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What does a speechwriter do?

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What is a Speechwriter?

A speechwriter specializes in creating speeches for clients, usually for politicians, executives, or public figures. The primary responsibility of a speechwriter is to craft a compelling message that effectively communicates the speaker's ideas, values, and objectives to the audience. This requires not only exceptional writing skills but also the ability to understand the speaker's personality, voice, and audience's expectations, as well as the context of the speech.

Speechwriters typically work closely with their clients to understand their goals, message, and audience. They research the topic, gather data and information, and write a draft speech, which they then edit and refine until it meets the speaker's needs. This involves creating an outline, selecting the right words, tone, and structure, and ensuring the speech is well-organized and coherent. In some cases, speechwriters may also assist in rehearsing and delivering the speech, providing feedback and guidance to the speaker to ensure they deliver the message effectively.

What does a Speechwriter do?

Speechwriters are valuable assets in any organization or public figure's communication team because they possess the expertise to craft well-written, impactful speeches that can inspire, persuade, and inform the audience. They can help ensure that the message is communicated clearly and effectively, and that the tone and style of the speech match the speaker's personality and objectives.

Speechwriters also have the ability to research and understand the audience, tailoring the content to their specific needs and interests. In addition, they can help their clients save time and reduce stress by taking on the task of writing and editing the speech, allowing the speaker to focus on delivering it with confidence and passion.

Duties and Responsibilities The following are some of the key duties and responsibilities of a speech writer:

• Research: Before writing a speech, a speech writer must conduct research on the topic to ensure that they have a deep understanding of the subject matter. This may involve reading relevant articles, books, and reports, as well as conducting interviews with subject matter experts. The speech writer must also research the audience to ensure that the speech is tailored to their interests, knowledge level, and cultural background. In addition, they may research the occasion or event to ensure that the speech is appropriate for the setting and tone.
• Writing: After completing the research, the speech writer must craft the speech in a clear, concise, and engaging manner. They must use language and tone that is appropriate for the audience and occasion, and convey the message in a compelling way. The speech writer must also consider the length of the speech, as well as any visual aids or other materials that may be used during the presentation.
• Editing: Once the speech is written, the speech writer must proofread and edit it for clarity, grammar, and tone. They may also seek feedback from others, such as the speaker or a trusted colleague, to ensure that the speech is effective and persuasive.
• Collaboration: Throughout the process, the speech writer must work closely with the speaker or client to ensure that the speech aligns with their vision and goals. This may involve multiple rounds of revisions and feedback, as well as ongoing communication to ensure that the speech is on track.
• Delivery: In some cases, the speech writer may be responsible for coaching the speaker on delivery techniques. This may include providing guidance on pacing, inflection, and body language to ensure that the speech is delivered in a confident and engaging manner.
• Feedback: Finally, the speech writer may be asked to solicit feedback from the audience or client to help improve future speeches. This may involve collecting surveys, conducting interviews, or analyzing social media and other feedback channels to identify areas for improvement.

Types of Speechwriters Here are some common types of speechwriters and what they do:

• Political Speechwriters: These speechwriters work for political leaders such as presidents, governors, and senators. They are responsible for creating speeches that communicate the leader's vision, policy proposals, and political platform.
• Corporate Speechwriters: These speechwriters work for companies and executives, crafting speeches that address stakeholders, shareholders, and employees. They may write speeches for product launches, shareholder meetings, and corporate events.
• Non-profit Speechwriters: These speechwriters work for non-profit organizations and charities, creating speeches that communicate the organization's mission, goals, and accomplishments.
• Freelance Speechwriters: These speechwriters work independently and are hired by individuals, businesses, and organizations to write speeches for specific events or occasions.

What is the workplace of a Speechwriter like?

The workplace of a speechwriter can vary depending on the organization they work for and the nature of their job. Generally, a speechwriter is responsible for crafting speeches and presentations that will be delivered by high-profile individuals, such as politicians, CEOs, or public figures. This can be a challenging and high-pressure role, as the quality of their work can have a significant impact on the reputation and success of the speaker.

In some cases, speechwriters may work directly for the individual they are writing for, such as a politician or CEO. In these situations, the workplace of the speechwriter may be within the same office or building as their client. They may attend meetings, events, and speeches with their client to gather information and ensure their writing is aligned with the speaker's messaging and tone.

In other cases, speechwriters may work for an agency or consulting firm, where they may have multiple clients across various industries. These speechwriters may work remotely or in a traditional office setting, collaborating with colleagues and clients through email, phone calls, and video conferencing. They may have a more flexible schedule than those working directly for an individual, but may also have to balance multiple projects and deadlines.

Regardless of the specific workplace, speechwriters typically work closely with their clients to understand their goals, audience, and messaging. They conduct research and gather information to inform their writing, and may collaborate with other team members, such as researchers or communication specialists, to ensure their work is accurate and effective. Depending on the organization, speechwriters may also be involved in other communication and marketing initiatives, such as developing social media content or creating press releases.

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3 Famous Speech Writers Throughout History: What They Teach You About Public Speaking

That said, some individuals are so talented at writing a speech their good speech writing makes them famous. Before we discuss these three famous writers, it’s essential to articulate what they do and why they are so crucial. Essentially, what makes a great speech writer?

Learning from these iconic individuals can help you learn tips on how to create a compelling talk. Whether you need to write wedding speeches, persuasive speeches, or simply want to know how best to capture your audience’s attention, learning from those before you can be your guide.

Bear in mind that while we discuss writers for presidents, there are many types of speechwriters. People hire a speech writer for various reasons, but every great writer shares a few commonalities.

What Is A Speech Writer?

A speech writer is an individual who conducts the necessary research process, writing, and editing, on behalf of the speaker. Individuals in both the public and private sectors often hire speech writers.

While you may associate speech writers with elected officials, such as vice presidents or presidents, you can also employ a speech writer for smaller events.

Since speech writers dedicate their lives writing speeches, employing one can help you create the best bullet points to enable your audience to listen attentively.

Speech writers cover a variety of events and write for well-known and lesser-known individuals. In order to define what makes a great speech writer, let’s cover three major speech writers throughout history.

Alexander Hamilton: A Detail Not Included In His Musical

Whether you know Alexander Hamilton from your high school history class or the musical named after him, Hamilton was a friend of George Washington. So when the first president of the United States decided to step down from office and wanted to give a farewell address, Hamilton was involved.

Although Washington originally asked James Madison to write his address , eventually, the task was turned over to Hamilton. Hamilton created his draft with full creative liberties but also incorporated Madison’s. Amendments were made, and the speech underwent many changes.

Alexander Hamilton is famous in many ways. However, following his death and Washington’s, controversy broke out concerning who wrote Washington’s Farewell Address. However, Hamilton’s wife publicly stated that :

“A short time previous to General Washington’s retiring from the Presidency…Hamilton suggested to him the idea of delivering a farewell address…with which idea General Washington was well pleased… Mr. Hamilton did so, and the address was written.”

Even President George Washington needed a speech writer at the end of his two terms. Hamilton was his go-to, and his speech has been remembered for decades. Never underestimate the power of a great speech or the tedious edits that make it so.

Judson Welliver: The First Presidential Speech Writer

While Alexander Hamilton is partially known for writing the famous Farewell Address, Judson Welliver is known as the first presidential speech writer . Until Warren G. Harding, there was no official speech writer for presidents.

However, Welliver was present for Harding, and when he took office, Welliver’s help transitioned into writing speeches. When Calvin Coolidge entered office he also used Welliver’s writing tips. Consequently, speech writers as a whole never left the White House.

Welliver was widely known as a newspaperman before his transition into speech writing for presidents. Before Welliever’s time, speech writers were not a standard commodity for presidents.

Judson Welliver helped where he was equipped to. Using his talent where needed, he created an entirely new position within the government. The name Judson Welliver should not go without notice.

Richard N. Goodwin: Capturing History With A Pen

Richard N. Goodwin married Dorris Kearns Goodwin. He did not know that just as he captured history through famous speeches, his wife would capture his career as well. In fact, he is a standout example of what makes a great speech writer.

Goodwin was considered a staff celebrity when President Lyndon B. Johnson recruited him to become his speech writer. Goodwin is credited with writing some of the President’s most well-known speeches.

He only served for two years on President Johnson’s staff. Regardless, one of these speeches is the 1965 famous address to Congress, in which the president called for voting rights legislation .

Although his political career was brief, Goodwin left an indelible mark as a speech writer. What is said lasts for decades, not just on the page but in the minds and hearts of those who hear them. Working as a speech writer isn’t simply a job but a way to embody the struggles and successes of others. Speech writing allows you to become a voice for history.

How Do You Become A Speech Writer?

Becoming a speech writer largely depends on what type of speeches you want to write. Regardless of who you one day work for, an elected government official, maid of honor, or even need to write your own speech, self-educating is important.

Take the necessary time to study the above names as well as lesser-known individuals. Pay attention to the small dedtails that made these names great:

• Alexander Hamilton edited his speech over and over
• Judson Welliver filled a need with his talent
• Richard N. Goodwin became a voice for history

Additionally, add in study of the art of communication, debate, and even body language. Once you have a general understanding of how to write a great speech, you can do the following:

• Volunteer at events that encompass your field of interest
• Practice writing speeches
• Watch memorable speeches

What Makes A Great Speech Writer?

A great speech writer knows how to write an effective speech by implementing the following:

• Creating a quality speech structure
• Knowing when to repeat keywords and phrases
• Presenting the core idea in a concise manner

The execution of a speech is left up to the speaker. A great speech writer trusts the speaker to voice their final draft with great tone, appropriate eye contact, and timely pauses.

The more speeches you write, the better you will understand how to write in another person’s voice. Speech writing is a type of ghostwriting. It’s crucial to draft your speech in the voice of the one presenting it.

It takes time and effort to draft a speech that:

• Fits the occasion
• Is the correct length
• Matches the tone of the speaker
• Is written to the right audience

But what if you don’t only want to become a great speech writer? Instead, you want to also ensure the speech is delivered exactly the way you hope it to be?

You Are Your Own Speech Writer: How To Start Excelling Today

When you realize you have the power to become your own speech writer, your options are limitless. Now you know examples of famous speech writers throughout history. You learned what makes a great one, and that you can be your own. Follow these few steps:

• You can create an environment that enables you to not just write a great speech, but deliver a great speech.
• Hone in on your uniqueness
• Perfect your presentation skills
• Write your memorable speech

Many individuals spent time crafting and giving speeches that changed their life forever . When you write a memorable speech and deliver it with excellence, you have potential to succeed in astounding ways.

The great news is, if you are interested in public speaking, you can be your own speech writer. Build a group of qualified individuals around you. Learn exactly what goes into a speech that your audience will remember and practice your delivery.

Before you know it you could step on stage and present the talk you always wanted to share. Remember: When you realize you have the power to become your own speech writer, your options are limitless.

Introductory Note: To George Washington

In Praise of Judson Welliver

MasterClass

Richard Goodwin: The Speechwriter Who Named The “Great Society”

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Behind Every President, There Is a Speechwriter

Cabinet Secretaries prowling the halls for clues, White House staffers crafting secret policy — it sounds straight out of the TV drama “The West Wing.” But it’s non-fiction, and has taken place in the run up to previous presidents’ State of the Union speeches. Ahead of President Barack Obama’s fourth State of the Union tonight, Hari Sreenivasan got a behind-the-scenes look at the process of writing such a speech from two former presidential speechwriters — Michael Gerson , who worked for President George W. Bush, and Don Baer , Communications Director for the Clinton White House.

So who decides exactly what goes and what doesn’t go into the State of the Union? It depends on the administration. According to Gerson, the agenda and language are mostly conceived of in the West Wing.

“We did get some lobbying, but the nature of modern government is that the executive office of the president, the people around the president, are really very much in charge,” said Gerson. “The Cabinets are not anymore; they are not contributing language. They are consulted by the domestic policy team at the White House in the lead up to a State of the Union address, but these things are driven from within the West Wing.”

For Baer, the Cabinet Secretaries didn’t relinquish a role in the speech so easily. “We had one or two who would actually prowl the halls during the time when the speech was being written,” Baer said. “[They were] sort of knocking from door to door to see where the speech was and to try to attach themselves to see whether or not they could have an impact on it.”

One common theme? Secrecy. When drafting the first State of the Union speech for President Clinton’s second term, Baer said the president asked him to leave an open space in the speech for Social Security. “He asked me specifically, leave it blank,” Baer said. “He knew what he wanted to say, but he didn’t want everyone else around the White House to know … because there were forces around who may or may not agree.”

