Yesterday a guy in my club gave a speech evaluating Obama’s recent speech on race. The speaker is an Obama supporter and was also trying to get people rallied up. The audience response was OK but not great. This guy usually owns audiences so- using the language of Paula Abdul on American Idol - “I’m afraid it wasn’t his best performance.”

At one point he asked something like, “Are you hungry for change?” Not a lot of response. Then he said, “Are you just hungry?” It got a lot of laughs. I don’t know if he ad-libbed it or if he had it prepared, but it did have the effect of getting people more into his speech. If the “Are you hungry for change?” line had got a lot of response I would not have done “Are you hungry.” The “change” theme is the center of Obama’s platform and you don’t necessarily want a joke right after.

This makes me think of football teams that run the option, where they read the defense and can change up the play once it’s running. Being able to tweak a speech in the middle depending on audience response is the stuff of pro’s, but more important is setting up for it by having lines like “Are you hungry for change?” Here you can stay serious or be a smartass depending on whether the audience needs a jolt or not. The “Are you hungry” I plan on stealing, though unfortunately I can’t use it at my club until enough people forget its original use.