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November 10, 2010 08:51 PM UTC

Is Tancredo a great communicator?

  • 11 Comments
  • by: Jason Salzman

In a post-election analysis story last week, The Denver Post quoted conservative political analyst Katy Atkinson’s views on Tom Tancredo’s future.

“He’s always going to have an audience. He is a really great communicator,” she told The Post.

I would have liked one more sentence explaining why she thinks this. So I asked her.

“Have you ever heard Tom Tancredo speak?” Atkinson kindly replied via email. “I’ve known the guy for 30 years and his enthusiasm is contagious. Combine enthusiasm with passion, sincerity and the ability to make complex subjects comprehensible, sprinkle on a sense of humor and you get a great communicator. You don’t have to agree with him all the time, or any of the time, to admire his abilities.”

I admire Atkinson’s abilities, but I’ve criticized The Post in the past for quoting her and other familiar pundits too often. So when I queried her, Atkinson added, “I’ve just been relishing the irony of you asking for my opinion.” (Nowadays, I think there’s a wider variety of pundits quoted in The Post’s political stories, which is a good thing. But I’ll do a bean count at some point to see if this is true.)

In any case, Tancredo is clearly great at getting media attention, and he is a good speaker, but he’s not so great as a communicator, because he goes off message too often, and it’s not clear what he’s trying to achieve-except to draw attention to himself.

Extreme media stunts, like the kind Tancredo is famous for, can work for extremists as long as they are on message, but Tancredo too often goes over the cliff.

For example, when he says the U.S. should bomb Mecca in retaliation to a terrorist attack, and Tancredo’s agenda is to foment anger against illegal immigrants or Islam, he’s gone too far because his message gets lost in the outcry about bombing a religious site and the ramifications. The ensuing debate does not focus on immigrants or Islam per se.

But when Tancredo says Obama is more of a threat to America than Osama Bin Laden, and Tancredo’s agenda is to tear down Obama, he’s actually succeeded in injecting his message into the mass media. The ensuing media discussion centers on how bad Obama really is.

Still, you’d never guess that strategic communications occupies Tancredo’s thoughts very often, but that’s how it goes with bomb throwers. And he’s a great one.

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11 thoughts on “Is Tancredo a great communicator?”

    1. Having followed Tancredo to 10 events in the three days before the election and filmed all of them, I’ve concluded that when he is talking to his supporters, he’s a great communicator. He’s got a special smile in his voice and sparkle in his eyes.

      He tells stories and jokes around to establish a special kind of rapport. Then he gets serious and makes his pitch. And he uses his head to make his pitch because it’s just different enough each time that you know that he’s thinking about what he’s saying and how to make a particular point. Some audiences get long speeches, and some get short ones, depending on whatever.

      Tancredo usually closes with another story or some more kidding before repeating his most important point for a given event.

      The guy spent eight years as a 9th grade civics teacher. He is a teacher first and a politician after that. He talks more about what he believes and feels than about what the audience should believe and feel. He assumes everyone is there because they know him and agree with him. He’s not a preacher, but he is an evangelist.

      After one meeting, he told me that he thought that I must be getting tired of hearing his pitch so many times. That is true with a lot of politicians, but I never really got bored listening to Tancredo. And about 8 out of the 10 events produced newsy little clips that I posted on my blog. More are in the can, but I’ll probably leave them there.

      Just my impressions.

        1. Stephen Keating over at http://www.whosaidyousaid.com asked me to film events I covered. He showed me how to use a FlipVideo camcorder and how to make movies in iMovie. And he showed me how to post them on my blogged. After using his camera a couple of weeks, I made a trip to Best Buy and bought a nice little Canon.

          I got hooked on filming vs. taking notes. Instead of writing long boring blogs, I made long, boring movies. 🙂

          2. What hooked me on film is that it lets a speaker talk directly to viewers and readers without being filtered by me. And a blog lets me run a 30 second or 6 minute clip, which is much more than a TV station can offer. If I want, I can run several clips from one event. A TV station can’t do that unless it puts a longer clip on its web site.

            For the viewer/reader, seeing and hearing a speaker is much more informative than reading about a speech, comment or sound bite. Seeing several clips on a given speaker is even more informative, I think.

            For Tancredo, I think, clips humanized him and let people get a feel for the man in ways that the printed word never could.

  3. He is totally in control of his message.  Some of what he says is “dog whistle” stuff.  He knows his audience and his “wild” so-called off message stuff is exactly what he wants them to hear.  Then, he talks to the main stream media “rationally.”

    He is dangerous because he presents a posture of being a little crazy, a little old North Denver Italian guy.  I think if boyles had not been gone a full week before election day, Tancredo might have won. Ironically, George somebody was the substitute for boyles…and he was quite objective and attempted to be fair to all sides.  May have slowed down Tancredo’s big Mo.  

    I think that Tancredo is to be taken seriously.

    The so-called teaparty/conservatives are a suite…in the sense that they are all well coordinated…one part reinforces the other.  There are media campaigns in the works to influence Congress….expect Tancredo to be part of that…

    ie.

    1) NO to the STAR treaty.  Listen to Tancredo talk on the radio about his “russian” experience…I bet he will be on.

    2) Champion this Larken guy who is being court marshaled for refusing a lawful order to deploy because he wants to see Obama’s “long form.”

    3) NO to immigration reform.

    4) NO to repealing DADT.

    5) NO to extending tax cuts for the wealthy..

    Talk radio audiences will be instructed to contact Congress for each of these issues.  I am betting that they are successful.

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