Gerson’s best State of the Union experience involved unveiling a policy created in a secret process — Bush’s 2003 emergency plan for AIDS relief in Africa. “No one had any idea it was going to happen, it was a secret policy process that produced this, gained bipartisan support,” he said. “That was a State of the Union initiative that really could change things, and it just symbolized to me, that occasionally you can do something unexpected.”

Tune into the PBS NewsHour Tuesday night for special coverage of President Obama’s State of the Union address.

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What It's Really Like To Be a Political Speechwriter

Spoiler alert: it's nothing like The West Wing .

Few political staffers are lionized as much as the political speechwriter. You know the caricature: the rumpled hair, desk strewn with empty coffee cups, peering at a laptop screen searching for the perfect turn of phrase. Their struggle is real, but their gallant prose can bring a nation to its feet.

In reality, few speechwriters look like Sam Seaborn, or even his rubber-ball-throwing counterpart, Toby Ziegler . Rather than tortured wordsmiths who can afford to belabor every syllable, speechwriters have to deal with the same time constraints, bureaucracy, and petty office politics as any other drone in a political office.

Barton Swaim occupied that space for nearly four years as a speechwriter for Rep. Mark Sanford during his time as governor of South Carolina. When Swaim started working in Sanford's office, he knew he wanted to write a book about the political life — something funny, maybe a novel. Then the Appalachian Trail happened. Swaim's new book, The Speechwriter , chronicles his time in Sanford's office before and after the revelation that Sanford was having an affair with a woman in Argentina when he told his staff he was hiking.

When he first came to Sanford's office, Swaim, who has a Ph. D. in English, quickly learned that his writing was not up to the governor's snuff. One of Swaim's duties was transcribing Sanford's dictated letters to constituents, and he picked up the quirks of the governor's speech that way.

"I copied down a lot of his phrases and weird expressions, and I would just sprinkle everything I wrote with those expressions, whether they were appropriate or not," Swaim said.

Some of those phrases: "speaks volumes," "a whole host of," "in large measure," "pearls of wisdom," "unique," "fabulous," and especially "given the fact that." When giving a speech or discussing policy, Sanford would demand the writers give him three points, never two.

Sanford preferred to write his own speeches when he had the time, so Swaim was consigned to writing speeches for less-than-momentous occasions — the ground-breaking and ribbon-cutting ceremonies that take up much of a governor's face time with the public.

"I thought I was going to be this great speechwriter, stringing grand phrases together and soaring oratory and all this," Swaim said. "I was basically just coming up with cute things that you could say at a gathering of the National Square Dancing Society, or a grand opening at the Heinz factory. So, coming up with stories about ketchup."

Matt Latimer can sympathize. He became a speechwriter for then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2004. He recalls receiving a "snowflake," one of Rumsfeld's infamous brief one-page notes, from the secretary on his writing preferences.

"One of my favorite snowflakes he sent me was, 'I never use the word "very." It is a very weak word,' " Latimer said.

In 2007, Latimer moved from the Pentagon to the White House to write speeches for President George W. Bush. This was in the late stages of Bush's presidency, when the Iraq War was going sideways and the economy was collapsing in on itself.

"It was less like Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing and more like The Office ," Latimer wrote in his 2009 book Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor .

Like Swaim, Latimer often found himself frustrated with the layers of bureaucracy involved in writing more high-profile speeches, so he gravitated toward ceremonial speeches. One of the speeches Latimer is most proud of writing was when Bush presented the Congressional Gold Medal to members of the Tuskegee Airmen.

Here's an excerpt of that speech:

"I'm interested in a story about a young man who was so worried that the Army might change its mind about allowing him to fly that he drove immediately to the train station; he left his car as well as $1,000 worth of photography equipment. He never saw his car. He never saw his camera. But he became a flyer. These men in our presence felt a special sense of urgency. They were fighting two wars: one was in Europe, and the other took place in the hearts and minds of our citizens. That's why we're here."

It's a near-perfect blend of prose, research, anecdote, and commitment to the greater purpose of our country. And even Latimer, who by that point already felt some disenchantment toward his job, still recognized the importance of delivering all those elements — that Bush's audience deserved to hear something good.

Being a speechwriter is like being a novelist, only with more behind-the-scenes power and fewer accolades. The one thing being a speechwriter does not provide is fame — that is, until you leave your job and write a tell-all book about your old boss.

Swaim and Latimer are just two in a long tradition of political speechwriters turning toward more creative expressions of their craft. Peggy Noonan's book, What I Saw at the Revolution , chronicles her work as a speechwriter for President Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush. And Mark Salter, who wrote speeches for Sen. John McCain during his 2008 presidential run, was revealed as the anonymous author of O: A Presidential Novel in 2011.

When asked if he would ever want to work as a speechwriter again, Swaim — who now works as the communications director for the South Carolina Policy Council — chuckled. "Who would hire me?"

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of a speechwriter for Sen. McCain's 2008 campaign. His name is Mark Salter.

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Rice Speechwriting

Beginners guide to what is a speech writing, what is a speech writing: a beginner’s guide, what is the purpose of speech writing.

The purpose of speech writing is to craft a compelling and effective speech that conveys a specific message or idea to an audience. It involves writing a script that is well-structured, engaging, and tailored to the speaker’s delivery style and the audience’s needs.

Have you ever been called upon to deliver a speech and didn’t know where to start? Or maybe you’re looking to improve your public speaking skills and wondering how speech writing can help. Whatever the case may be, this beginner’s guide on speech writing is just what you need. In this blog, we will cover everything from understanding the art of speech writing to key elements of an effective speech. We will also discuss techniques for engaging speech writing, the role of audience analysis in speech writing, time and length considerations, and how to practice and rehearse your speech. By the end of this article, you will have a clear understanding of how speech writing can improve your public speaking skills and make you feel confident when delivering your next big presentation.

Understanding the Art of Speech Writing

Crafting a speech involves melding spoken and written language. Tailoring the speech to the audience and occasion is crucial, as is captivating the audience and evoking emotion. Effective speeches utilize rhetorical devices, anecdotes, and a conversational tone. Structuring the speech with a compelling opener, clear points, and a strong conclusion is imperative. Additionally, employing persuasive language and maintaining simplicity are essential elements. The University of North Carolina’s writing center greatly emphasizes the importance of using these techniques.

The Importance of Speech Writing

Crafting a persuasive and impactful speech is essential for reaching your audience effectively. A well-crafted speech incorporates a central idea, main point, and a thesis statement to engage the audience. Whether it’s for a large audience or different ways of public speaking, good speech writing ensures that your message resonates with the audience. Incorporating engaging visual aids, an impactful introduction, and a strong start are key features of a compelling speech. Embracing these elements sets the stage for a successful speech delivery.

The Role of a Speech Writer

A speechwriter holds the responsibility of composing speeches for various occasions and specific points, employing a speechwriting process that includes audience analysis for both the United States and New York audiences. This written text is essential for delivering impactful and persuasive messages, often serving as a good start to a great speech. Utilizing NLP terms like ‘short sentences’ and ‘persuasion’ enhances the content’s quality and relevance.

Key Elements of Effective Speech Writing

Balancing shorter sentences with longer ones is essential for crafting an engaging speech. Including subordinate clauses and personal stories caters to the target audience and adds persuasion. The speechwriting process, including the thesis statement and a compelling introduction, ensures the content captures the audience’s attention. Effective speech writing involves research and the generation of new ideas. Toastmasters International and the Writing Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill provide valuable resources for honing English and verbal skills.

Clarity and Purpose of the Speech

Achieving clarity, authenticity, and empathy defines a good speech. Whether to persuade, inform, or entertain, the purpose of a speech is crucial. It involves crafting persuasive content with rich vocabulary and clear repetition. Successful speechwriting demands a thorough understanding of the audience and a compelling introduction. Balancing short and long sentences is essential for holding the audience’s attention. This process is a fusion of linguistics, psychology, and rhetoric, making it an art form with a powerful impact.

Identifying Target Audience

Tailoring the speechwriting process hinges on identifying the target audience. Their attention is integral to the persuasive content, requiring adaptation of the speechwriting process. A speechwriter conducts audience analysis to capture the audience’s attention, employing new york audience analysis methods. Ensuring a good introduction and adapting the writing process for the target audience are key features of a great speech. Effective speechwriters prioritize the audience’s attention to craft compelling and persuasive speeches.

Structuring Your Speech

The speechwriting process relies on a well-defined structure, crucial to both the speech’s content and the writing process. It encompasses a compelling introduction, an informative body, and a strong conclusion. This process serves as a foundation for effective speeches, guiding the speaker through a series of reasons and a persuasive speechwriting definition. Furthermore, the structure, coupled with audience analysis, is integral to delivering a great speech that resonates with the intended listeners.

The Process of Writing a Speech

Crafting a speech involves composing the opening line, developing key points, and ensuring a strong start. Effective speech writing follows a structured approach, incorporating rhetorical questions and a compelling introduction. A speechwriter’s process includes formulating a thesis statement, leveraging rhetorical questions, and establishing a good start. This process entails careful consideration of the audience, persuasive language, and engaging content. The University of North Carolina’s writing center emphasizes the significance of persuasion, clarity, and concise sentences in speechwriting.

Starting with a Compelling Opener

A speechwriting process commences with a captivating opening line and a strong introduction, incorporating the right words and rhetorical questions. The opening line serves as both an introduction and a persuasive speech, laying the foundation for a great speechwriting definition. Additionally, the structure of the speechwriting process, along with audience analysis, plays a crucial role in crafting an effective opening. Considering these elements is imperative when aiming to start a speech with a compelling opener.

Developing the Body of the Speech

Crafting the body of a speech involves conveying the main points with persuasion and precision. It’s essential to outline the speechwriting process, ensuring a clear and impactful message. The body serves as a structured series of reasons, guiding the audience through the content. Through the use of short sentences and clear language, the body of the speech engages the audience, maintaining their attention. Crafting the body involves the art of persuasion, using the power of words to deliver a compelling message.

Crafting a Strong Conclusion

Crafting a strong conclusion involves reflecting the main points of the speech and summarizing key ideas, leaving the audience with a memorable statement. It’s the final chance to leave a lasting impression and challenge the audience to take action or consider new perspectives. A good conclusion can make the speech memorable and impactful, using persuasion and English language effectively to drive the desired response from the audience. Toastmasters International emphasizes the importance of a strong conclusion in speechwriting for maximum impact.

Techniques for Engaging Speech Writing

Engage the audience’s attention using rhetorical questions. Create a connection through anecdotes and personal stories. Emphasize key points with rhetorical devices to capture the audience’s attention. Maintain interest by varying sentence structure and length. Use visual aids to complement the spoken word and enhance understanding. Incorporate NLP terms such as “short sentences,” “writing center,” and “persuasion” to create engaging and informative speech writing.

Keeping the Content Engaging

Captivating the audience’s attention requires a conversational tone, alliteration, and repetition for effect. A strong introduction sets the tone, while emotional appeals evoke responses. Resonating with the target audience ensures engagement. Utilize short sentences, incorporate persuasion, and vary sentence structure to maintain interest. Infuse the speech with NLP terms like “writing center”, “University of North Carolina”, and “Toastmasters International” to enhance its appeal. Engaging content captivates the audience and compels them to listen attentively.

Maintaining Simplicity and Clarity

To ensure clarity and impact, express ideas in short sentences. Use a series of reasons and specific points to effectively convey the main idea. Enhance the speech with the right words for clarity and comprehension. Simplify complex concepts by incorporating anecdotes and personal stories. Subordinate clauses can provide structure and clarity in the speechwriting process.

The Power of Nonverbal Communication

Nonverbal cues, such as body language and gestures, can add emphasis to your spoken words, enhancing the overall impact of your speech. By incorporating visual aids and handouts, you can further augment the audience’s understanding and retention of key points. Utilizing a conversational tone and appropriate body language is crucial for establishing a genuine connection with your audience. Visual aids and gestures not only aid comprehension but also help in creating a lasting impression, captivat**ing** the audience with compelling visual elements.

The Role of Audience Analysis in Speech Writing

Tailoring a speech to the audience’s needs is paramount. Demographics like age, gender, and cultural background must be considered. Understanding the audience’s interests and affiliation is crucial for delivering a resonating speech. Content should be tailored to specific audience points of interest, engaging and speaking to their concerns.

Understanding Audience Demographics

Understanding the varied demographics of the audience, including age and cultural diversity, is crucial. Adapting the speech content to resonate with a diverse audience involves tailoring it to the different ways audience members process and interpret information. This adaptation ensures that the speech can effectively engage with the audience, no matter their background or age. Recognizing the importance of understanding audience demographics is key for effective audience analysis. By considering these factors, the speech can be tailored to meet the needs and preferences of the audience, resulting in a more impactful delivery.

