveys the impression that the reader - most often the leader - has memorised his or her speeches and are connecting with the audience.īut even neat little machines fail. The teleprompter’s popularity is understandable. But soon it became a neat little machine generations of politicians have loved: two nearly invisible plates of glass angled at a 45-degree slant at either side of their podiums that they can read off. It started in 1948 as a clunky jugaad: a roll of printed paper propped up against half a suitcase.

Obama with no teleprompter