ON THE CUTTING EDGE: Blaming The Medium, Not The Messenger
Boston Globe columnist Brian McGrory and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus both take former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) to task for using a PowerPoint presentation to explain why socialized medicine is good for MA but bad for the other 49 states.
McGrory hopes Romney understands that, “if the occasion should ever arise, he’s not actually allowed to use a PowerPoint presentation during a presidential inaugural address” and wonders whether Romney’s marriage proposal involved a projector and overhead screen (“Listen, Sweetie, as you can see from the bar chart on this next slide, the genetic risk of me ever losing my hair is incalculably low.’’).
Marcus, who “loathe[s]” PowerPoint (“why think through a tough problem when you can spend your time surfing for clip art or experimenting with fonts”), is more peevish:
Some people believe that Mitt Romney is unfit to be president because the health reform he instituted as Massachusetts governor included an individual mandate.
I believe Romney is unfit to be president because he used a PowerPoint presentation to defend it. …
There are two problems with Romney’s predilection for PowerPoint. One is the threat that he would use it to communicate on the campaign trail or, heaven forfend, from the Oval Office. …
Government-by-PowerPoint threatens to flatten the nuance inherent in difficult public policy decisions. It substitutes the appearance of serious thinking for real analytical rigor.
And really, governor, if you’re trying to come across as a Regular Guy, is a PowerPoint presentation the way to go?
And one more thing: Marcus wants Romney to stop using the words “ongoing” and “input.” Especially in PowerPoint presentations.
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