Considering the Audience Size and Affiliation

When tailoring a speech, consider the audience size and affiliation to influence the tone and content effectively. Adapt the speech content and delivery to resonate with a large audience and different occasions, addressing the specific points of the target audience’s affiliation. By delivering a speech tailored to the audience’s size and specific points of affiliation, you can ensure that your message is received and understood by all.

Time and Length Considerations in Speech Writing

Choosing the appropriate time for your speech and determining its ideal length are crucial factors influenced by the purpose and audience demographics. Tailoring the speech’s content and structure for different occasions ensures relevance and impact. Adapting the speech to specific points and the audience’s demographics is key to its effectiveness. Understanding these time and length considerations allows for effective persuasion and engagement, catering to the audience’s diverse processing styles.

Choosing the Right Time for Your Speech

Selecting the optimal start and opening line is crucial for capturing the audience’s attention right from the beginning. It’s essential to consider the timing and the audience’s focus to deliver a compelling and persuasive speech. The right choice of opening line and attention to the audience set the tone for the speech, influencing the emotional response. A good introduction and opening line not only captivate the audience but also establish the desired tone for the speech.

Determining the Ideal Length of Your Speech

When deciding the ideal length of your speech, it’s crucial to tailor it to your specific points and purpose. Consider the attention span of your audience and the nature of the event. Engage in audience analysis to understand the right words and structure for your speech. Ensure that the length is appropriate for the occasion and target audience. By assessing these factors, you can structure your speech effectively and deliver it with confidence and persuasion.

How to Practice and Rehearse Your Speech

Incorporating rhetorical questions and anecdotes can deeply engage your audience, evoking an emotional response that resonates. Utilize visual aids, alliteration, and repetition to enhance your speech and captivate the audience’s attention. Effective speechwriting techniques are essential for crafting a compelling introduction and persuasive main points. By practicing a conversational tone and prioritizing clarity, you establish authenticity and empathy with your audience. Develop a structured series of reasons and a solid thesis statement to ensure your speech truly resonates.

Techniques for Effective Speech Rehearsal

When practicing your speech, aim for clarity and emphasis by using purposeful repetition and shorter sentences. Connect with your audience by infusing personal stories and quotations to make your speech more relatable. Maximize the impact of your written speech when spoken by practicing subordinate clauses and shorter sentences. Focus on clarity and authenticity, rehearsing your content with a good introduction and a persuasive central idea. Employ rhetorical devices and a conversational tone, ensuring the right vocabulary and grammar.

How Can Speech Writing Improve Your Public Speaking Skills?

Enhancing your public speaking skills is possible through speech writing. By emphasizing key points and a clear thesis, you can capture the audience’s attention. Developing a strong start and central idea helps deliver effective speeches. Utilize speechwriting techniques and rhetorical devices to structure engaging speeches that connect with the audience. Focus on authenticity, empathy, and a conversational tone to improve your public speaking skills.

In conclusion, speech writing is an art that requires careful consideration of various elements such as clarity, audience analysis, and engagement. By understanding the importance of speech writing and the role of a speech writer, you can craft effective speeches that leave a lasting impact on your audience. Remember to start with a compelling opener, develop a strong body, and end with a memorable conclusion. Engaging techniques, simplicity, and nonverbal communication are key to keeping your audience captivated. Additionally, analyzing your audience demographics and considering time and length considerations are vital for a successful speech. Lastly, practicing and rehearsing your speech will help improve your public speaking skills and ensure a confident delivery.

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Speechwriters: Salary, career path, job outlook, education and more

Speechwriters write speeches for business leaders, politicians, and others who must speak in front of an audience. A speech is heard, not read, which means speechwriters must think about audience reaction and rhetorical effect.

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speechwriter

[ speech -rahy-ter ]

• a person who writes speeches for others, usually for pay.

Word History and Origins

Origin of speechwriter 1

Example Sentences

It is hardly alone in this regard, as an analysis by the speechwriter Dana Rubin reveals.

A former speechwriter for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Johnson writes with lyrical clarity, delivering tales that are by turns heartwarming and heartbreaking.

Hunter-Torricke, who spent four years working on the Facebook executive communications team and served as a speechwriter for both Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, also hinted at a more expansive vision for the board.

I worked for Baker as his special assistant and speechwriter when he was majority leader of the Senate, in the early 1980s.

Before he joined The Daily Beast, executive editor John Avlon was a speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

What greater pleasure could an emotionally-needy speechwriter know than to be pitied by the most powerful person on earth?

Speechwriter Mark Katz quickly scrambled to tone down the jokes.

Thatcher had cried when the lines were originally suggested by her speechwriter Ronald Miller.

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Home / Online Bachelor’s Degree Programs / Online Bachelor’s in Liberal Studies Degree Program / Careers with a Bachelor’s Degree in Liberal Studies / How to Become a Speech Writer

How to Become a Speech Writer How to Become a Speech Writer How to Become a Speech Writer

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Tables of Contents

More Than Words: Speech Writer Job Description

Steps to become a speech writer, key speech writing tips, 4 types of speech writing, what is the typical speech writer salary, why we need speech writers.

Speeches provoke cultural change, memorialize human achievement, and shape monumental events. In the right hands, with the right voice, under the right circumstances, spoken words can inspire, motivate, persuade, or inform the world.

Before the words of a speech are spoken, they are written. Words delivered in a public setting can be powerful. However, to reach their full potential, the words must be considered, measured, and crafted to suit the message and the audience.

This is the mission of a speech writer: to help a speaker effectively deliver a message. Sometimes, the message resonates through history:

“Four score and seven years ago …”

“Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country …”

“I have a dream …”

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

These words commemorate significant moments in American history: the Civil War, generational upheaval in the 1960s, the civil rights movement, and the end of the Cold War. The words and the associated turning points forever are linked with the famous speakers — Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Ronald Reagan.

However, only two of them actually wrote the words they spoke: Lincoln and King. Kennedy, Reagan, and countless other historical figures breathed life into speeches written by others.

Not every speech writer has the opportunity to write for a president or a legendary civil rights leader. A wedding toast, commencement address, keynote presentation at a conference — these speeches won’t necessarily change the course of history, but they’re important to the people delivering them.

Professional speech writers work in every industry to help people in all walks of life deliver clear, concise messages that resonate with an audience. It’s a career that requires a deft touch with words; a passion for digging into the facts; and a desire to help others inform, entertain, or persuade an audience.

A speech writer’s professional focus is communication. Depending on the size and scope of the organization, a speech writer might be responsible for multiple communication-related duties.

These duties might include the following:

• Public relations
• Media relations
• Crisis management
• Internal communications
• Social media

No matter how broad the duties of a writer or communications professional, there are aspects of the job that translate across disciplines. It begins with a mastery of language and the written word.  

Writing and Editing

Strong writing and editing skills are a must for anyone who wishes to pursue a speech writing career. Fortunately, while there is an art to writing and editing, the craft can be taught and improved over time.

Grammar, spelling, and sentence structure count. To effectively deliver a message, a writer must understand the effect words have when delivered out loud in a particular sequence. In this regard, it’s as much about the writer’s “ear” as about the thought process.

While writing and editing a speech, the writer must ask whether the words will elicit the desired emotional response from the audience. Experienced writers have knowledge of the power of certain words and phrases to move listeners. Reading great speeches and other writings can help writers develop an ear for what works.

Researching Facts

Knowing how to write and edit well is only the beginning. A speech must be grounded in facts to reach its full potential.

Facts that support the message should be researched first. For example, Peter Robinson, one of Reagan’s speech writers, spent time in Berlin before he wrote Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall” speech in 1987. During his  preliminary research , Robinson spoke with a U.S. diplomat in West Berlin, took a helicopter flight over the city, and conversed with German citizens.

Robinson devised the famous challenge — “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” — after noticing the bleak conditions on the East Berlin side of the wall and hearing the sentiment expressed by a German dinner companion.

The work Robinson put into the research led to one of the most memorable public statements by a U.S. president in the 20th century. By 1989, the people of Berlin were free to cross the once-formidable barrier.

Robinson’s work on the speech was an excellent example of how thorough research became the foundation for a speech that marked a historical turning point.

Conducting Interviews

In addition to learning as much as possible about the topic through research, a speech writer must know how a speaker talks and what message the speaker wishes to deliver. One way to learn this is to conduct an interview.

There are two types of interview questions: fact-finding and open-ended.

Fact-finding questions are intended to learn details about the speaker’s expertise in the topic. This can include education, work experience, or research projects.

Open-ended questions are intended to provide detail, color, and anecdotes that might provide the audience with emotional access to the speaker’s point of view. This might include information about how and why the speaker became interested in the topic, or it might be a relevant story about the topic drawn from the speaker’s life.

An interview with the speaker also gives the writer insight into the speaker’s speech patterns and personality. This kind of information enables the writer to capture the rhythm of the speaker’s voice.

Writing and Editing Resources

• American Rhetoric: Top 100 Speeches
• Scribbr: List of Credible Sources for Research

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Many speech writers begin their careers either as communications specialists (public relations, journalism, academia) or as experts in a particular industry with a flair for writing. Rarely will someone step into the job and start writing for heads of state or CEOs.

As with any career, there’s a known trajectory to follow as regards educational requirements, work experience, and soft skills needed to succeed. The important thing for an aspiring speech writer to remember is to set career goals early and take the appropriate steps along the way to achieve those goals.

Educational Requirements for Speech Writers

Speech writers may benefit from a bachelor’s degree in journalism, communications, or English, as well as a liberal studies degree with a concentration in writing or marketing. It’s important to study writing, editing, rhetoric, debate techniques, and other topics related to public speaking and speech writing.

In addition to honing the craft of writing, an aspiring speech writer might pursue a course of study related to a specific topic. This could entail earning a minor in a broad topic, such as history or political science. Another educational route might be in-depth study of a specialized topic, such as a technical field or law.

Recommended Work Experience for Speech Writers

Work experience is particularly important for an aspiring speech writer. A writer with a high level of expertise in a topic brings authority to the job.

Some of the finest speech writers in American history were lawyers: Ted Sorenson (JFK) was one. Others, such as Peggy Noonan (Reagan), were journalists or ghostwriters before they entered the inner circle of world leaders.

Professional speech writer Brent Kerrigan, writing an  essay on speech writing as a career  for the public relations firm Ragan, said that the best way to get started with speech writing work experience is to “find somebody who needs a speech written, and write it for them.”

Kerrigan went on to write that “becoming an expert in anything takes practice.” His advice is to seek out busy public officials and company leaders who regularly make speeches but lack the time to write them, and offer your services.

Nonwriting Skills to Cultivate

It’s not enough for an aspiring speech writer to perfect the craft of writing and to learn as much as possible about a relevant topic. As with all careers, finding the right job requires building a well-connected professional network.

According to the Labor Department’s Occupational Outlook Handbook  entry for writers and authors , the soft skills writers should cultivate include adaptability, creativity, determination, critical thinking, social perceptiveness, and the ability to persuade others.

Writing begins with a plan. Sometimes the plan is depicted by an outline. Sometimes it’s simply a set of notes on a piece of paper.

The beginning stages of writing a speech require a lot of thinking. It helps to have a solid foundation of knowledge about the topic and the speaker going into the process.

Here are a few tips for developing a speech that can resonate with an audience.

Determine the Message

Why is a speech necessary? What does the speaker want to say? What action is intended for audience members to take after they hear the speech?

Answering these questions in the early stages of speech writing will allow the writer to find clarity of purpose. Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall” speech provides an excellent example of how a writer worked to develop a concise, compelling message.

According to Robinson, the speech was originally intended to commemorate the 750th anniversary of the city of Berlin. In 1987, the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was coming to a head, but the Berlin Wall remained a symbol of oppression.

Robinson, as well as Reagan’s other advisors, chose that moment to send a message of support for the people of East Germany. It was a seminal moment in the Reagan presidency and a powerful milestone in U.S.-Soviet relations.

Understand the Audience

An important factor in determining the message is understanding the makeup of the intended audience. In most cases, the audience for a speech will consist of the people present for the event. However, all speeches have multiple audiences: those present, those who will read the text only, those who will view some or all of the speech later on video, and all future generations.

Each element of the larger “audience” should be taken into consideration when a writer sits down to determine the tone, voice, and length of a speech. Audience makeup determines not only the words that are written but also the way a speaker is intended to deliver those words.

Will the message be couched in humor? Will the tone be completely serious? How big is the in-person audience? How knowledgeable are the audience members about the topic? Are the audience members sympathetic or adversarial toward the speaker?

All of these questions and more are important to answer when creating the framework and shaping the message of a speech.

