The Election Past, President's Message Gets a New Accent His Speech Gains Precision, Even French References; Trying to 'Turn the Page'
By JOHN D. MCKINNON Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- At a late-afternoon Paris news conference in May 2002, a jet-lagged President Bush rushed through sentences, mangled some words and teased an American journalist for asking President Jacques Chirac a question in French. Asked about street demonstrations protesting his presence, Mr. Bush drawled: "The only thing I know to do is speak my mind.... A lotta people on the Continent o' Europe appreciate that."
Last month, addressing European leaders in Brussels, Mr. Bush spoke precisely, with only traces of his twang. He paid homage to the Continent's political legacy, such as the Magna Carta, and flawlessly pronounced the name of Albert Camus.
Linguists and longtime watchers of Mr. Bush say it is evidence of a subtle but unmistakable change the 43rd president has undergone in speaking style. He is enunciating more clearly and dotting his remarks with more literary references. Gone is much of the verbal swagger, which produced such memorable first-term phrases as "bring 'em on" (said of Iraqi insurgents) and "dead or alive" (said of catching Osama bin Laden). Some linguists even say they detect a dialing-down of Mr. Bush's Texas accent, at least in his formal speeches.
The more careful speaking style also has meant fewer verbal slip-ups. Jacob Weisberg, who filled four books, numerous Web entries and a calendar series with Bush malapropisms, says his supply of new material has slowed to a trickle. "In a press conference in his first year I might get five" bloopers, says Mr. Weisberg, who is editor of Slate, the online magazine. "Now I'm pretty lucky if I get one or two."
In his 2004 and 2005 State of the Union addresses, Mr. Bush reported, as presidents pretty much always do, that the "state of our union is confident and strong." But in 2004, the word "our" sounded like "are," a typical pronunciation for Mr. Bush, who speaks in what linguists describe generally as an Inland Southern accent. In this year's address, "our" sounded more like "hour."
And in a word like "my," which Mr. Bush often pronounced somewhat like "mah" in the past, he partly reformed this "non-gliding vowel," as linguists call it. In his 2005 speech, Mr. Bush also generally pronounced the words ending in "ing" without dropping the "g," unlike in 2004. He largely overcame his tendency to say "hunnerd" for "hundred," and started pronouncing the word "government" more precisely. Still proliferating, though, are pronunciations of "nuclear" as "nu-kyoo-lar."
Geoffrey Nunberg, a professor of linguistics at Stanford University, says that Mr. Bush now also pauses more, making his speech seem more "considered."
The Texas strut and drawl may have worked well to win votes and given Mr. Bush a regular-Joe appeal in his first four years when he still faced re-election. Now that he is trying to sell an ambitious second-term agenda -- overhauling Social Security and the tax system, in addition to helping bring democracy to the Middle East -- his remarks are often more conciliatory and appear to be targeted more at congressional critics and European leaders. Playing to that crowd means Mr. Bush portrays himself a bit less as a Texas Ranger and more as an Ivy League-educated chief executive -- which of course he is.
Mr. Bush may also be weighing his legacy factor. When presidents are mindful of the history books, their style sometimes is different from when they're trying to win elections.
White House advisers say Mr. Bush is indeed communicating with an eye to establishing a different tone for his second term, though they say they aren't trying to play up his intellectual side or dial down his accent.
"We made a concerted effort [to change the tone] particularly with the start of the second term," says Dan Bartlett, a senior adviser. After the disagreements of the first term, especially with European allies, "the goal was to say, 'Let's turn the page.' And the president went out of his way to demonstrate that he was willing to turn the page. At different times we find different ways to communicate that." Mr. Bartlett cites Mr. Bush's comment, at a February news conference, that sometimes the U.S. and its European allies had seemed "to talk past each other."
It may be too early to judge whether Mr. Bush's style is winning him points. Congressional Democrats show few signs of supporting him on Social Security. On the other hand, some European leaders seem to be warming to Mr. Bush, working more closely with the White House on Lebanon and Iran, for instance.
In addition to linguistic tweaks, some presidential scholars claim to detect a dash of what Mr. Bush himself might once have dismissed as highfalutin talk.
For a president who was mocked by some abroad and in the intelligentsia for not reading newspapers, Mr. Bush now seems to emphasize his reading habits. "I'm downing quite a few books," he told C-SPAN in an interview in January, mentioning "the Washington book by Ellis" (Joseph J. Ellis) and "the Hamilton book by [Ron] Chernow, which I thought was a fascinating book." Elsewhere he has cited historian John Lewis Gaddis as a big recent influence. He cited "The Case for Democracy," by Israeli (and former Russian) political activist Natan Sharansky, as an inspiration, both for Mr. Bush's inaugural address and his second-term emphasis on free elections around the world.
In recent speeches, Mr. Bush often has dropped in references to the 19th-century French writer Alexis de Tocqueville, in a move some Bush watchers interpret as another subtle overture to France.
The makeover is far from extreme. In his less-formal appearances, Mr. Bush certainly still invokes colloquialisms. The baby-boom generation, he often reminds audiences in talking about Social Security, "is fixin' to retire." But in a speech Tuesday night, he said "getting ready to retire."
Chroniclers of Mr. Bush's miscues say there are still enough to keep their cottage industry puttering along. But many are just verbal foot faults, some coming when the president tires late in the day. A slip Mr. Weisberg posted on Slate three weeks ago was, "I believe we are called to do the hard work to make our communities and quality of life a better place."
Missing for a while have been howlers like one in September 2004, when, arguing for his medical-malpractice overhaul, Mr. Bush said, "Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."
Mr. Bush has more or less taken a public pledge to tone down his language. In an interview with a group of newspapers in January, he conceded having misgivings over his first-term use of phrases like "bring 'em on," which he said after insurgent attacks in Iraq began to mount in mid-2003. Advisers say Mr. Bush intended the remark as a vote of confidence in U.S. troops.
"You've got to be mindful of the consequences of the words," Mr. Bush told the reporters this January.