I saw Bob Barr speak twice at the Libertarian Party convention. I saw his acceptance speech for the nomination first. During a break, CSPAN replayed the speech he gave when he was trying to win the nomination.

His speech asking for the nomination he had the right objective and I thought he did a decent job. His speech accepting the nomination he had an objective, which he fulfilled, but it was the wrong objective in my opinion and he got into trouble.

Asking For the Nomination Speech

Barr’s initial speech where he was competing for the nomination wasn’t that bad.

His goal is simple - to win enough votes from the delegates to get the nomination. Barr is a household name, which could help him and the Libertarian Party get their message out in a general election. Complicating life is the fact that Barr was a conservative Republican congressman who took a pretty hard-right stand on a lot of (or rather all) social issues. A few years ago Barr became a Libertarian, but has never been fully accepted by the party. Barr’s needs to convince the audience that he respects them and that he is a real Libertarian.

I don’t think he won over the people that hate him (nor could he have with any speech), but he did make a good go at it.

GOOD

• The speech was short, about six minutes. We can probably thank the Libertarian Party, not Barr, for having the time limit. I’m not complaining either way.
  
• He praised the Libertarian ideals a number of times and general intellectualism. I liked his line about there being more substantive debate in the last three days at the convention than in thirty years of being a Republican.
• Praised the other Libertarian candidates. Barr frankly strikes me as a pretty cutthroat politician, but at least in public his praise of the other Libertarian candidates seemed sincere.
• Nice background about how he lived in Bagdad and Tehran when younger, so he appreciated the value of freedom.
• Talked about how he caught a lot of hell over the weekend, presumably for his past history as a Republican, from opinionated Libertarians. But again he welcomed it.
• Said he would vote to repeal the “Defensive of Marriage Act,” which he had voted for and wouldn’t be popular with audience. He qualified this carefully, he said he didn’t like how it was being implemented as opposed to the philosophy behind it. So kudos to nice hair splitting on his part.

SUGGESTIONS

• Vocal variety was so-so. He punched certain words up with extra emphasis, it kind of worked at end but it felt like he was trying too hard sometimes, too.
  
• He spoke way too fast at the end. All of the candidates that I saw raced towards their end, I’m sure because some timing light was flashing at them. If Barr had got three minutes of standing ovation in the middle of his speech I can appreciate that his timing would be thrown off. But he got tepid applause at best, so there was no excuse. He needed to have made painful cuts to avoid losing it at the end. It’s possible he was trying to build to a powerful end with lots of energy, but he had too many subordinate clauses for that. It felt rushed.
• All of these type speeches from all the parties feel kind of trite, this one was no exception. Not bad necessarily, just a little trite. I think he could have made it really special if he could have spoken more about his experiences in Tehran and Bagdad. How many American politicians can say they graduated high school in Tehran? Given time limits and given most of speech had to reassure Libertarians he was one of them, there’s no way he could have done this given these constraints.
• He tended to grab onto the lectern and rock around a lot, especially early.

On Accepting the Nomination

He blew this speech in my opinion. Not on YouTube or CSPAN, sorry.

It was a hotly contested contest for the presidential nomination. Barr’s main rival was Doctor Mary Ruwart, who is the more typical Libertarian. She has a PhD in biophysics and is more activist than politician. I really liked her (admittedly based only on her personality, not policy) and was upset when Barr won.

They had to go multiple ballots before Barr won the nomination, only beating Mary by 54-46 percent. The %46 of Mary supporters were visibly not happy at Barr’s victory. Barr was given five minutes to address the crowd after his victory.

Barr made the number one mistake in public speaking, which is not knowing what your objective should be.

Barr’s objective was to thank all the politicos who had helped him on his campaign. So he invited what seemed to be a cast of thousands up onto the stage with him and called them out by name, saying a few words about them. I’d guess most of these guys were Barr’s former supporters when he was a Republican who also jumped ship with him, reminding the audience further he’s not a complete Libertarian.

Barr introduced his wife as the next first lady of the United States with a straight face. Right.

Barr’s objective should have been uniting the party. His closest advisors will follow him to the gates of hell. They don’t need to be up on stage to get public praise, however grateful Barr is to them. The %46 are who he needs to worry about. Had I been Barr, I would have acknowledged the tough contest and thanked the candidates for the spirit which it was fought for the first thirty seconds of my speech. Then I would spend the next few minutes absolutely tearing John McCain apart. (I’m a McCain supporter personally so I hate to say that. But McCain is a better target than Obama for Barr, since Barr distances himself from Republicans further.)

This would get the audience going. In the last minute of the acceptance speech I’d go straight out Cicero. I’d walk out into the audience, wave my arms around, swing for the fences as I described exactly what the Libertarian party meant in the cosmic sense - never mind Barr versus McCain.

I know this sounds like Spaith is a dirty politico too, but the fact of the matter is Barr needed to get the focus off of him. By having the Barr Bunch up there, he kept the anger in the room directed at the wrong place. Barr will never win all %46 of Mary’s folks over, but I don’t think he won any of them over with the performance he gave.

It’s funny how the same man can give a pretty good and a really awful speech in the same day on almost the same subject. He had the right objectives in one speech and the wrong ones the second go around.