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Mitt Romney goes after Obama with PowerPoint

Technically Incorrect: The former Republican candidate decides that only technology can fully expose the truth. Might this be a template for the coming debates?

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.


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Mitt Romney, showing the technological way. Harvard Law School/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

We are all technological beings.

This has happened quickly, forcefully and cannot be reversed.

We should, therefore, consider technology's primacy in all things, especially politics.

The template may have been set by former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. As The Washington Post reports, Romney decided to offer a speech in Utah, one extremely critical of President Obama.

I don't propose to discuss the merits of his argument. Presidents are often criticized while in office and strangely admired (perhaps for their endurance of criticism) once they leave.

However, Romney chose to present his case not through mere silken words, but with a PowerPoint presentation. Entitled "The Most Consequential Obama Foreign Policy Mistakes," this opus offered 20 slides that fully expressed Romney's views.

Might this not be a trendsetter? What if, instead of the turgid debates presided over by tired-looking journalists, every candidate was now forced to create a PowerPoint?

What if they were not to be judged by their windy rhetoric and avoidance of actual question-answering and instead forced to present cogent arguments that flowed from slide to slide?

We're always being told that running the country should be the same as running a business, so why not make all the candidates prove their presentation skills, while simultaneously testing their attempts at reasoning?

Once we've elected the finest PowerPointer, we could make this our nation's branding device.

Who would not marvel at a State of the Union address delivered by PowerPoint? There would be something both modern and heartening to see members of Congress constantly being brought to their feet by a slide.

And imagine the conversation afterwards, as one fine senator turned to another and whispers: "I wasn't sure about slide 14. Were you?"

Romney is clearly onto something. Let's show the world that America really does mean business.