This is unusual, a politician doing a PowerPoint in front of the press. You can see his full presentation here.

Here are a few observations:

  • The slide design is actually OK: consistent, good use of color, balanced, not a spectacular TED talk, but still a lot better than your average corporate bullet point deck
  • The screen is too small
  • He is a pretty good and confident presenter
  • Het gets the start wrong. A super technical summary slide with what they are going to do, without having presented the logic of why they want to do it. I think most people switch of in the first minute (See some reactions here). 
  • Later on, things get better. But it is almost as if the slides are holding him back. First he presents a statistic or a quote, turning towards the slide, then he steps away from the screen and explains what it actually means. And it is here where he does a pretty good job.

I watched about 10 minutes of the presentation. The key change I would have made, is to change the framing of the presentation. Leaving my own political views aside, if I were trying to make the case for a script, it would: "Hey, from the outside Obamacare looks pretty good, because of 1, 2, 3. BUT, people are missing a few problems 1, 2, 3,. Our plan offers the best alternative. And here is all the technical, legal stuff we are going to do to make it happen. 

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