Seems most US Presidents and Presidential candidates have strong regional accents. Bill Clinton, GW Bush, John Edwards, Ross Perot all had very strong southern accents; Al Gore did too, though not quite as strong. John Kerry had a strong northern accent (not so much a Boston accent as the sterotypical “upper crust” accent).
But I’ve lived in Bush’s state of Texas and Edwards’ state of North Carolina, and most of the people there don’t talk like that. Regional accents are fading. So why do so many Presidential candidates have such strong accents when the population at large doesn’t? Is it all an act to make sure voters know they’re from a certain geographic area? But why? Haven’t we reached a point in America where television has established the “correct” way of speaking and anyone whose accent doesn’t match that is (unfairly) thought less of? Or are accents actually considered a positive in politics now?
A fair proportion of Americans speak “Standard American” which is a dialect that extends from Upstate New York across much of the Midwest and Mountain States. It has been adopted as “standard usage” by most broadcast media.
However, probably a majority of Americans do not speak Standard American. There are a wide variety of distinct accents in use in New England, the Middle Atlantic seaboard, all of the South and adjacent parts of the Midwest (people from Cincinnati speak with more of the “Appalachian twang” than people from Asheville NC), the Southwest, much of the Pacific Coast, Minnesota, and even the southern Great Plains.
And remember that the urban areas of America, particularly the faster growing cities of the South, with their rapidly transient populations, will not give you a true picture of local dialect. I can drive into Raleigh in a half hour from here and hear exactly what I grew up speaking, but my landlady who lives next door could read an “Andy Griffith Show” script aloud in her normal voice and be indistinguishable from Francis Bavier. One of the best market analysts I’ve ever met was six years out of his hometown of Macon GA and sounded it; you could have poured his accent over hotcakes, but what he said in it was insightful and by no means regional. Texas has about six or seven regional dialects of its own.
So my impression is that the politicians are simply speaking naturally in the dialect where they grew up. Remember also that the locus of successful candidates has shifted drastically within the lifetime of all but the youngest members here. There’s a fairly famous story about the Texas woman interviewed shortly after the Kennedy assassination, who after saying she was sorry JFK had been shot, commented that she was happy that “we finally have a president without an accent.” 
Their accent is also part of the persona they use to sell themselves. A “standard” American accent may be safe but it doesn’t stand out much and that is a drawback in national elections. Many of the people that you listed have someone developed a trademark accent that is very distinctive to them. I grew up not terribly far from Hope, Arkansas where Bill Clinton is from and they don’t speak much like he does at all. The Kennedy’s have a family accent that is so distinctive that it instantly identifies the speaker and family. This persists over 40 years after JFK was assasinated. Both Bushes have very distinctive accents that are somewhat Texan yet not very at the same time. I believe that each of these men has cultivated their accent to create an image and persona to sell to voters.
Richard Nixon, from California, didn’t have an “accent” to most people. His voice was distinctive, but it was more his patter and intonation. The vowel sounds weren’t distinctive. Gerald Ford, from Michigan (most of his life, he was born in Nebraska), also didn’t have a noticeable “accent”.
That is because a “standard” accent is Midwestern. And Californians tend to have that same accent. Eisenhower didn’t have anything distinctive in the way he spoke in my opinion.
tavistmorph, welcome aboard!
Do keep in mind that all English speakers (indeed, all speaking humans) have accents. Presidents have accents just like any other English speaker. If there’s a trend to avoid “newscaster” speech, that might or might not be an appeal to “plain folks” voters.
I came in all prepared with snark after reading your title, but the content of your post does seem to indicate that you understand what you’re talking about. So here’s my own two cents.
Polycarp’s suggestion that perhaps the majority of Americans don’t speak SAE natively makes sense; I’m not sure whether that’s true or not, but it’s certainly a reasonable supposition, especially if you take into account not only regional variation but also the presence of various sociolects (i.e. dialects confined to one particular social class or group rather than one region.)
But I suspect a lot of it is affectation - and I don’t mean that as an insult. Nowadays the president is probably the chief example in many people’s lives of an orator. Some have been better at it than others - Reagan, of course, has always been noted as a speaker, for example. But all of them are carefully groomed in their speech; very few other people - ministers being the only other example I can think of - depend as heavily upon public speaking as the president.
So naturally it’s in a politician’s interest to develop a style of speaking that is distinct; rather than the deliberate blandness of a newscaster, major political figures wish to emphasize themselves as distinct figures. Combine that with the sort of folksy image that has always been useful in American politics, and you’ll get a tendency to emphasize rather than minimize regionalisms in speech. I’m sure as well that the president’s imagemakers have compiled reams of information about which accents are liable to stir warmth in which segments of the populace. I myself very much enjoy the sound of a southern accent, and I suspect a lot of people do. I wonder how much that has to do with the recent ascendancy of the south in American politics.
