The term for this sort of freelance expedition was a "filibuster" (it did not become associated with long-winded congressional debates until the 1850s).
Instead of long-winded public debates, the people want capsule slogans-- Time for a change"--"The meslogans-- Timeon"--"More bang for a buck"--punch lineslogans-- Time-- A fore in the Crowd (1957).
Barack Obama is unusually long-winded: in the debate last week he crammed more than 19 words into an average sentence, nearly five more than John McCain.
Washington gossips report that Obama sometimes found Kerry long-winded during the hours of debate preparation when Kerry played the role of Mitt Romney.
And a debate could be risky: The senator is not an agile debater, offering long-winded, meandering answers.
It was instead the cautious Gore whose public persona changed from debate to debate and whose answers were often long-winded and equivocal (even about the Kansas Board of Education's decision to ban the teaching of evolution).
"One thing is very clear to me after the time we spent together: Dan Savage believes that gay people are 'a tiny defenseless minority,' as he said during the debate," Brown notes in the lengthy, long-winded blog.
They're not interested in say, door-to-door campaigning, but rather in debating their obscure pet issues with long-winded interventions at meetings on a Thursday evening.
But to the frustration of people who had tuned in to watch the candidates duke it out over key issues, his frequent soliloquies and long-winded questions took up a significant chunk of the 45-minute debate.
During Tuesday night's GOP debate, Donald Trump predictably pivoted to China in a long-winded response explaining his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal the U.S. has forged with 11 other Pacific Rim nations.
He suggested one possible approach in their debate Sunday night by gently mocking Mr. Kerry for a long-winded answer about his vote to authorize Mr. Bush to use force in Iraq, a position Mr. Edwards shared.
