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The President and the poet are two completely different characters and must behave and communicate in really different ways. The difference is how serious each needs to be. The president is running a country and needs to behave as such. Many thousands of lives depend on the things that he says and does. The poet does not have this huge responsibility. The poet can sit and ponder life's mysteries and think about how things can be different. If they experiment in living it just affects themselves, no one else. Zadie suggests there is no difference in how they speak. Zadie says they both need to embody the voice of different people. The president needs to look at the situation he is in through the eyes of many different people. The poet also looks at things through other people's eyes. Zadie uses Shakespeare as an example. This idea that presidents and poets both use multiple voices is true but she ignores the differences in what each needs to talk about.