I’ve long suspected that the accents that politicians speak with are largely affectations. I’m sure that’s not always the case, but I believe it is more often than not. My native western Pennsylvania has a distinct accent that’s whupped out of every child with parents who want their kids to sound smart. Having an accent doesn’t make you stupid, but there’s a prejudice that lots of people have against them, which is one reason so many accents are vanishing. Both my grandmothers spoke like Appalachian coal miners’ daughters, but neither of my parents do. By and large, middle- and upper-class people work to shed their accents. That’s as true in Pittsburgh as it is in my adopted New York City, and in New England, and throughout the South, as others have pointed out.
The Bushes seem to back up tavistmorph2’s point. The family is an old New England family that moved to Texas. George W. Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut, himself, and speaks with that from-Texas-yet-not-from-Texas accent. One could argue that he picked it up while he was growing up, but then, brother Jeb was born and raised in Texas, but he doesn’t have a trace of the accent, though he only moved to Florida when he was in his twenties. Also interesting are Jenna and Barbara Bush, Texas natives, who have no discernable accents themselves. George and Jeb’s sister (I forget her name) now lives in Maryland and has no accent. I’ll admit I don’t have a good idea what Neil’s voice sounds like, but I’ll bet dollars to brisket that he doesn’t sound like an old cowhand from the Rio Grande.
I’m no fan of the Bushes, but I don’t think this is any cause to slam them. As has been pointed out, many politicians affect accents. I’m convinced that if they started out in a different line of work—say, the corporate world—they’d have shorn those accents as quickly as possible. This goes equally for John Edwards, John Kerry, Bill Clinton, Mitch McConnell, Hailey Barbour… whoever. This affectation is bipartisan.
It’s odd, though. In the business world, accents are a negative, and those who have strong accents are viewed as bumpkins. But in politics, they’re viewed as an asset, as if they suggest that those who have them have some kind of integrity. Some people are charmed by these regionalisms, even if they’re not regionalisms of their own regions, and I’m sure there are marketing treatises on this somewhere. Personally, when someone’s marketing to me, I tend to resist, even if I like the product, but I’m sure that’s not a typical reaction. But who knows? With the Standard American accent rising, and with more and more immunity to marketers, perhaps we Americans will one day insist that our president talk like everyone else on TV. Perhaps. But not yet.
This is just my opinion, but I would say that Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush, in addition to Nixon, did not have particularly strong accents. As BobT said, their voices were distinctive, but I would not say that they had an accent that falls in line with LBJ’s Texas twang or JFK’s Boston patois.
Nixon, Reagan and Ford all spoke “standard” American English. But we seem to have a penchant for voting in southerners of late, so you have Carter, Clinton and Bush II. Bush II, of course, is arguably not southern by birth, but I’d give him the benefit of the doubt on the honesty of his accent unless someone has a recording of him speaking w/o a southern/Texas accent in his younger days-- it’s exceedingly rare for an adult to pick up an accent.
Perhaps rare, but certainly not unheard of.
I tend to absorb accents if I’ve spent some time outside my “normal” home range. For example, a week in Dallas, or Charlotte NC, will get me speaking somewhat like the locals do. Drives the wife nuts when I return from a business trip.
By the same token, I’ve trained most of my standard New England accent out of my speech. It’s to the point that I’ve been accused of not being a local, as I don’t sound like my relatives (Lynn MA, one of the WORST versions of the NE accent). It comes sneaking back in late at night when I’m tired, or have tilted a few “adult beverages”. It also infuriates those folks that I meet on business trips, as I can’t do the "Say ‘Havahad Yahd’ or ‘pahk the cah’ " as requested. 
I’m still seeing posts in this thread saying “so-and-so has no accent”. This simply isn’t true. Speaking like an American newscaster != speaking without an accent.
Ask any British, Irish, or Australian doper whether or not “Standard American English” is an accent.
That’s precisely why I think Bush’s Texas accent is an affectation. He doesn’t have a pure, Lyndon Johnson-style accent; Bush’s accent seems practiced to me. Carter’s seems more genuine to me, but I still suspect that he must have resisted losing his accent somewhat. I suspect that Bill Clinton’s is largely an affectation, though. Of course I wouldn’t expect the Illinois-born Hillary Clinton to have an Arkansan accent, but it’s telling that Arkansas native Chelsea Clinton never picked one up.
Me, too. There are a few words that can give me away as being from N.E., but it’s almost totally gone. Put me back in Boston for a few days, though, and I have to consciously supress it. As for the “worst” N.E. accent, you obviously haven’t spent much in R.I.
To my ear, since Ike, JFK, Carter and Ford had the most regional accent
and Reagan and Nixon the least.
Since a president usually is someone who has been elected to high office
from his part of the country, one would expect if they had an accent, it
would be like the voters. If they vary from that, it would usually be toward what
we are calling standard American.
Reagan and Nixon had the advantage as California probably favors not
having a particular accent. ARNOLD’s the exception of course.
No kidding. I find it hilarious to listen to American weather reporters try to say “snow.” It comes out sort of like “sneeauw.”
