Word: off-the-cuff
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...built up a reputation as a speaker. However, his off-the-cuff efforts proved to be full of ballooning sentences, and his speeches from prepared texts tended to be wooden. At one point he threw out all prepared texts and-while his advisers watched him as nervously as if he were a time bomb-made some major speeches off the cuff. That way his sincerity came through, but Ike was not used to the split-minute timing necessary for television, sometimes rambled on, made some blunders. Ike finally settled on a prepared text in a looseleaf notebook from which...
...Beacon, after assuring itself that Squire had a good reputation for veracity and reliability, decided to issue its state-wide call for a saucer-watch. To spread the alarm further, the Beacon wanted the Associated Press state wire to carry it. The A.P. stuffily refused, giving the off-the-cuff explanation that flying saucers, like a golfer's hole in one, should be verified by at least two people...
Even before the N.E.A. convention, its headquarters had issued a sharp statement defending N.E.A. leadership, and charging distortions and inaccuracies in the article. Out-of-date statements by Rugg and others, said the N.E.A., must be read as off-the-cuff theorizing that never was accepted by the N.E.A...
Cheers interrupted Eisenhower 30 times in 28 minutes, engulfed him at the end. But how effective was his off-the-cuff experiment? It put across his strong and often moving sincerity. It created a suspense (will he make a mistake?) which some found exciting and others painful. While Ike has much off-the-cuff speaking experience, he was not quite equal to the hazards of public-address systems (sound engineers vainly worked on the Detroit p.a. system till the last minute), the emotional impact of facing a vast crowd, the split-minute timing necessary for TV and radio. Ike rambled...
...Truman was a Jackson County judge (i.e., county commissioner) and making a name for himself for administration. "The President loved those picnics, never missed one," Bill Boyle recalled much later. The kids always hoped Judge Truman would be moved to make one of his "Lonejack orations," the belligerent, off-the-cuff speeches that still serve him best at election time...