--- title: Ben Carson: He's Finding His Voice Ahead of the Debate description: With the second Republican debate nearing, Ben Carson is hitting his stride and honing his quirky campaign style. canonical: https://time.com/4033330/ben-carson-campaign-style/ author: Tessa Berenson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-09-14T20:05:24.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:01:41.373Z article:section: Politics og:title: Ben Carson Finds His Voice on the Campaign Trail og:description: And it's the opposite of his Republican rivals. og:url: https://time.com/4033330/ben-carson-campaign-style/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7e93127a9adc0081/69885f4135ba6f60dec0ea83/ben-carson-debate.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson speaks during the prime time Republican presidential debate on August 6, 2015 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Ben Carson Finds His Voice on the Campaign Trail twitter:description: And it's the opposite of his Republican rivals. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7e93127a9adc0081/69885f4135ba6f60dec0ea83/ben-carson-debate.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Ben Carson Finds His Voice on the Campaign Trail  by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/)  ## Tessa Berenson Sep 14, 2015 8:05 PM UTC  Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at the Cleveland Fox News debate Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at the Cleveland Fox News debateMANDEL NGAN—AFP/Getty Images  by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/)  ## Tessa Berenson Sep 14, 2015 8:05 PM UTC Former neurosurgeon Ben Carson’s unusual rhetorical style was on full display last week when he appeared in Ferguson, Mo., to speak about last summer’s shooting of an unarmed black teenager and the racial tension that sprouted in its wake. When he began the press conference, he became visibly emotional, taking long pauses to collect himself as he spoke about his own experience growing up poor in Detroit. When he talked about the issues, his tone returned to the pitch of a doctor’s bedside manner: sedate and understated. “I heard more than one time how the thing that really inflamed the community was the fact that Michael Brown’s body laid out on the street for four hours,” he said. “I think a lot of people understood that he had done bad things, but his body didn’t have to be disrespected. I heard also that people need to learn how to respect authority.” In both tone and substance, Carson’s message these days is a far cry from that of his Republican rivals, especially frontrunner Donald Trump, with whom he has deliberately avoided confrontation. He’s also more measured than earlier this year, when he argued that prison makes people gay, [apologizing hours later](http://time.com/3733184/ben-carson-gay-prison/), or [compared ISIS militants](http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/ben-carson-equates-isis-americas-founding-fathers) to the Founding Fathers. He’s now promoting policies that are conservative, but not extreme. He compared his own immigration plan, which favors allowing undocumented immigrants to become guest workers, to Trump’s strategy of deporting all 11 million: “It sounds really cool, you know, ‘Let’s just round them all up and send them back,'” [he said](http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/surging-ben-carson-knocks-trump-immigration-plan-n423781). “People who say that have no idea what that would entail in terms of our legal system, the costs—forget about it. Plus, where you gonna send them? It’s just a double whammy.” Carson appears to have found his voice as he comes off several weeks of strong polling which show him in second place. Despite a typically understated appearance at the Aug. 6 Fox News debate and a quiet August campaign schedule, Carson moved up the polls throughout the month. As one of the outsider candidates with no formal political experience, Carson has leaned on his personal biography and his intelligence as the first doctor to successfully separate conjoined twins at the head. “I find it quite humorous when people say, ‘he’s an idiot savant,'” he said in [an interview](http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/full-interview-ben-carson-september-13/) on CBS Sunday. “Just the fact that they would say something like that—they don’t know what it takes to become a neurosurgeon. That’s pretty idiotic itself.” ### See the Covers of the 2016 Presidential Hopefuls' Memoirs  The cover of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's 2014 book "Hard Choices" is a classic of the political memoir genre: The politician's face, front and center with a strong but vague title beneath.  Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina's 2007 book "Tough Choices" followed the same playbook as Clinton's, even down to the similar titles.  Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson's 2014 book "One Nation" is a variation on the theme, the crossed arms and the subtitle underlining the message, since he's not been a politician before.  Former New York Gov. George Pataki's 1998 autobiography, "Pataki," presents him as such a towering figure that he doesn't even need a regular title.  Other politicians go for a softer touch with a more autobiographical book to help voters learn more about who they are, as in Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's 2013 memoir, "An American Son."  