Use Research to Support the Message

Research forms the core of the speech. It’s as simple as no research, no speech.

However, supporting the message with research isn’t merely a matter of throwing together a list of related facts. The information gathered during the research process must be organized so the message can be supported logically, clearly, and convincingly.

One way to effectively use research is to create a list of questions related to the topic and use examples pulled from the research to provide the answers. The questions should be prioritized based on urgency: What does the audience most want or need to hear?

The structure of the speech will depend, in part, on how the writer and speaker decide to present the facts learned through research. A well-researched fact presented at the right time can capture attention and provide an air of authority to the speaker.

Show Personality to Connect

Attorney and author Sarah Hurwitz was the primary speech writer for former first lady Michelle Obama. Prior to that, Hurwitz wrote speeches for former President Barack Obama when he was a presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, and other prominent politicians.

In an  interview about speech writing with the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania , Hurwitz described how she and Michelle Obama used details to show — rather than tell — a relevant anecdote.

“I think details are so incredibly important,” Hurwitz told the Wharton interviewer. “When she tells the story of her father who had multiple sclerosis and worked at the city water plant, she could say, ‘You know, my dad had MS. He worked at the plant. He worked really hard. He sacrificed a lot.’ That’s all just sort of telling. I don’t really see him. But instead what she said in some of her speeches was, ‘You know, as my dad got sicker it got harder for him to get dressed in the morning. He would wake up an hour early so that he could slowly button his shirt. He would drag himself across the room with two canes to give my mom a kiss.’”

Through the use of colorful, vivid details about an experience, Hurwitz helped her subject reveal her personality as a way of connecting to the audience.

Speech Writing Resources

• Public Affairs Council: Speechwriting 101 — Writing an Effective Speech
• Medium: “Orations Worth Ovations — The Olive Branch as a Weapon”
• ThoughtCo: “How to Organize Research Notes”

Speeches can be categorized by delivery style, writing style, and purpose. It’s important to know ahead of time what type of speech will be written, because the type has a bearing on word choice, tone, and many other elements of the speech.

To determine the type of speech to write, first answer questions such as:

• Is the speech intended to elicit an emotion or trigger a specific action?
• Does the speaker want to stick to the script or talk off the cuff?
• Will the speaker be required to defend an opinion?
• Will the speaker be alone on the podium, or will others talk?

Answers to these and other relevant questions will provide guidance about what type of speech to write. The more details writers know about the context of the event, the more likely they’ll craft an effective speech.

Here are four common types of speeches with examples of when each should be used.

Informative Speech Writing

An informative speech is used to explain a concept, describe an object or objects, or provide context for an event or a social movement. For example, a CEO might want to deliver an informative speech at a shareholder event or share details about an annual report with employees.

An effective informative speech presents facts in a concise, easily understood format. One potential challenge for the writer of an informative speech is to capture and maintain the interest of the audience. A dry recitation of facts seldom makes for a memorable or an effective speech.

Persuasive Speech Writing

A persuasive speech is used in an effort to convince an audience to support an idea or take a specific action. Types of persuasive speeches include opening or closing arguments in a criminal trial, an opening or a closing statement in a debate, and a sales presentation.

Persuasive speeches use rhetorical devices to create a sense of intimacy with the audience. The words used, the tone of voice, the volume, the physical gestures, eye contact — all of these devices can create a connection and engender trust with the audience.

The greater the connection, the more likely the audience is to be persuaded by the arguments being presented.

Motivational Speech Writing

A motivational speech is used to convince an audience to take specific action, particularly action that’s designed to engineer change of some sort. This type of speech is also used to elicit an emotional response to a particular cause or purpose.

Motivational speakers know how to connect with an audience on an emotional level. They help audience members understand an obstacle, recognize how that obstacle affects them, and determine ways to overcome that obstacle.

Motivational speeches are good for commencement addresses, recruiting drives, and charity drives. Coaches and managers also make motivational speeches before games and matches to help players focus their emotions toward success on the field of play.

Demonstrative Speech Writing

A demonstrative speech is used to show the audience how to do, build, or create something. A demonstrative speaker is typically an expert in the field who’s sharing knowledge or demonstrating how audience members can attain knowledge for themselves.

A demonstrative speech often requires visual aids, such as a slideshow or stage props. The speaker typically provides context for the demonstration with an introduction, and then gives the presentation. Sometimes, the speaker will open the floor to audience questions.

A demonstrative speech might be used by a salesperson to show how a product is used, by an inventor to show how a new device was created, or by a professional instructor to show how to use a piece of equipment.

Additional Tips for Writing Different Speech Types

• Your Dictionary: 5 Steps for Writing an Informative Speech
• Lifehack: “Ultimate Guide to Persuasive Speech (Hook and Influence an Audience) ”
• Houston Chronicle : “The Key Components of a Motivational Speech”
• Purdue University: Tips for Effective Demonstrations

Salaries for speech writers vary widely in the U.S. Wages can be determined by factors such as the prominence of the client or employer, professional experience, and the complexity or relevance of the speech topics.

According to a 2011 report in  The   Washington Post , Obama speech writer Jon Favreau earned $172,200 annually — the same salary as some of the former president’s top advisors. An expert freelance speech writer who crafts minor speeches for businesses or personal use might charge by the word, hour, page, or speech.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), writers and authors ― speech writers among them ― were paid a median salary of $63,200 in 2019. Salaries and job opportunities are affected by factors such as geography, job market, and economic conditions.

BLS employment projections for writers and authors show that the number of positions nationwide is expected to hold steady at about 123,000 from 2018 to 2028. In a related field, media and communication workers, BLS projections indicate a 4% increase in positions from 2018 to 2028.

The history of the U.S. can be told through its famous speeches.

George Washington’s farewell address created the precedent of the peaceful transition of power in the federal government. Frederick Douglass gave voice to the enslaved and momentum to the abolitionist movement with his 1852 speech “ What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? ”

The Lincoln-Douglas debates in the 1850s led to Lincoln’s victory in the 1860 presidential election, an event that helped trigger the Civil War. Then President Franklin D. Roosevelt offered motivation and encouragement with his inaugural address, with its famous line “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

MLK delivered perhaps the most influential speech in American history on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, giving impetus to the civil rights movement.

We remember the speakers, and rightfully so. They were front and center, delivering the words that shifted history.

However, before the words could be spoken, before history could be made, someone had to write the speeches. Someone had to, as Hurwitz advises, “say something true.”

That’s the role of the speech writer: to distill the facts and provide the words that allow the speaker to serve as an effective, persuasive, entertaining messenger.

“Whether you were giving a speech to 1,000 people or talking to your board or leading an informal meeting, it’s really important to say something that is clearly and glaringly true,” Hurwitz said. “I think that it makes people trust you. It makes them respect you. It shows your authenticity. I think it makes you credible and it’s a really good way to start. I’d say it’s also a good way to continue and end a speech.”

Houston Chronicle , “Speechwriter Job Description”

Houston Chronicle , “The Key Components of a Motivational Speech”

National Archives, “Tear Down This Wall”

PayScale, Average Speech Writer Salary

PRSA, “Your Speech Writer: An Operator’s Manual”

Public Affairs Council, Speechwriting 101: Writing an Effective Speech

Public Affairs Council, “Speechwriting: Getting to a Perfect Fit”

Ragan, “Want to Become a Speechwriter? Step 1: Write Speeches”

Textbroker, Speechwriting

The Manual, “10 Famous Speeches That Stand the Test of Time”

Time , “‘He Had Transformed’: What It Was Like to Watch Martin Luther King Jr. Give the ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech”

Bring us your ambition and we’ll guide you along a personalized path to a quality education that’s designed to change your life.

List of Famous Speechwriters

List of famous speechwriters, with photos, bios, and other information when available. Who are the top speechwriters in the world? This includes the most prominent speechwriters, living and dead, both in America and abroad. This list of notable speechwriters is ordered by their level of prominence, and can be sorted for various bits of information, such as where these historic speechwriters were born and what their nationality is. The people on this list are from different countries, but what they all have in common is that they're all renowned speechwriters.

These famous writers of speeches, like Ben Stein and Pat Buchanan include images when available. Featuring presidential speech writers, political speech writers, and more, this list has it all. 

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When Did U.S. Presidents Start Using Speechwriters?

By quora .com | jan 23, 2017.

When did U.S. presidents start outsourcing the writing of their speeches? Ross Cohen :

According to Robert Schlesinger, author of  Presidents and Their Speechwriters , “Judson Welliver, 'literary clerk' during the Harding administration, from 1921 to 1923, is generally considered the first presidential speechwriter in the modern sense—someone whose job description includes helping to compose speeches.”

And then FDR had a number of people helping him.

That said, some of it started right from the beginning, to some extent. Not outsourcing, per se—at least not consistently—but certainly collaboration.

The first draft of George Washington’s famous farewell address was prepared with the assistance of James Madison, five years before he ultimately delivered it. Years later, Alexander Hamilton put in a lot of work helping Washington revise it before it reached its final form.

James Monroe delivered his famous doctrine in a State of the Union Address, but it was primarily written by his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams.

“When James K. Polk asked Congress for a declaration of war against Mexico in 1846, his words were written by Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft, the most distinguished American historian of the time," according to Profiles of U.S. Presidents. "Years later Bancroft was again the presidential amanuensis, this time of Andrew Johnson.”

According to the same source, Woodrow Wilson was the last president to write his own speeches.

After Wilson came Harding, who was the first president with a dedicated speechwriter (though I’m not sure if his immediate successors, Coolidge and Hoover, had one as well). Once they were through it becomes a little clearer, as FDR is known to have used a number of ghost writers for his speeches.

This post originally appeared on Quora. Click here to view .

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Powerful Writing: Presidential Speechwriters Discuss Their Craft

Presidential speechwriters play an important role in making sure the president’s message hits home with the masses, whether in campaigns or in White House policymaking.

Three past presidential speechwriters are giving a special presentation at Chicago’s American Writers Museum at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, and two of them gave “Chicago Tonight” a behind-the-scenes peek into their profession.

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Carolyn Curiel served as a senior speechwriter for President Bill Clinton. John McConnell was a speechwriter for both President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney during their eight years in the White House.

Below, a Q&A with our guests on the current state of presidential messaging.

How might the threat of impeachment impact speeches during a presidency?

John McConnell:   The news media will cover impeachment as topic A, so dealing with it will be central to any messaging strategy.  Speeches, however, are different – as Bill Clinton showed 21 years ago, a president has no obligation to address impeachment in every public utterance.  A president has an agenda to advance and his words will be widely covered in any event. 

Carolyn Curiel:   A president and his administration should work to compartmentalize the process, however stressful, so the wheels of government don't grind to a halt. As he faced impeachment, President Clinton nonetheless worked with Congress to normalize trade relations with China and brought parties together in pursuit of Middle East peace.

President Trump has come under fire for inaccuracies in his public statements. John, you’ve said the Bush speechwriters had an entire team of fact-checkers. Carolyn, how about President Clinton? How did you both ensure accuracy and why are we not seeing that in the current administration?

McConnell:   Indeed we had a great team of fact-checkers, who spared us anxiety and embarrassment!  I don't know how the office is organized at present, but I would recommend our process to any presidential speechwriting operation.

Curiel:   The Clinton White House had a robust fact-checking system. President Clinton was a policy wonk who often knew the exact statistics needed. Errors rarely survived the process.

President Trump has been known to veer off script when delivering speeches. Did the Presidents you wrote for go off script to this extent, or is this a signature style of Donald Trump that we’ve never seen in a previous president? 

McConnell: President Bush would occasionally depart from the text, but not that often.  He worked hard on his speeches, so when he stepped in front of an audience, the document in front of him contained his best thoughts in his own words.  President Trump is a very different kind of speaker, but he's not the first to veer widely from a prepared text.  President Clinton digressed fairly often, I'm told, and pretty effectively. 

Curiel: It has been said that President Clinton used his speech scripts as briefing memos, and that was sometimes true. But he also sometimes delivered speeches without detours. Those were especially happy days.

How have speeches and messaging changed under the current administration?

McConnell: President Trump waged a successful campaign with more off-the-cuff performances than set-piece speeches, but the balance shifted once he came into office.  He now delivers lots of prepared speeches. Even for a president with an improvisational style like Trump's, there are plenty of times when the traditional path is best, and he takes it. 

Curiel:   The changes have been dramatic from prior administrations, some of it owing to social media, especially Twitter and Facebook, and especially under the current president. Facts, context and the most pressing issues can get lost when the commander-in-chief tweets and talks incessantly – and often about himself – creating and controlling news and rabbit holes of information. It's been good for the news business, though.

