Obama's small town comments

I've read what he said originally & what he's said since. It's unfortunate that voters rely so heavily on how well someone speaks. My daughter (14 not quite politically experienced yet) & I were talking about this yesterday. She was baffled & shocked when I used the words speech writers. She asked what I meant & didn't everyone write their own speeches. Without getting too far from my point, Obama is normally very well spoken & articulate. I have no idea how much or how little of his speeches he writes himself & how much he has assistance with them, but no question most of the time he delivers them smoothly & eloquently. How much should that impact our impression of him? I hear people say that he's an elitist, that he's uppity based on how he speaks. I hear others who are actively supporting his campaign because it seems they have some sort of crush on how well he speaks. Neither of those should be what we're looking at in an election. That a candidate can deliver a good speech should make up a tiny part of what qualifies or disqualifies him or her in our mind. Do they support the issues that matter to us? Does their previous actions confirm that they support what matters to us? In my opinion, those are the questions we should be asking ourselves & determining how we vote.

I think that if we don't start cutting these candidates some slack, they just won't say anything about anything. I get the gist of what he said. I'm not going to dissect every nuance and I'll try to do the same for the other candidates.