We all, I guess, will take one or two lines of the speech - I mean, he talks about the genius of America is that we can change, that we can improve.

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In two debates now, Bush has appeared tense and uptight -- and his answers have been, for the most part, memorized stock lines from his standard stump speech.

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The following day, there was nothing on the front pages of two leading US newspapers, The New York Times and the Washington Post to suggest that the countrymen in his audience had been particularly impressed by the speech - neither of them referred to any of the lines above that have become so famous.

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In fact, the speech is perhaps the best example of the effective use of repeated lines that gather power and force with each repetition.

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Anyone who watched the frigid reception given Jeb Bush in response to his attempt to present serious issues for review and consideration would have every reason to throw away the speech prepared for the grown-ups and pull out the collection of laugh lines they had tucked into the briefcase on the way to the convention.

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Latifah purposely over-enunciated her lines, and when a pair of rehearsal actors claimed an Oscar onstage and gave an acceptance speech, Zeta-Jones started to play them off with an imaginary violin.

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Part of his dislike of the whole experience came from when he inevitably forgot one of those memorized lines, and went into a tizzy trying to recall it so that he would give the audience the entire speech as written.

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