Presidential speechwriters Carolyn Curiel and John McConnell share White House memories and their opinions on what makes a great speech with Paris Schutz on “Chicago Tonight.”

Follow Andrea Guthmann on Twitter @AndreaGuthmann

Related stories:

Political Messaging in the Age of Deeply Partisan Politics

What Past Presidents Tell Us About Trump’s Inaugural Speech

The Purpose of the Presidential Farewell Speech

Related Stories

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How speechwriters delve into a president’s mind: Lots of listening, studying and becoming a mirror

FILE - President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol, Feb. 7, 2023, in Washington. It’s an annual process that former presidential speechwriters say take months. Speechwriters have the uneviable task of taking dozens of ideas and stitching into a cohesive narrative of a president’s vision for the year. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Speechwriting, in one sense, is essentially being someone else’s mirror.

“You can try to find the right words,” said Dan Cluchey, a former speechwriter for President Joe Biden . “But ultimately, your job is to ensure that when the speech is done, that it has a reflection of the speaker.”

That concept is infinitely magnified in the role of the presidential speechwriter. Over the course of U.S. history, those aides have absorbed the personalities, the quirks, the speech cadences of the most powerful leader on the globe, capturing his thoughts for all manner of public remarks, from the mundane to the historic and most consequential.

There are few times in a presidency that the art — and the rigorous, often painful process — of speechwriting is more on display than during a State of the Union , when the vast array of a president’s policy aspirations and political messages come together in one, hour-plus carefully choreographed address at the Capitol. Biden will deliver the annual address on Thursday .

It’s a process that former White House speechwriters say take months, with untold lobbying and input from various federal agencies and others outside the president’s inner circle who are all working to ensure their favored proposals merit a mention. Speechwriters have the unenviable task of taking dozens of ideas and stitching them into a cohesive narrative of a president’s vision for the year.

It’s less elegant prose, more laundry list of policy ideas.

Amid all those formalities and constraints of a State of the Union address, there is also how a president executes the speech.

Biden’s biggest political liability remains his age (81) and voters’ questions about whether he is still up to the job (his doctor this past week declared him fit to serve ). His every word is watched by Republican operatives eager to capture any misspeak to plant doubt about Biden’s fitness among the public.

“This year, of course, is an election year. It also comes as there’s much more chatter about his age,” said Michael Waldman, who served as a speechwriter for President Bill Clinton. “People are really going to be scrutinizing him for how he delivers the speech, as much as what he says.”

Biden will remain at Camp David through Tuesday and is expected to spend much of that time preparing for the State of the Union. Bruce Reed, the White House deputy chief of staff, accompanied Biden to the presidential retreat outside Washington on Friday evening.

The White House has said lowering costs, shoring up democracy and protecting women’s reproductive care will be among the topics that Biden will address on Thursday night.

Biden likely won’t top the list of the most talented presidential orators. He has thrived the most during small chance encounters with Americans, where interactions can be more off the cuff and intimate.

The plain-spoken Biden is known to hate Washington jargon and the alphabet soup of government acronyms, and he has challenged aides, when writing his remarks, to cut through the clutter and to get to the point with speed. Cluchey, who worked for Biden from 2018 to 2022, said the president was very engaged in the speech drafting process, all the way down to individual lines and words.

Biden can also come across as stiff at times when standing and reading from a teleprompter, but immediately loosens up and appears more comfortable when he switches to a hand-held microphone mid-remark. Biden has also learned to navigate a childhood stutter that he says helped him develop empathy for others facing similar challenges.

To become engrossed in another person’s voice, past presidential speechwriters list things that are critical. One is just doing a lot of listening to the principal, to get a sense of his rhythms and how he uses language.

Lots of direct conversation with the president is key, to try and get inside the commander in chief’s thinking and how that leader frames arguments and make their case.

“This is not an act of impression, where you’re simply just trying to get the accent down,” said Jeff Shesol, another former Clinton speechwriter. “What you really are learning to do and need to learn to do -– this is true of speechwriters in any role, but particularly for a president –- is to understand not just how he sounds, but how he thinks.”

Shesol added: “You’re absorbing not just the rhythms and cadences of speech, but you’re absorbing a worldview.”

Then there is always the matter of the speech-giver going rogue.

Biden is often candid, and White House aides are sometimes left to clean up and clarify what he said in unvarnished moments. But other times when he deviates from the script, it ends up being an improvement on what his aides had scripted.

Take last year’s State of the Union . Biden had launched into an attack prepared in advance against some Republicans who were insisting on requiring renewal votes on popular programs such as Medicare and Social Security, which would effectively threaten their fate every five years.

That prompted heckling from Republicans and shouts of “Liar!” from the audience.

Biden immediately pivoted, egging on the Republicans to contact his office for a copy of the proposal and joking that he was enjoying their “conversion.”

“Folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare is off the — off the books now, right? They’re not to be touched?” Biden continued. The crowd of lawmakers applauded. “All right. All right. We got unanimity!”

Speechwriters do try and prepare for such moments, particularly if a president is known to speak extemporaneously.

Shesol recalled that Clinton’s speechwriters would draft remarks that were relatively spare, to account for him veering off on his own. The writers would write a clear structure into the speech that would allow Clinton to easily return to his prepared remarks once his riff was over.

“Clinton used to liken it to playing a jazz solo and then he’s going back to the score,” Waldman added.

Cluchey, when asked for his reaction when his former boss would go off-script, described it as a “ballet with several movements of, you know, panic, to ‘Wait a minute, this is actually very good,’ and then ‘Oh man, he really nailed it.’”

Biden is “at his best when he’s most authentically, most loosely, just speaking the plain truth,” Cluchey said. “The speechwriting process even at its best has strictures around it.”

60 Words To Describe Writing Or Speaking Styles

Writers Write creates and shares writing resources. In this post, we give you 60 words to describe writing or speaking styles .

What Is Your Writing Or Speaking Style?

“Style, in its broadest sense, is a specific way in which we create, perform, or do something. Style in literature is the way an author uses words to tell a story. It is a writer’s way of showing his or her personality on paper.

Just as a person putting together items of clothing and jewellery, and applying make-up creates a personal style, the way a person puts together word choice, sentence structure, and figurative language describes his or her literary style.

When combined, the choices they make work together to establish mood , images, and meaning. This has an effect on their audience.”

From  7 Choices That Affect A Writer’s Style

• articulate – able to express your thoughts, arguments, and ideas clearly and effectively; writing or speech is clear and easy to understand
• chatty – a chatty writing style is friendly and informal
• circuitous – taking a long time to say what you really mean when you are talking or writing about something
• clean – clean language or humour does not offend people, especially because it does not involve sex
• conversational – a conversational style of writing or speaking is informal, like a private conversation
• crisp – crisp speech or writing is clear and effective
• declamatory – expressing feelings or opinions with great force
• diffuse – using too many words and not easy to understand
• discursive – including information that is not relevant to the main subject
• economical – an economical way of speaking or writing does not use more words than are necessary
• elliptical – suggesting what you mean rather than saying or writing it clearly
• eloquent – expressing what you mean using clear and effective language
• emphatic – making your meaning very clear because you have very strong feelings about a situation or subject
• emphatically – very firmly and clearly
• epigrammatic – expressing something such as a feeling or idea in a short and clever or funny way
• epistolary – relating to the writing of letters
• euphemistic – euphemistic expressions are used for talking about unpleasant or embarrassing subjects without mentioning the things themselves
• flowery – flowery language or writing uses many complicated words that are intended to make it more attractive
• fluent – expressing yourself in a clear and confident way, without seeming to make an effort
• formal – correct or conservative in style, and suitable for official or serious situations or occasions
• gossipy – a gossipy letter is lively and full of news about the writer of the letter and about other people
• grandiloquent – expressed in extremely formal language in order to impress people, and often sounding silly because of this
• idiomatic – expressing things in a way that sounds natural
• inarticulate – not able to express clearly what you want to say; not spoken or pronounced clearly
• incoherent – unable to express yourself clearly
• informal – used about language or behaviour that is suitable for using with friends but not in formal situations
• journalistic – similar in style to journalism
• learned – a learned piece of writing shows great knowledge about a subject, especially an academic subject
• literary – involving books or the activity of writing, reading, or studying books; relating to the kind of words that are used only in stories or poems, and not in normal writing or speech
• lyric – using words to express feelings in the way that a song would
• lyrical – having the qualities of music
• ornate – using unusual words and complicated sentences
• orotund – containing extremely formal and complicated language intended to impress people
• parenthetical – not directly connected with what you are saying or writing
• pejorative – a pejorative word, phrase etc expresses criticism or a bad opinion of someone or something
• picturesque – picturesque language is unusual and interesting
• pithy – a pithy statement or piece of writing is short and very effective
• poetic – expressing ideas in a very sensitive way and with great beauty or imagination
• polemical – using or supported by strong arguments
• ponderous – ponderous writing or speech is serious and boring
• portentous – trying to seem very serious and important, in order to impress people
• prolix – using too many words and therefore boring
• punchy – a punchy piece of writing such as a speech, report, or slogan is one that has a strong effect because it uses clear simple language and not many words
• rambling – a rambling speech or piece of writing is long and confusing
• readable – writing that is readable is clear and able to be read
• rhetorical – relating to a style of speaking or writing that is effective or intended to influence people; written or spoken in a way that is impressive but is not honest
• rhetorically – in a way that expects or wants no answer; using or relating to rhetoric
• rough – a rough drawing or piece of writing is not completely finished
• roundly – in a strong and clear way
• sententious – expressing opinions about right and wrong behaviour in a way that is intended to impress people
• sesquipedalian – using a lot of long words that most people do not understand
• Shakespearean – using words in the way that is typical of Shakespeare’s writing
• stylistic – relating to ways of creating effects, especially in language and literature
• succinct – expressed in a very short but clear way
• turgid – using language in a way that is complicated and difficult to understand
• unprintable – used for describing writing or words that you think are offensive
• vague – someone who is vague does not clearly or fully explain something
• verbose – using more words than necessary, and therefore long and boring
• well-turned – a well-turned phrase is one that is expressed well
• wordy – using more words than are necessary, especially long or formal words

Source for Words:  Macmillan Dictionary

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy

• The 4 Main Characters As Literary Devices
• 7 Choices That Affect A Writer’s Style
• 5 Incredibly Simple Ways To Help Writers Show And Not Tell
• Cheat Sheets for Writing Body Language
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• If you want to learn how to write a book, sign up for our  online course .
• If you want to learn how to blog, sign up for the online course.
• Style , Writing Resource

4 thoughts on “60 Words To Describe Writing Or Speaking Styles”

useful thank you …

useful thank you.

Very informative. Taught me slot

Thanks a lot. Very useful.

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© Writers Write 2022

Will you join us in lighting the way for the leaders of tomorrow?

Presidential speechwriters.

TOM PUTNAM:   What better way to celebrate Presidents’ Day than at the nation’s memorial to our 35 th President and in the company of one of his most trusted advisors?  I'm Tom Putnam, the Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.  And on behalf of John Shattuck, CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation and all of my Library and Foundation colleagues, I want to welcome you to this very special forum.  Let me begin by thanking all of you for coming, by acknowledging those watching this program on C-SPAN and listening on public radio, and by expressing appreciation to the sponsors of the Kennedy Library forums, including lead sponsor, Bank of America, Boston Capital, The Lowell Institute, the Boston Foundation, Corcoran Jennison Companies, as well as our media sponsors, The Boston Globe, WBUR, and NECN.  

As you know, today’s national holiday began first as a tribute to George Washington, then was later wedded to the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.  In more recent times, it has become popularly known as Presidents’ Day, continuing the tradition of honoring Washington and Lincoln and highlighting one of the hallmarks of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of power between all those who have served in our nation’s highest office.  It is a day devoted to history, to harkening back to the famous words of Abraham Lincoln, to the mystic chords of memory, and to learning from those who have preceded us.  For just as President Kennedy instructed Theodore Sorensen to study the secret of Lincoln’s rhetoric, many recent presidential speechwriters describe how they in turn spent hours examining the speech craft of Kennedy and Sorensen.  For those budding speechwriters in today’s audience, one of Mr. Sorensen’s conclusions was that Abraham Lincoln never used two or three words where one would do, so I promise to try and make my introduction of today’s speakers brief.  [laughter] 

Theodore Sorensen served for 11 years as policy advisor, legal counsel and speechwriter to Senator and President John F. Kennedy.  He was deeply involved in such presidential decisions as the Cuban Missile Crisis, civil rights legislation, and the decision to send a man to the moon.  He is the author of numerous books, including his best-selling biography, Kennedy , and Let the Word Go Forth , a selection of the best JFK speeches.  He is also an international lawyer, lecturer and writer.