South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham's 2015 e-book, "My Story," takes a similar approach.  Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's 2005 book, "Rick Santorum," is less autobiographical, but the cover also goes for the soft touch.  Some books zero in on a specific image. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's 2015 book, "God, Guns, Grits and Gravy" and the photo of him, tieless, in a pastoral scene, sells him as an avatar of rural America.  Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry's 2014 book defends the Boy Scouts, reinforcing the fact that he's an Eagle Scout and a cultural conservative.  And business mogul Donald Trump's 1988 book, "The Art of the Deal," sells his image as a dealmaker so much that he still references it today.  Other candidates aim to show they are leaders, as in Ohio Gov. John Kasich's 2006 book, "Stand for Something."  Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul's 2015 book, "Taking a Stand," goes a similar route, though the subtitle, "Moving Beyond Partisan Politics," gives it a slightly different spin.  Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's 2015 book also pitches him as a truth teller, with a casual portrait and the title "A Time for Truth." AP  Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee's 2010 book, "Against the Tide," also promotes him as willing to go it alone, in this case referencing his vote against the Iraq war.  Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's 2014 book, "Unintimidated," goes the same route, promoting his fight against labor unions. Penguin Group/AP  And Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's 2010 book, "Leadership and Crisis," adds a photo of first responders to bring to mind natural disasters.  But the cover of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' 1998 memoir shows that he really does go his own way. It breaks all the design rules, looking more like an airport thriller. And at an event in San Francisco last week, when asked about his lack of foreign policy experience: “There’s nobody who knows everything,” [he said](http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-09-09/ben-carson-takes-his-conservative-outsider-campaign-to-liberal-san-francisco). “The people who do the best are the ones who know how to utilize experts.” In an interview with TIME, Carson’s campaign manager Barry Bennett echoed this theme. He said they’ve begun implementing “parlor sessions” for Carson, where the candidate receives a stack of briefs in the morning about a particular issue, then meets that afternoon with experts to ask questions and learn more. They recently held one with former CIA agents about the situation in Afghanistan. Carson’s calm demeanor was tested when he inadvertently angered the other frontrunner last week. Carson was speaking about his faith at an appearance in California was asked to compare himself to Trump: “Probably the biggest thing: I’ve realized where my success has come from, and I don’t in any way deny my faith in God,” he said. Trump fired back, [saying](http://time.com/4032716/trump-carson-iowa-election/),“I don’t know him. He knows nothing about me. I’m protestant, I’m Presbyterian, I believe strongly, believe in the Bible strongly. But he hit me on my faith. No, I believe strongly. You don’t hit a person on faith.” But in a move almost unprecedented in a bruising political primary, Carson backed off the comments and actually apologized to Trump. “I said something that sounded like I was questioning his faith,” Carson told the [Wall Street _Journal_](http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/09/14/ben-carson-on-donald-trump-abortion-football-wsj-interview/). “I really wasn’t, I was really talking more about mine. But it was said in an inappropriate way, which I recognized and I apologized for that. It’s never my intention to impugn other people.” Carson’s communications director Doug Watts [told TIME](http://time.com/4025577/ben-carson-facebook-campaign/) that the nice-guy campaign has been a strategy from the beginning. “We made a choice at the beginning of the campaign, when we never envisioned Trump getting into the race, that we were not going to be criticizing, attacking or dealing with any of the other candidates and their campaigns even if assaulted by them, which we expect to happen,” he said. “It’s not Dr. Carson, it’s not the way he works.” The second Republican debate will be on CNN on September 16\. Barry Bennett, Carson’s campaign manager, gave TIME a simple answer when asked how Carson will stand out this time: “He’s got this likability thing,” Bennett said. “His eyes and his smile; he’s self-deprecating and he’s funny. He’s pretty much a central-casting candidate.” **Read Next:** [_The Secret of Ben Carson’s Campaign Success: Facebook_](http://time.com/4025577/ben-carson-facebook-campaign/) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4033330/ben-carson-campaign-style/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4033330/ben-carson-campaign-style/"},"headline":"Ben Carson Finds His Voice on the Campaign Trail","datePublished":"2015-09-14T20:05:24.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T05:01:41.373Z","description":"With the second Republican debate nearing, Ben Carson is hitting his stride and honing his quirky campaign style.","url":"https://time.com/4033330/ben-carson-campaign-style/","keywords":["2016 Election topic","Donald Trump","Dr. Benjamin S. 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