• Moneyville Logo
  • Wheels Logo
  • The Kit Logo
  • Healthzone Logo
  • YourHome Logo
  • Toronto.com Logo

« Kim Kardashian, Scarlett Johansson coming to DNC | Main | The volatile Senate races »

09/06/2012

All hail Bubba, king of ad-libbing

513555898
(Mladen ANTONOVGettyImages)

Bill Clinton ad-libbed a significant amount of his speech, over 2,000 words of it.

"Numerous times during Clinton’s peroration, which eventually drew to a close just before eleven-thirty, the machine appeared to have conked out, the same words frozen on the screen," said the New Yorker. "It hadn’t backed up; it had simply stopped because the former President had departed from this prepared remarks, which were pretty long to begin with, and ad-libbed to his heart’s content"

Some say the improvisation helped his speech, here are some examples:

The text: "I believe that with all my heart."

The speech: "Whether you believe it or not, I just want you to know, with all my heart, that I believe it. I believe it. Let me tell you why I believe it."

Text: "It gets worse."

Speech: "Folks, this is serious, because it gets worse. And you won't be laughing when I finish with this."

He ad-libbed personal anecdotes:
   
So this is personal to me. We moved millions of people off welfare. It was one of thereasons that in the eight years I was president, we had a hundred times as many people move out of poverty into the middle class than happened under the previous 12 years, a hundred times as many. It’s a big deal.
And ad-libbed slogans on the fly:
    It passes the arithmetic test, and far more important, it passes the values test.

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been saved. Comments are moderated and will not appear until approved by the author. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment

Comments are moderated, and will not appear until the author has approved them.

Follow the Election on Twitter

    Follow us on Twitter

Recent Comments

© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2012 Terms & Conditions Privacy Policy