If you’ll allow me one anecdote, I once had the privilege of going through our Museum with Mr. Sorensen, his wife Gillian, who is here with us today and will be a featured speaker at our next Kennedy Library Forum, and their daughter Juliet.  After watching the renowned 1961 inaugural address, I asked Mr. Sorensen the following question.  Recalling the catechism of my youth, I speculated that some of the religious references in President Kennedy’s speeches were more Unitarian in their world view than Roman Catholic.  And I asked Mr. Sorensen, who was raised Unitarian in Lincoln, Nebraska, if that topic had ever come up in conversation with the President. It turns out it had.  He recounted to me an exchange in which President Kennedy once asked him, “So, Ted, has my Catholicism begun to rub off on you yet?”  Mr. Sorensen’s reply was, “No, I’m sorry, Mr. President.  On the contrary, it’s my Unitarianism that's finding its way into your speeches.”  [laughter] 

We're honored to have three other presidential speechwriters joining in today’s conversation who I’ll introduce chronologically.  It was exactly 40 years ago on this very holiday, Washington’s Birthday in 1967, that Raymond K. Price received the phone call that would change his life.  It was an invitation to join the campaign staff of Richard Nixon, who was considering mounting a second run for the presidency in 1968.  Over time, Mr. Price became a close friend, advisor, speechwriter, and special consultant to the President.  He was the President’s collaborator on both inaugural addresses, all of his State of the Union speeches, and President Nixon’s 1974 announcement from the Oval Office that he would resign.  Mr. Price had a distinguished career as a journalist, editor and public policy analyst and served for many years as the President of the Economic Club of New York.

Chriss Winston was the first woman to head the White House Office of Speechwriting and she was named Director of Speechwriting for President George H. W.  Bush.  She was also the Deputy Director of Communications for Bush/Quayle in 1988 and oversaw communications for the Department of Labor under President Reagan.  She’s the author of numerous books, including the forthcoming How to Raise an American in which, among other suggestions, she advises parents to bring their children to Boston to learn of this city’s rich history and to visit the Museum at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.  We’ll provide a free plug for any book that does the same for our Museum.   [laughter]   Ms. Winston is currently serving as a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Ted Widmer came to the Kennedy Library six years ago when he was charged by President Clinton to survey the field of presidential libraries in preparation for the design of the Clinton Library in Arkansas.  It is no surprise that President Clinton would have charged him with this task, for not only is Mr. Widmer a historian by training, he also served from 1997 to 2001 as a foreign policy speechwriter and senior advisor to President Clinton.  He is known for the creative programs he has designed to enliven the teaching of American history and politics to diverse groups, ranging from Muslim college students living in countries that have been historically suspicious of western culture, and to underprivileged children living in our own country with limited access to libraries and history museums.  He is currently the Director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

Moderating today’s forum is one of the most recognizable and trusted voices in national journalism, Linda Wertheimer.  Currently Senior National Correspondent for National Public Radio, for 13 years she was the host of NPR’s flagship news magazine All Things Considered .  In her 30 years with NPR, she anchored dozens of nominating conventions and election nights, and has reported on countless presidential addresses.  She knows a good speech when she hears one, and we're so fortunate to have her here today to guide today’s conversation, Linda Wertheimer.  [applause] 

LINDA WERTHEIMER:   Thank you very much.  Thank you.  As perhaps you know, the format of this event will be to hear from the speechwriters, to hear some of the speeches that presidents have given, and to then have an opportunity for you all to ask questions.  So I'm going to keep my part of this very brief, since these are all people who have a way with words.  I don’t need to do very much.  So let me just begin by saying that the first clip you will hear, this is a speech that John Kennedy gave at American University.  And it was an important policy speech, because he introduced the idea of a test ban treaty and said that the United States would take the voluntary step of banning atmospheric testing. So it was a very important speech in terms of making news for people like me, but it was also a tremendously important speech because it talked about world peace, as you're just about to hear.  We have two clips that have been put together, so this is a somewhat telescoped version of the speech.

PRESIDENT KENNEDY:   I have, therefore, chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived – yet it is the most important topic on earth, peace.  

What kind of a peace do I mean?  What kind of a peace do we seek?  Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.  Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave.  I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and build a better life for their children.  Not merely peace for Americans, but peace for all men and women. Not merely peace in our time, but peace for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war.  Total war makes no sense in an age where great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces.  It makes no sense in an age where a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War.  It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and a generation yet unborn.

Today, the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them is essential to the keeping of peace.  But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles, which can only destroy and never create, is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace.  

I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational man.  I realize the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war and frequently the words of the pursuers fall on deaf ears.  But we have no more urgent task.

For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combat ignorance, poverty and disease.  We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counter weapons.

In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race.  Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours.  And even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interests.  

So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved.  And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.  For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet.  We all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children’s futures, and we are all mortal.  

MS. WERTHEIMER:   President Kennedy speaking at American University.  That speech was … Let’s see, what was the date of that speech?

THEODORE SORENSEN:   June 10 th , 1963.  [laughter] 

MS. WERTHEIMER:   And Theodore Sorensen who is, I think, perhaps the best known of all the presidential speechwriters, is here with us to talk about why that speech happened the way it did and tell us about writing speeches for President Kennedy.

MR. SORENSEN:   Well, thank you Linda.  First, I want to say how honored I am to be back at the Kennedy Library, my favorite institution in the whole world, where I’ve been so often that you're going to get tired of seeing me.  But I'm going to be back next year.  And to be with you, Linda, whom I’ve been a fan for many years, as I told you during lunch.  To be with my longtime friend, Ray Price, and I was glad to meet Ted and Chriss, so this is a terrific group.  But Linda, I am not the best known presidential speechwriter.  Abraham Lincoln was the best known.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   I was going to say unless we count Abraham Lincoln, I should have said that.  [laughter] 

MR. SORENSEN:   I picked that particular speech to be shown here today, and I must say it’s the first time I’ve seen it since June 10, 1963.  I was sitting on the platform behind him at American University, and I’m rather touched to see it again and to be reminded how wonderful a human being John F. Kennedy was, how well he spoke.  But I picked that particular speech to be shown today because I'm still on a crusade that I’ve been on all my life, to try to make this a better world and nobody is more disheartened than I by what has happened to this country and its foreign policy over these last six years or so.  [applause] 

And I wanted you in the audience and those who watch this later on television to remember that America had a tradition of peace once, we were a peaceful country.  We did have a President who wasn't waging unilateral war and preemptive strikes, but who believed … I hope you’ll weigh carefully the particular words that were in those two excerpts that were shown there, because they are the very opposite of what our policy has been since 2001.  So I think it’s very, very important to get that message out.  

I like to think that that was John F. Kennedy’s best speech.  Certainly his most important speech.  I know many people think the inaugural was his best, but this was better and more important, because it said more.  In addition to the moratorium on nuclear testing in the atmosphere, Linda, which you mentioned, that speech called for a reexamination of the Cold War.  No President had ever done that.  It called for a reexamination of our relations with the Soviet Union.  No President had ever done that.  It called for a reexamination, part of which you heard, of what we mean by peace itself.  

So it was an important speech, and I had a lot to do with it, yes.  The President had gone out to Hawaii, he made a swing through some western states, and then he spoke to the American Conference of Mayors in Honolulu.  Like other young men, I had reasons to go to Hawaii, but I had to stay back and work on the speech.  I then flew out with it.  He gave his speech on June 9 th , 1963, in Hawaii, in Honolulu, and we then flew back.   I brought the draft with me.  We then flew back overnight, in those days, from Honolulu to Washington.  I went directly to the campus of the American University in Washington, unshaven.  He was President, so he went to the White House and changed his shirt and got a shower and then came before … and he had a little time before delivering the speech.

But it was still the height of the Cold War.  But the previous October, the President had led the country through the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that had made a tremendous impression on him. 

And I will say it made a tremendous impression on Soviet Chairman Nikita Khrushchev as well.  And both of them learned from that serious experience and Kennedy wanted to speak about it, and there are words in this speech that talk about the follies of war and the follies of backing your adversary into a corner.  

And on the way back, he made the decision and cleared it on the Air Force One telephone with Bob McNamara in Defense and McBundy back in the White House to add to that speech the moratorium on nuclear testing in the atmosphere, which he hoped would help bring the Soviets to the bargaining table.  And it did, and later that same summer a treaty was signed in Moscow, the first step toward arms control in the nuclear age, the limited nuclear test ban treaty.  So speeches can have consequences, they aren't just empty words, and that speech was selected because it was both his best and his most important.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   There are lots of wonderful quotes in this speech.  If I were presenting a piece, I would be very torn about which ones to use.  He said, “Our problems are manmade, and therefore they can be solved by man, and man can be as big as he wants.”

MR. SORENSEN:   Now, that's good Unitarianism.  [laughter]  

MS. WERTHEIMER:   And here's one of those parallel constructions for which Mr. Sorensen is so famous.  Talking about seeking peace, the speech says, “So let us persevere, peace need not be impracticable and war need not be inevitable.”  And then there's a wonderful … The ending is fabulous.  But one of the things that he says in the last paragraph of the speech, which I think resonates today, is “The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.”  

Now, the next speech is another one of those speeches which just caused shivers to run right down the back of everyone who heard it, because it was such a terribly important speech.  And we have Ray Price, who had a hand in drafting it.  It was delivered by President Nixon on August 8 th , 1974.  You want to talk about the Great Occasion?

RAY PRICE:   Yeah, I chose the resignation announcement, partly because it’s significant, partly because there have been fewer of those than there have been inaugurals.  And it was quite a wrenching one to do, but I was glad to be the one doing it with him.  The part you’ll hear now is just the last concluding portion of it.  If we had more time, I would have included what came before.  What came immediately before it dealt more with the world, with what we had succeeded in doing, but what was yet left to do in making this a better world.  And that section that is before it, before this closing, very personal part, was something that was largely worked out through a series of phone calls from him to me beginning at … It was Thursday night he delivered it, beginning 8:30 p.m. Wednesday and ending at 5:07 a.m. Thursday.  That part that we did end leading, about the world, leads into this very personal conclusion.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Let’s hear it.

PRESIDENT NIXON:   For more than a quarter of a century of public life, I have shared in the turbulent history of this nation.  I have fought for what I believed.  I have tried to the best of my ability to discharge those duties and meet those responsibilities that were entrusted to me.

Sometimes I have succeeded and sometimes I have failed, but always I have taken heart from what Theodore Roosevelt once said about the man in the arena, “whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again because there is not effort with error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deed, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievements and at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”

I pledge to you tonight that as long as I have a breath of light in my body, I shall continue in that spirit.  I shall continue to work for the great causes to which I have been dedicated throughout my years as a Congressman, a Senator, Vice President and President, the cause of peace not just for America, but among all nations, prosperity, justice and opportunity for all our people.  

There is one cause above all to which I have been devoted and to which I shall always be devoted for as long as I live.  

When I first took the oath of office of President 5 ½ years ago, I made this sacred commitment: “to consecrate my office, my energies, and all of the wisdom I can summon to the cause of peace among nations.”

  I have done my very best in all the days since to be true to that pledge.  As a result  of these efforts, I am confident that the world is a safer place today not only for the people of America, but for the people of all nations and that all of our children have a better chance than before of living in peace rather than dying in war.

This, more than anything, is what I hoped to achieve when I sought the Presidency.  This, more than anything, is what I hope will be my legacy to you, to our country, as I leave the Presidency.  

To have served in this office is to have felt a very personal sense of kinship with each and every American.  In leaving it, I do so with this prayer.  May God’s grace be with you in all the days ahead.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Ray Price, early in the speech, the President said the thing that I think just was so shocking to hear, even though we knew it was coming, where he talked about the country needed him to leave, basically.  And then he said, “Therefore, I shall resign the Presidency, effective at noon tomorrow.  Vice President Ford will be sworn in as President at that hour, in this office.”  I'm sure that everyone who heard that will never forget those words. This speech had an enormous emotional content, something we were not generally accustomed to hear from President Nixon.

MR. PRICE:   Well, he tried not to be emotional in his speeches.  But it had been a difficult week for him, too.  [laughter]  And he had been up and down on whether to resign or not, but figured the resignation finally was having to turn over a bunch of tapes to the court and the prosecutor, having lost the case in the Supreme Court.  And they included one which we were pretty sure would be fatal anyway, that we could have handled earlier, easily if we had known about it earlier; we could not at that point.  And that week had begun, really, a week earlier.  

