During the Lincoln-Douglas debates one spoke ex tempore for 1 hour, the next for 1 1/2 hours and back to the first for 1/2 an hour.

The speeches were taken down in short-hand but were improvised on the stump and delivered without even notes. Contrast that with our teleprompter-bound President.
Nevertheless, he seems to be talking on TV all the time. Subtract the 1 1/2 hours a day he plays basketball, and the meetings of any bureaucracy, and one wonders when he has time to think. Perhaps he did his lifetime's worth of thinking when he was younger and merely keeps rehashing his sophomoric musings. Too bad; most of us were socialists before we were 20 but gave it up by 40, but that presupposes a continuing pace of thought.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eta-OjVUOK4 Teleprompter follies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxxxGUeZtno Teleprompter follies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WlqW6UCeaY&NR=1 Barack bows to the Guardian of the Two Shrines

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gJtIss7xso&NR=1 Comparison of bows: Queen of England and King of Saudia