After having listened to 10+ hours of Steve on web radio shows, I agree that he is a far better -- perhaps the best in the current field -- when speaking extemporaneously rather than from a script. I told Tom this after Steve's state of the union video, which apparently was Steve's first time with a teleprompter. Since speaking from a script tends to make most of us flatten our emotional affect, I find it helps to try to force oneself to emote more and even ham it up a little, just to get back to normal.
Note that this script said: "Just paying the interest on the government's staggering debt consumes all the money the government collects from income taxes." Interest on the federal debt is about $260B/yr, but the federal income tax takes $1.25T/yr. State and local government debt was $1.85T in 2005, so I don't see a way to salvage this quote. This, and the talk of debt repudiation, makes me pretty sure that Kubby-endorsing economist Joe Cobb didn't review the script.