I’ll tell you a little bit on the lead up to that.  On Thursday the 1 st , the speech was Thursday, August 8, 1974.  On Thursday, August 1 st , Al Haig was then the Chief of Staff, convened a meeting in his office of a few department heads and so forth, including me, and had a lot of charts and so forth, laying out the strategy for the battle in the Congress over the impeachment.  From there on, it was at a crucial point and assigning what people would do and all the patterns for reporting and reconvening and so forth.  And then we left.  And had chalkboards laying this all out … And then we left and a few of us were talking outside, and his secretary motioned to me to come in, and I came back, and he told me that was all a sham.  He wants to go on the air on Monday, he wants a speech for Monday announcing his resignation.  So I started then on Thursday, the 1 st .  And then on Friday, the next day, Friday the 2 nd , was called back over to Al’s office again, and by then we had an actual transcript of what was called the smoking gun tape, in which he had temporarily, only temporarily, but temporarily approved having the CIA try to head the FBI off in wanting an investigation.

Incidentally, just one parenthetical aside, this, which was a trigger to the resignation, was an investigation into a Mexican connection that could have run into some other things.  And so he was told in a meeting, this was a meeting with Bob Haldeman, and Haldeman is reporting to him on what he had learned, what he had been told, and he said that John Dean and John Mitchell -- Bob later told me that not Mitchell had told him this, but Dean had told him this -- that recommended asking the CIA to head the FBI off from the Mexican connection.  And he said okay.

And then two weeks later … So he made the call to the director of the FBI.  And two weeks later, the President got a call from the CIA saying they no longer had a problem with the Mexican connection.  Or, rather, he got a call from the head of the FBI saying that the CIA had told him they no longer had a problem.  So the President said, “Go ahead, do a full investigation.”  Which they did.  The only practical impact of that intervention, which ultimately brought him down, was a two week delay in interviews of two witnesses, nothing more.  But things had gotten to a point, at that point, where that was enough.

But anyway, by Friday, he had decided no, he wanted a different speech.  He still wanted to make a speech on Monday.  But instead of saying he was going to resign, he was going to explain the transcripts which he was turning over, explain the context and so forth, and pledged to fight on in the … To answer questions under oath in the well of the Senate and fight on.  I thought that was a mistake.  At this point, I thought we could not save it.  

Then I saw the transcript, and it looked to me at first glance as though it was something we could not survive.  Then Saturday, Al called.  The President wanted us to come up to Camp David on Sunday.  We did, and meanwhile I’d been working on the draft and so on, but thinking it was probably a mistake.  We did meet up there.  While up there, he changed his mind and instead of pledging to fight on or resigning, he was going to put out the transcripts with a written statement explaining what they meant and see if the reaction was as bad as we thought it was going to be.  I thought that made sense, a lot was at stake, and let’s really see what it is.

We did put out the transcripts on Monday; the reaction was what we expected.  Tuesday, I got a call from Al.  We're back on the resignation track, but still very secretly.  And so Tuesday to Thursday is when we were working on the resignation speech, back and forth.

Linda, as a parenthetical aside, we did not call ours the speechwriting section, we called it the writing and research.  And this was accurate because in Nixon’s case, most of his speeches were not written and he never used notes.  My educated guess, having only a guess but educated because I did run the writing staff, is that 19 out of 20 speeches were not written, 1 out of 20 was.  And he never used notes.  He was always more comfortable without a text than with one.  But some were, and this of course, was one of those that were.  The State of Unions were all written, the inaugurals were written, and some others where he particularly wanted a text for some special reason, but he preferred not to have one.  But anyway, so that was the background.  

But then on the night before we’d been going back and forth on it.  Then the day before, the Thursday, rather, Wednesday, we were sitting in his old executive office building office.  I had my office a couple doors down and going over it.  And he mentioned to me that the head of the, the Republican leaders of the House and Senate were both going to be coming and together with Barry Goldwater, were going to come in to see him at five.  And a lot of notes made a  couple of years ago when this story really hit about how they had come in and bearded the lion in his den and persuaded him to resign.  We discussed this at 3:00 before they came in.  He had already written in the margin of the draft we were working on what he expected them to say.

He was already working on a resignation.  But he explained to me at 3:00 that he thought it was important to hear them out so that it would be more like an impeachment and thus to less damage the future presidency.  But then we worked on through and those calls that I mention, beginning at 8:30 on Wednesday, we were talking through and then really honing it down.  And then it went on through two or three calls that evening.  As he began to get into the kind of world view, the foreign policy stakes and what we’d done, what needed to be done.  And then these continued up until about 11:00 or so.  And he mentioned he wanted to get in that man in the arena quote and to find that, and that had been located and so on.

Then finally, around 1:00, I left the office.  Well, piece to that, shortly before one, I got a call from Jerry Warren, who was the Deputy Press Secretary, but he was Acting Press Secretary, saying that he’d gotten … very cautiously, saying that he was getting some calls from reporters who were still on duty there, noticing the lights were on in my office and wondering if that meant that Nixon was planning to resign.  And Jerry said, very cautiously, I told them I don’t know, or I told them or …How should I handle it?  And I thought a second, I said, “Jerry, you can tell them you don’t know.”  This was very careful, and he understood what I was doing.  He was a man of total integrity.  I was alerting him that he shouldn’t deny it, but not giving him actual knowledge so he didn't have to affirm it. But then we went on.

And then finally I went home and about 3:45, got a call from him.  He was working more.  He was working in the Lincoln sitting room, that's up in the family quarters, which was his working area up there.  He’d been working on the end and fleshing out more about one thing after another that we’d been doing, but there was this much left to do and so on.  And it was in those calls there that 3:45, 4:15, 4:30, 4:45, he really kind of worked out the meat of that.  And then finally at 5:07, the last call, was from him saying, “Just bring it over in the morning.”  He wanted it at 8:30.  “But don’t run it by Al Haig, don’t run it by Henry Kissinger or anyone else.  Just you and me, I want this to be my speech.”

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Goodness.  For those of us who spent as many hours, weeks and days as I did covering Watergate, it’s fascinating to hear the behind the scenes moments.  We're going to move on to Chriss Winston who is, as you heard, the first woman, to head a speechwriting office.  And it was in the Bush Administration, but she has chosen, instead, to include a speech which was delivered by the Great Communicator.  Chriss?

CHRISS WINSTON:   And I'm not casting any aspersions on my boss.  I actually started out, I was going to do one of his speeches.  He did a series of speeches in Europe just before and just after the fall of the Berlin Wall that were very exciting places to be, Prague and Poland and Budapest and a number of other places that we went in eastern Europe.  So, initially, I was going to pick one of those speeches and talk about what it was like to be in these countries at that moment in time and hopefully in the Q&A, we’ll have some time to talk about that.  

But kind of in the last minute, I had a change of heart and I decided to go with Ronald Reagan’s farewell address from the Oval Office, an excerpt from that speech.  And the reason I did that was because it’s Presidents’ Day, and I started thinking about how important Presidents are as our models and have been since the beginning of our country.  Abraham Lincoln talked about the fact that as a young boy, George Washington was his hero and his model.  And I started thinking about what I’d been studying for the last couple of years, which is how do we create good citizens today in the sort of political and cultural climate in which our children are being raised.

And one of the ways we do that, I think, is to teach our children about America’s great story and our history is something that can inspire them.   So I started thinking about Presidents’ Day and that made me think, well, Ronald Reagan talked about exactly that issue in his farewell address.  It was sort of his final … He called it the warning as he left office.  And so I wanted to focus on that in part because he is such a wonderful communicator and it seemed to me to have a panel here without something from Ronald Reagan would be a glaring omission.

But also because I thought about a quote from a Czech writer who wrote that if you want to destroy a nation, destroy its memory.  And so I wanted to use this excerpt on Presidents’ Day to remind us all that our presidents are our models for our children, and heroes like John Kennedy was to me when I was a young girl at the time.  And how important it is for our children to have those kinds of models in their lives to become good citizens.  That's why I chose this excerpt.

[VIDEO]  

PRESIDENT REAGAN:   Finally, there is a great tradition of warnings in presidential farewells, and I’ve got one that's been on my mind for some time.  And oddly enough, it starts with one of the things I’m proudest of in the past eight years: the resurgence of national pride that I call the new patriotism.  This national feeling is good, but it won’t count for much and it won’t last unless it’s grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge.  

An informed patriotism is what we want.  And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?  Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America.  We were taught very directly what it means to be an American, and we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions.  If you didn't get these things from your family, you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea, or the family who lost someone at Anzio.  Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school.  And if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture.  The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special.  TV was like that, too, through the mid-‘60s.

But now we're about to enter the ‘90s and some things have changed.  Younger parents aren’t sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children.  And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style.  Our spirit is back, but we haven’t reinstitutionalized it.  We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom -- freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise, and freedom is special and rare.  It’s fragile, it needs protection.  

So we've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion, but what's important.  Why the pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant.  You know, four years ago on the 40 th anniversary of D Day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father who had fought at Omaha Beach.  Her name was Liza Zanatta Henn and she said, “We will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.”  Well, let’s help her keep her word.  If we forget what we did, we won’t know who we are.  I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.  Let’s start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual.  And let me offer lesson number one about America: all great change in America begins at the dinner table.  So tomorrow night in the kitchen, I hope the talking begins.  And children, if your parents hadn't been teaching you what it means to be an American, let them know and nail them on it.  That would be a very American thing to do.    

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Chriss, this is a wonderful example of President Reagan’s long conversation with the American people.  It’s not a particularly good example of Presidential speechwriting, however, because the President wrote it, according to David Gergen, he wrote it himself.  But why does it stand out for you, besides the … I mean, just in terms of the writing of a speech?

MS. WINSTON:   Well, I do think conversation is the right word.  I think his final address from the Oval Office was very much a conversational kind of speech.  The language was that way, and if you remember at the very end of the speech, he says something to the effect of all in all, we didn't do too badly, not bad at all.  And it was very Reagan in so many ways.  The language, the love of America.  He was always optimistic about America.  I think that's one of the reasons the American people always responded to him.  He was hopeful and optimistic and clearly loved his country, and that was evident in so much of what he had to say to the American people over the eight years he was in office.

The other thing that I think was so typical of him was the humor.  Ronald Reagan used humor sometimes to attack the other side, and they really wouldn’t feel it coming.  I mean, he always did it in a way that would bring a smile to the faces of sometimes even the other side.  So humor was a really great strength.

I brought the speech with me, and if I can do this without putting my glasses on, which is debatable, but I will try and read you what he said in this speech about being a great communicator.  He said, “I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference.  It was the content.  I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things.  And they didn't spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation, from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in principles that have guided us for two centuries.”  And I think that really was his style.  He always attributed his success to the country he grew up in.  And he may not have wanted to take the credit, but he was, in fact, a great communicator.  So I found this a very moving speech watching it at the time.  And having reread it over the last couple of years several times, it just struck me as an appropriate speech today, when times are tough in the country again, that it might be something that we could maybe agree on.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   I very much liked listening to Ronald Reagan’s speeches, I have to say.  He ends this one talking about the shining city on the hill; he talked about it so much in his speeches.  And he says how stands the city on this winter night?  One of the things that you’d hear from him was what I think of as kind of cowboy rhetoric, talking about the Soviet Union. 

He says that he wants the closeness that the United States had, and that he had, with the new Soviet leader Gorbachev at the time, to continue.  And he says that as long as they continue to act in a helpful manner, and then he said, “If and when they don’t, first pull your punches.  If they persist, then pull the plug.  It’s still trust, but verify.  It’s still play, but cut the cards.   And watch closely, and don’t be afraid to see what you see.”  I mean, that kind of thing, I think the American people used to love.

MS. WINSTON:   I think that's one of the reasons why the current President has often been criticized for the same kind of rhetoric.  I believe cowboy has been used frequently to describe this President as well, but there are some similarities between Reagan and Bush in terms of some of the rhetoric they've used over the years.  Obviously, I think President Reagan had a real ability to communicate through a prepared text, through a speech, which is difficult to do, very difficult as a matter of fact, prepared text.  And it was interesting hearing about how many prepared texts were done with President Nixon.  It’s something we might want to talk about later, the whole technical process side of speechwriting in the White House today has become, I think in large part because of a change in how much coverage there is at the White House, Presidents today will have a fairly substantial speechwriting operation.  We had seven speechwriters in our shop and seven researchers.  And President Bush would give sometimes as many as four speeches a day.  So you can see how things have really changed substantially.  And most speeches were not written by President Bush.  

But as Linda said, David Gergen, just after we finished lunch here today, we were talking about the speech and he said that he thought that President Reagan in this case had written this one, for the most part, himself though he did have a fairly large speechwriting operation, too.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   We're going to move on to Ted Widmer, who was writing speeches in the administration of President Clinton, and as you heard, is instrumental in setting up the Clinton Library.  So the speech you have chosen was given in Ireland.

