It’s possible.
A televangelist a few years back got in trouble for doing the very thing you bring up. He’d walk around and pick out people from the audience and reveal something specific about them, something he had no real way of knowing like a childhood disease or a the details of a bad accident etc… But what wasn’t known, or even visible to the audience, was that the guy was wearing a radio receiver earpiece. On the other end of the earpiece was the guy’s wife feeding him the revealing information.
He was bound to get burned and eventually he did. What was interesting to me about this whole thing wasn’t so much that the guy would try something like that, hey, I think its only fitting and typical they’d try a crappy move like that, that wasn’t it, it was the size of the earpiece that surprised me. The thing was teeny-tiny.
What they showed the guy using looked almost exactly like the new kinds of hearing aids, a unit about the size of a corn nibblet.
Interesting.
But, and here’s the big but, in the case of Bush trying to do this, it’d take a hell of a lot of skill. What the televangelist was receiving were mere snippets of information, “Seat five- polio at fifteen- can’t walk”. For the president to be getting answers fed to him, it’d be a bit more complicated.
But obviously something was going on. Bush stumbled, hesitated, and searched for thoughts a lot more than what you would expect.
What do I think was going on? It’s the same thing my father and I talked about (I was over for dinner and happened to watch the address with the family) last night. I had recently heard a guy in the pentagon talk about how not revealing sensitive information to the public while at the same time trying to be informative to the public wasn’t as hard as you’d expect. He basically said you start of small and you learn. By the time you’re dealing with some serious sensitive information, you’ve grown so accustom to what you should and shouldn’t say that it’s second nature and done without much thought.
That makes sense.
“Hmmmm” I said to dad, “Maybe that’s what we were listening to. Maybe he’s having a hard time trying to figure out what not to say, and not what to say?” My father didn’t buy it.
He believed it simply has to do with Bush’s background alone. That is, he’s never had to really formulate diplomatic answers that are being scrutinized by the world. He simply hasn’t had the experience saying things in a confidant and clear manner.
I somewhat agree with his idea, and include it as partly a biased opinion but quite possibly the truth, but still believe my explanation is closer to the truth.
Again, it’d take a hell of a lot to pull off a move like you suggest. I’d think it’s so risky as to backfire and destroy the presidents credibility, that they’d never try it. What we saw was a guy who really really was trying to think about how proper and safe his answers were.
While we’re on this topic, I’d just like to comment that I thought the first few question were pre-arranged. I caught myself a few times thinking, ‘You know, it looks like he’s looking for the right prepared statement to make on that question… but he can’t find it”. I think that’s partly true too, but only reflects on his having a harder time than some of the best politicians in speaking in a forum like that.
If that too was the case, then I think it’s even more proof that the transmitter-earpiece idea would be idiotic to try.
