Here's the citation on the Fallows piece:
 
Fallows, James. "When George Meets John." Atlantic Monthly Jul/Aug2004, Vol. 294 Issue 1, p67-80.
 
And here's the relevant piece of the text; I apologize for the length, but I think it's very interesting; unfortunately, it has no information or interesting suppositions about who might have led W to craft his folksy persona. Fallows writes:
 

This spring I watched dozens of hours' worth of old videos of John Kerry and George W. Bush in action. But it was the hour in which Bush faced Ann Richards that I had to watch several times. The Bush on this tape was almost unrecognizable - and not just because he looked different from the figure we are accustomed to in the White House. He was younger, thinner, with much darker hair and a more eager yet less swaggering carriage than he has now. But the real difference was the way he sounded.

This Bush was eloquent. He spoke quickly and easily. He rattled off complicated sentences and brought them to the right grammatical conclusions. He mishandled a word or two ("million" when he clearly meant "billion"; "stole" when he meant "sold"), but fewer than most people would in an hour's debate. More striking, he did not pause before foreing out big words, as he so often does now, or invent mangled new ones. "To lay out my juvenile-justice plan in a minute and a half is a hard task, but I will try to do so," he said fluidly and with a smile midway through the debate, before beginning to list his principles.

Richards's main line of attack - in fact, her only one - was that Bush had done so poorly in a series of businesses that he would be over his head as governor. Each time she tried this, Bush calmly said, "I think this is a diversion away from talking about the issues that face Texas" - which led him right back to the items on his stump speech ("I want to discuss welfare, education. I want to discuss the juvenile-justice system ..."). When talking about schools he said, "I think the mission in education ought to be excellence in literature, math, science, and social science" - an ordinary enough thought, but one delivered with an offhand fluency I do not remember his ever showing at a presidential press conference. When Richards was asked about permitting casino gambling, she replied with a convoluted, minutes-long answer with details about Indian tribal rights. Bush, when asked the same question, had simply said, "I'm against casino gambling" - and when asked, after Richards's discourse, if he wanted to elaborate, said, "Not really" For years I had been told by people who knew Bush from business school or from Texas politics that he was keenly smart - though perhaps in a way that didn't come across in his public statements. Perhaps! The man on the debate platform looked and sounded smart and in control. If you had to guess which of the two candidates had won the debate scholarship to college and was about to win the governorship, you would choose Bush.

I bored my friends by forcing them to watch the tape - but I could tell that I had not bored George Lakoff, a linguist from the University of California at Berkeley, who has written often of the importance of metaphor and emotional message in political communications. When I invited him to watch the Bush-Richards tape, Lakoff confirmed that everything about Bush's surface style was different. His choice of words, the pace of his speech, the length and completeness of his sentences, all made him sound like another person. Even his body language was surprising. When he was younger, Bush leaned toward the camera and did not fidget or shift his weight. He arched his eyebrows and positioned his mouth in a way that, according to Lakoff, signifies in all languages an intense, engaged form of speech.

Lakoff also emphasized that what had changed in Bush's style was less important than what had remained the same. Bush's ways of appealing to his electoral base, of demonstrating resolve and strength, of deflecting rather than rebutting criticism, had all worked against Ann Richards. These have been constants in his rhetorical presentation of himself over the years, despite the striking decline in his sentence-by-sentence speaking skills, and they have been consistently and devastatingly effective. 

 
Dr. Seth Katz 
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Bradley University
 
Faculty Advisor
Bradley University Hillel

________________________________

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
Sent: Wed 2/6/2008 4:48 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: grammar and our folksy president



James Fallows had an interesting column  on this in Atlantic back in 2002 or so.  He compared W's performance in debates with Ann Richards in his '96 run with his performance in the 2000 campaign and since.  In the Texas gubernatorial race he was not only very on message, as he has been since, but he also spoke a more sophisticated English, was mentally agile against a very skilled debater, and generally comported himself well.  Fallows thinks, and I tend to agree, that his later folksiness is a persona that has been very successful, one perhaps designed by Rove, and one that W seems to have been unable to escape, once he adopted it.

 

Herb

 

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Brad Johnston
Sent: 2008-02-06 15:59
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: grammar and our folksy president

 

Fascinating theory, Seth.

 

I voted for Dubya twice but it makes me so uncomfortable to watch him, I didn't see his State of the Union but read the full text the next day. Could his annoying, anti-Churchillian demeanor possible be a put-on? Hard to believe.

"Katz, Seth" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

	On GW Bush saying "nucular" (as did Jimmy Carter--who was a nuclear engineer!): I have heard tell that in the televised Texas gubernatorial debates, Bush did not speak as he has for the past 8 years, but rather sounded much more like the articulate, Yale-educated, upper-class Northeasterner that he actually is. The folksy, aw-shucks, malapropistic Bush is a character that he and his handlers created to make him a more marketable candidate. Does anyone know if this is true: that Bush did not always speak publicly as he does now?
	
	BTW: I do not believe that Bill Clinton, George HW Bush, or Ronald Reagan said "nucular."
	
	Best--
	Seth
	
	Dr. Seth Katz 
	Assistant Professor
	Department of English
	Bradley University
	
	
	________________________________
	
	From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Carol Morrison
	Sent: Wed 2/6/2008 11:57 AM
	To: [log in to unmask]
	Subject: Re: McCain, Obama, Clinton...Who has the best grammar?
	
	
	Yes, every time Bush says "nucular" it makes me cringe!
	
	Patricia Lafayllve wrote: 
	
	Purely from a public speaking standpoint, all three do fairly well. McCain strives for an "everyman" approach, Clinton goes for "Powerful Woman" in her voice, and Obama is leaning toward an almost call-and-response flavor. I did hear Obama promise to pronounce the word "nuclear" as...well..."nuclear," which made me chuckle.
	
	-patty
	
	
	________________________________
	
	From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Carol Morrison
	Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2008 10:18 AM
	To: [log in to unmask]
	Subject: McCain, Obama, Clinton...Who has the best grammar?
	
	I am curious to see which of the candidates has the best grammar and who is the most well-spoken. I will be listening attentively to upcoming speeches, interviews, and press conferences. It would be nice to have a president who has a strong command of the English language. That person will get my vote (maybe). Any favorites?
	CLM
	
	
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