STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Neurosurgeon Ben Carson is getting his moment as a presidential candidate. He's drawn admiring crowds in Iowa. He's gained enough support that Donald Trump was forced to say yesterday he's now behind Carson in recent polling. Ben Carson has done this by being the quietest guy in the room. NPR's Sam Sanders takes a listen.
SAM SANDERS, BYLINE: Ben Carson has emerged as an anti-Donald Trump of sorts, quiet where Trump is loud, soft-spoken, so much so that even Whoopi Goldberg asked him about his style on "The View."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE VIEW")
WHOOPI GOLDBERG: I just have to ask before we do anything else, do you ever yell?
BEN CARSON: No.
GOLDBERG: No.
(LAUGHTER)
SANDERS: It's working. On Carson's book tour stops across the country, he's drawing massive crowds, many of them women like Beverly Belew from Fort Worth. She explains why Carson's style speaks to her.
BEVERLY BELEW: He's wise. He is wise. You don't have to scream over people when you have something solid to say, and he does.
SANDERS: But that quiet style we're used to now, it wasn't always there. In his stump speech, Carson talks about how he went from angry to Zen.
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CARSON: I had a terrible temper, and I would go after people with baseball bats and rocks and bricks and hammers.
SANDERS: That's Carson earlier this month at the Prestonwood Baptist Church outside of Dallas. Carson says he was a pretty bad teenager, but then he changed.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
CARSON: When I was 14, another teenager angered me, and I took a large camping knife, and I tried to stab him in the abdomen. And fortunately, under his clothing, he had on a large metal belt buckle, and the knife blade struck with such force that it broke, and he fled in terror. But I was more horrified that he recognized in that I was trying to kill somebody over nothing.
SANDERS: After that moment, Ben Carson locked himself in a bathroom, read some Scriptures, and prayed to God to change him.
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CARSON: And that was the last day I ever had a angry outburst. It's been gone ever since then.
SANDERS: Whatever happened in that bathroom, it's working this campaign. Carson is leading in the polls heading into Wednesday night's debate. But why?
LARA BROWN: When everyone else is screaming, there's nothing more powerful than a whisper.
SANDERS: Lara Brown is with the political management program at George Washington University. She says Carson offers a big contrast to Trump in style. But behind that quiet style, there's some bite. Carson has compared Obamacare and abortion to slavery and the U.S. to Nazi Germany.
DONNA HOFFMAN: Donald Trump is very bombastic, and Ben Carson is presenting himself as kind of the opposite of that. And in point of fact, he actually says things that are quite provocative.
SANDERS: That's Donna Hoffman at the University of Northern Iowa. She says when Carson does say something controversial, it just sounds different.
HOFFMAN: In the way he talks about them, he presents those opinions as being perfectly reasonable because he's not yelling them. He is calmly talking about the things that he thinks.
SANDERS: Carson came to fame after a speech he gave at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2013. He was supposed to introduce President Obama, but he actually bashed him and his policies. Lara Brown from GW, she points out that Carson in some ways has a lot in common with President Obama. Both are black, and that means both are up against a certain racial politics. Obama acknowledged that in 2008.
BROWN: It was very important because he was African-American to also not play into some stereotype of an angry black man. So I would imagine that Dr. Carson sees that, knows that.
SANDERS: Brown does have some advice for Carson ahead of tonight's debate.
BROWN: I would tell him that it is time to study up because the spotlight will be on him in a way that it hasn't been so far, and he needs to show that he has the gravitas, not just the demeanor for the presidency.
SANDERS: He'll need to show some substance behind that soft-spoken style, Sam Sanders, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
