Republican National Convention Surrogate: Jeb Bush & Education

I will take a look at an issue that is present and valid all the time: Education.  There are a few different aspects of the education discussion that I hope to delve into throughout the duration of this class in my blog posts.  For this post, I will look at Jeb Bush’s speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC).  Yes, Bush is the brother of the recent president and is the current Governor of Florida.  Bush, assuming the role as a republican surrogate, had the stage for about fifteen minutes talking about grade school and high school (K-12) education.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIB0aTmm-s8

I wanted to get more into secondary schooling issues such as the rising costs but that can be saved for another post.  Since there were many other speakers at the RNC, Bush focused on one topic, that being K-12 education.  He tied in what he was talking about to what he had already implemented in Florida.  Those things were all based around creating equal opportunities for students and giving them a choice of schools.  He talked about how Romney would try to implement something similar to this federally if elected.

            

Bush’s speech was a good one to look at because he did a few things well.  He was a great advocate for education because of all the programs he outlined that he got started down in Florida.  By highlighting his experience and previously implemented programs, it builds up credibility among the listeners.  This is one of the main reasons presidential candidates pick their speakers.  They wouldn’t have someone speak who has zero credibility; it wouldn’t make them look very smart as a potential president.  So, for their convention speakers the incumbent and challenger will pick people such as “Also-Ran candidates,” former presidents from their party, even respected celebrities, or, in this case, current governors who are better known in their party.  Any of these people who could potentially speak at either the Republican or Democratic Conventions are called surrogates.  Their job is to pretty much make their party’s nominee look good with a powerful keynote address.  They even tend to bash the other candidate more than either of the candidates would do to each other because the surrogates aren’t really scrutinized by the public in the way that either candidate would be if they said something controversially brutal about the other.  So, both parties take advantage of this and use their surrogates to do a little bashing of the other candidate. 

Jeb Bush’s speech had all the aspects that a surrogate’s convention speech should have.  He started off by talking about how he comes from a family of people who have “served the public;” meaning that there have been two presidents that came from his family.  Also, he spun everything to make it positive in some way.  For example, when he was talking about his brother’s tenure, George W. Bush, he said it was incredibly tough times, but he kept us save.  That isn’t even actually true because hundreds of people died on 9/11 while he was in office.  However that is not my point.  And still before he got to his main point of education he interjected a few words of criticism of President Obama’s economic policies.  Also, later in his speech he did a little more bashing on President Obama saying that he didn’t do anything productive in the realm of education during his four years.  However, he gets into his main message of revamping the education system slightly to benefit our nations future leaders.  He kept using the same upbeat phrases such as “shaping our future” and “equal opportunity.”  The purpose or function of this is to get the listeners thinking about a better future with Romney as the President in this case.  It gets the audience associating those upbeat words and phrases with the candidate that the surrogate is supporting.  It is also an emotional plea to get the audience to buy into the Republicans way of thinking on this issue.  This is accomplished in his speech by the events he highlights such as the kids he’s personally seen read their first books and other such emotional stories.  He also brings two people up on stage with him.  One is a teacher and the other is a student, both of which have benefited in some way from Governor Bush’s education programs in Florida.  They each told their stories, which were emotional in a sense, and they gave you an emotional tie to those people and in turn tied you to Mitt Romney.  There are many techniques that are used to persuade voters, and many of them work with just a small stretch of the true maybe.  The candidates can set themselves up for success with the choice of the right surrogates, speakers, and other party supporters.