I also am not sure there is a clear Standard American anyway; people from upstate New York, which was cited as a Standard American location, sound, to my ears, noticably different than Californians, and Midwesterners are different from both. Minnesotans are very distinctive, for instance; I was amazed to go there and find “Fargo” wasn’t an exagerration. (I actually was in Brainerd. Home o’ Paul Bunyan, Babe the Blue Ox. Nice folks.)
My sister spent the first 22 years of her life in Wisconsin and has spent the last 10+ years living in northwest Georgia. When I call her on the phone, she often answers in a “southern accent”, but as the conversation starts, she reverts back to her flat Midwestern accent. From my experience, she “uses” a southern accent when she talks to locals, especially those who have accents, but in unaccented company shifts out of it. Its often most apparent at restaurants where she’ll being talking “normally” at the table, then shift to “southern” when ordering, especially if the waiter/ress has a strong accent. I’ve mentioned this to her and she usually claims to be unaware of it.
I think there is a certain amount of unconscious desire to “fit in” that is going here and causes people to parrot back the accents of those around them. Inasmuch as that, perhaps W. Bush’s accent got more pronounced than this siblings and parents was because of a desire to fit in as a Texan when he became politically active. It would be interesting to compare and contract the speech patterns of W’s “lost era” party days to when he got to be politically active.
At what age did Bush II move from Connecticut to Texas?
Please keep in mind that “accent” and “dialect” are two different things. “Dialect” refers to vocabulary, grammar, syntax, etc. “Accent” refers to pronunciation.
For example, in the mid-20th century, the B.B.C. required that all of its announcers speak in a single dialect (Standard British English) and in a single accent (received pronunciation). Now, you hear B.B.C. broadcasters using all sorts of regional accents, but they still speak in the same dialect.
Similarly, you’ll find that in the United States, most broadcasters and politicians (especially in formal situations) use the same dialect (Standard American English), but they speak in a variety of accents.
There’s a lot of talk about the “newsanchor accent,” but there are linguists who believe that there is no single accent being used here. There are a variety of accents, which actually have significant differences. Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Brian Williams, Bob Schieffer, Bob Edwards, Cokie Roberts, Linda Wertheimer, and Nina Totenberg, for example, do not speak using the same accent.
In short, there is a strong suggestion that while there is a Standard American English dialect, there is no Standard American accent.
You mean California favored not having a particular accent. Mr. Schwarzenegger deviates from what we thought of as the normal California gubernatorial candidate for a couple reasons. One is that Gray Davis, who Arnold replaced, spoke indelible SAE (I was there for one of his speeches once), and after he raped us on utilities many of us wanted to find someone as unlike him as possible. We were tired of the status quo. Those who were here know that many of the candidates in that gubernatorial circus ran on platforms that basically boiled down to “I’m not a politician, so you should vote for me because I’ll bring something to Sacramento you haven’t seen before”. Being unlike previous governors was very much the thing to do, and Arnold did it exceptionally. Not only was he foreign-born, but he was a rags-to-riches story; he’s just about the most un-politician politician you can think of. He even got videotaped smoking pot (in “Pumping Iron”), which would normally bump someone right out; but his Republican constituents liked him enough to brush it aside, and it might have even won him some votes for Democrats favoring decriminalization/legalization, like myself. (At the time I was a Republican, but I wasn’t of voting age.)
Another reason you’ll start to see accents becoming more prolific in California politics is that Caucasian SAE speakers now make up less than 50% of California’s population. The population in California is becoming such that if you get 100% of the Asian vote, the Latino vote, and the African-American vote, and 0% of the Caucasian vote, you’ll probably win or come close. The constant influx of immigration from everywhere–including, by the way, the Northeast US–means that SAE will fall further and further into the minority. Having a foreign-sounding accent would, I’m sure, be as reassuring to non-Anglo Californians as an SAE accent would be to the traditional Californian majority.
Yeah? Except, like, in Southern California we talk like this? Everything we say, like, sounds like a question? With, like, a lilt at the end of the sentence? Like, it’s really annoying for the first couple years you live here? But you soooo totally start talking like this after you’ve been here a while?
Coaches in scandal depend on speech, also; they just suck at it. “Well, we’re just trying to put our defensive end’s donkey molestation case behind us, and move forward. We’re taking this one game at a time. We just want to do the best job we can out there. We’re trying to keep this from being a distraction to the team.”
Have you noticed that as news has become more opinion-based, newscasters’ voices have become less bland? I can think of a couple ‘news’ channel folks who seem to spice up their voice to emphasize how terrible the effects of a particular political figure or rapper’s actions will be on our children.
Same here. After a week in Minnesota I’ll come back sounding like a Minnesotan. (“Yeah” morphs slightly toward “Yah”, some short A’s turn into long ones, etc.)
Nice folks indeed. It’s my understanding that upper/west Midwesterners–Minnesotans, Iowans–sound different from the rest of the Midwest. Those on the southeastern twinges of the Midwest–Missouri, Kansas–sound more like Southerners. When people speak of Midwestern SAE, I think they’re talking about Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, etc.
Have you noticed, btw, that New York is the only place with an “upstate”?