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Think also about who Fred was talking to: Republican leadership. His speech was exactly right for that group. When he speaks he realizes who he is talking to and what he wants to accomplish.

I think closely tailoring your speech to an audience is a mistake. All speeches should be considered to be given to a national audience. In this case the speech was on CSPAN which means a national audience of probably tens of thousands. Even if not on national TV, every campaign is being followed by reporters whose goal is to get their coverage nationally exposed. The Internet has coverage of everything you say in almost real time. Their are no more "local" events.

Tailoring your message also gets you into trouble, like Romney's recent inconsistent abortion statements. A Presidential campaign is not designed to "educate" voters, as one poster has claimed. If it was, Newt Gingrich would probably be a great candidate. He wouldn't. Sure, a candidate can throw in some local flavor and toss a little red meat to a partisan live audience, but the message should be consistent in all forums. A campaign should be designed to convince voters the candidate will lead the Country to a place they want to go which I believe to be victory, success and prosperity for the United States.

If a candidate convinces voters that, with him as leader, we will defeat our enemies, not just fight the WOT, that we will secure our borders, not just "make progress" towards that goal, that we will enforce our laws equally, not just those laws that are easy to enforce, that we will stop wasting the voters money, not only if it doesn't effect a pet project, and that we will be proud of our Country and ourselves because we are good people that live in a good Country, very little else needs to be said.

Fred was right in that voters don't want to hear about a 30 point plan. They want to hear from a leader who has a positive vision of our future, despite our problems. Reagan understood this. I hope Fred does too.