TED WIDMER:   It was given in a small town called Armagh, outside of Belfast, in Northern Ireland in September, 1998.  Before I describe it, I want to thank the Library for organizing this thoughtful panel.  It’s a great pleasure to be with my fellow speechwriters.  And I want to particularly thank Ted Sorensen, who by the way, he asked me at lunch which speeches by President Kennedy I included in an anthology I’ve just published with the Library of America,  Great American Political Speeches .  And he correctly guessed all five speeches.  [laughter]  And I believe he would have known the dates of them also.  And I want to thank Ted for a very personal reason.  His speeches were not only moving and persuasive to the American people, leading to the election of then-Senator Kennedy, but they were exciting and persuasive to many of the young volunteers in the 1960 campaign, including two college students from Massachusetts who joined the campaign, met each other and got married, and they were my parents.  So we speechwriters tend to beget more speechwriters.  [laughter] 

Well, this particular speech by President Clinton is probably not that well known to most of you, although it was an important foreign policy speech at the time.  It was his first day in Northern Ireland since brokering the Good Friday Accord, and it was a very exciting day.  We had been on a trip to Russia and then to Ireland and Northern Ireland, and you couldn’t find two more different regions of the world.  Russia was dark and cold and people were not in a very good mood at the time.  They had had a severe economic setback and we touched down in Ireland; I remember that day vividly.  It was one of those days where you fly all around the world, it seems, giving speeches at different locations.  And we left Moscow at about six in the morning and landed in Ireland.  And everywhere we went, just driving from the airport into a city, the roads were thick with enthusiastic people waving at the motorcade and it was tremendously exciting, and he gave a number of speeches.

One of my great challenges today was to pick a single Bill Clinton speech after he gave so many of them.  There are 17 volumes in the collected speeches of President Bill Clinton.  I don't think any other President comes within five or six of that number.  They were sent to me by the Clinton Library, and I remember thinking, “Would one UPS man be strong enough to carry all of these volumes?”  

But this was a magical day and a magical particular speech.  He gave it in the late afternoon.  It’s September, early September, and the light was beginning to diminish.  And we had chosen a location in this beautiful small town called Armagh.  And there was a Catholic church facing a Protestant church across the town green.  So it was a beautiful location for so many reasons.  And it was a speech outdoors, which I fear is a disappearing presidential tradition.  I loved the quote that President Nixon chose from Teddy Roosevelt, about the man in the arena.  And I think for most of the 20 th century that was something that American presidents loved to do, certainly when they were campaigning, but then after they became president.  And one thinks a little bit about JFK’s speech in Berlin, or Ronald Reagan’s speech in Berlin.  And part of the drama is it’s this man who’s the embodiment of American openness and confidence standing amidst huge throngs of foreign people who are listening very closely.  And so much of it is the body language.  And I fear for many reasons, including unavoidable reasons stemming from 9/11, but also from the great unpopularity of the Iraq war and other U.S. policies, that it will be a long time before we return to that tradition.

But on this particular day, Clinton was in full form.  He was very much the man in the arena, and he strode out to the lectern and an enormous roar came from the crowd and he gave a speech that was both beautiful with some literary allusions and deeply humane.  He said he’d wanted to come back to his hometown in Ireland, but his ancestors were so poor that no one knew what that hometown was.  And he just talked about peace, and I think that's very much related to the idea of the open air speech.  He talked about how important the peace was that the Irish people had discovered for themselves, and I think he would have phrased it that way, he had just helped bring them together.

And the end of the speech I felt was moving because he said, “Look, you're not just doing this for yourselves.  You have your own tradition.  Part of the problem has been that you haven’t always been able to look at yourselves objectively outside these two traditions.  And what is fantastic about the peace of Northern Ireland in 1998 is that all peoples indulging in similar feuds around the Earth will see this and see that peace is achievable.”  And so, he ended the speech with a long section that wasn’t about Ireland at all, but it was about what this would mean to all other peoples on Earth.  And I think that sort of contrarian approach, going a little bit beyond what is expected, can make a speech truly distinctive.  

PRESIDENT CLINTON:   We wanted to come here in person to thank you, to thank you for the peace, to thank you for strengthening the hand of everyone, everyone anywhere, who is working to make the world a little better.  When I go about to other troubled places, I talk to you as proof that peace is not an idle daydream, for your peace is real and it resonates around the world.  It echoes in the ears of people hungry for the end of strife in their own country.  

Now, when I meet Palestinians and Israelis, I can say, “Don't tell me it’s impossible, look at Northern Ireland.”  When I meet Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo, I can say, “Don’t tell me it’s impossible, look at Northern Ireland.”  When I hear what the Indians and Pakistanis say about each other over their religious differences, I say, “Don’t tell me you can’t work this out.  Look at Northern Ireland.”  Centuries were put to bed and a new day has dawned.  Thank you for that gift to the world.  

And never underestimate the impact you can have on the world.  The great English poet and clergyman, John Donne, wrote those famous lines, “No man is an island.  We are all a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”  Tonight, we might even say in this interconnected world, not even an island, not even a very unique island, not even Ireland, is fully an island.  On this island, Northern Ireland, is obviously connected in ways to the Republic as well as to England, Scotland and Wales.  And in ways, the Republic of Ireland is connected to them also.  All of you on this island increasingly are connected to Europe and to the rest of the world as ideas and information and people fly across the globe at record speed.

We are tied ever closer together, and we have obligations now that we cannot shirk to stand for the cause of human dignity everywhere.  To continue John Donne’s beautiful metaphor, when the bells of Armagh toll, they ring out not just to the Irish of Protestant and Catholic traditions, they ring out to people everywhere in the world who long for peace and freedom and dignity.  That is your gift.  

We Americans will do what we can to support the peace, to support economic projects, to support educational projects.  Tomorrow, the Secretary of Education will announce a cooperative effort here to help children bring peace by doing cross community civic projects.  We know we have an obligation to you because your ancestors were such a source of strength in America’s early history., because their descendents are building America’s future today.  Because of all that, we have not forgotten our debt to Ulster.  But we really owe an obligation to you because none of us are islands.  We are all now a part of the main.  

Three years ago, I pledged that if you chose peace, America would walk with you.  You made the choice, and America will honor its pledge.  Thank you for the springtime of hope you have given the world.  Thank you for reminding us of one of life’s most important lessons, that it is never too late for a new beginning.  And remember, you will be tested again and again, but a God of grace has given you a new beginning.  Now, you must make the most of it, mindful of President Kennedy’s adage that here on Earth, God’s work must truly be our own.  Your work is the world’s work, and everywhere, in every corner, there are people who long to believe in our better selves, who want to be able to say for the rest of their lives in the face of an act of madness borne of hatred, over religious or racial or ethnic or tribal differences, they want to be able to shake their fist in defiance and say, “Do not tell me it has to be this way.  Look at Northern Ireland.”  Thank you, and God bless you.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   An extraordinarily inspirational speech.  I want to, because I want to get to the questions as quickly as possible, let me just ask you all to just talk for a few minutes about some of the technical aspects of speechwriting, and I suppose some of you will have questions of that sort as well.  I’d like to begin with Ted Sorensen whose memoir, as you heard, is going to be published, but we don’t know the name of it yet.  That I understand, in part of it, you talk about how you did what you did, how to write speeches for presidents.  Could you just share a little bit of that with us?

MR. SORENSEN:   Well, thanks for the plug.  It’s true, I’ve been working for five years on my life story, and I'm at the finish line at last.  And I expect it will be out next year, and I hope you’ll invite me back.  One of the chapters is entitled, “Speechwriting.”  And looking over the latest draft, and it’s still a draft … 

MS. WERTHEIMER:   And too long ... (inaudible)—

MR. SORENSEN:   Oh yes, I couldn’t possibly.  But I did find one excerpt that I thought I would read to you.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Great.

MR. SORENSEN:   This is what somebody else said about the Kennedy/Sorensen collaboration, and I thought you might be interested in that.  Now, these are not my views, please understand.  “You need a mind like Sorensen’s around you that's clicking and clicking all the time.  You can get a beautifully tooled speech, but at best just one sentence of it will make the difference.  It takes an intellectual to come up with a phrase that may penetrate.  Sorensen is tough, cold, not carried away by emotion, and he has the rare gift of being an intellectual who can completely sublimate his style to another individual.  And in his case, it’s the right combination. Sorensen is analytical and unemotional, so was Kennedy.  There hasn’t been such a combination of speechwriter and president since Raymond Moley and Franklin D. Roosevelt.”  

And a little bit later, “A public figure shouldn’t be just a puppet who echoes his speechmaker.  The ideas should be his, the opinions his, the words his.  It’s easy for Kennedy to get up and read Sorensen’s speeches.  But I don't think it’s responsible unless he believes in it deeply himself.”  That's Richard Nixon.  [laughter] 

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Well, that is the essential problem of being a presidential speechwriter, it does seem to me.  You know, the big question, who wrote that?  Which you always have to stand back from, deny, efface yourself from.  What is that like?  Ray Price, what was that like?

MR. PRICE:   I didn't have that problem so much.  I had been a professional writer before I joined up with Nixon, and I’d been a debater and things like that, and at times a speechwriter, as well as a parliamentary debater.  But he taught me speechwriting.  He’d been a master of the craft.  And again, as I said, my rough count was probably 19 out of 20 speeches in the White House were not written.  Most of our writing was things like the legislative messages to Congress and so forth, long written things in which we laid out what we wanted and made the argument for why and so on.  And these were delivered in written form, they're not spoken.

Nixon had a first rate mind, a very organized mind.  I was always appalled at speechwriters who would brag, as I heard a number of them do from time to time, about how they had snuck something into a president’s speech, or how they’d gotten him to say what they, the speechwriters, wanted him to say.  I felt my role, both as a writer and as head of the writing department, was to make sure that nothing got into the President’s speech that was not what he wanted to say, the way he wanted to say it.  And in the process of back and forth with him, in his case when we went back and forth on a written speech, it was usually through about six or seven or eight drafts.  But he would be using that, and we’d be editing and revising and so on.  He would be using that process as a means of refining ideas.  As you find they don’t work out on paper, you find maybe they don’t work quite right.  You get different views on it.

I did all State of the Unions with him, and every one of those worked out, coincidentally, did 14 drafts.  But these were much more complicated things and much longer.  But again, he was an organized thinker.  He himself had been a champion debater from high school on, and debating teaches you something about rhetoric and about organizing thoughts and so forth.  And he was a lawyer, and this was part of his background.  But again, he was more comfortable without.  He just felt he connected better with the audience without it, and he didn't need a text.  And he was a natural, natural speaker.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   So your habit of self effacement has completely overtaken you here. [laughter]  Chriss, among other things, you had a principal who was not the orator that President Reagan was or President Clinton was.  I remember many times reading a speech and thinking, “There's my quote,” and then he would get to it and he would stumble somewhere in the middle of the money quote. 

MS. WINSTON:   Right.  [laughter]  I remember that, too.  One of my favorites was we were in one of those eastern European trips, and I believe it was -- I have to really go back to my memory bank here -- but I think it was Hungary, we were in Hungary.  And Rubic, who did Rubic’s Cube, the man who had created Rubic’s Cube, was one of the first entrepreneurs in Hungary after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and he’d been living there, he was Hungarian.  So in one of the speeches that President Bush was giving there, Mr. Rubic was going to be in the audience and we were talking about entrepreneurship and capitalism and all of these things, and we were going to use him as a good example.  When President Bush got to that section of the speech, he started talking about it, and he proceeded to call it Rubic’s Cone, which was one of those, we're just sitting there, “Well, great.”  [laughter]  And those things did happen sometimes with him.  

But I think it’s true with anyone that you write for.  One of the things that's most difficult to do is to try and learn that person’s voice, because you are reflecting not your thoughts and not your voice, but his or hers.  And President Bush, when we started to write for him, none of us had written speeches for him during the campaign.  We were in another part of the communications operation, and then we brought in some new speechwriters.  And so we had to learn that, and we had to learn it on the ground as we went along.  And one of the first things we discovered with him happened … Well, there were two things, really.  First of all, frequently when a speech draft would come back, in the margin would be the phrase that all of us came to really hate.  And it would say, “Too much rhetoric.”  Okay, that's the phrase, and it was the kiss of death.  Anything very flowery, the kind of language that speechwriters like to indulge in, he found it to be just overly dramatic or too flowery for him.  He liked very plain language.  So that was the first thing we learned.

The second thing we learned, and it happened just a few months after we were in office, and the  U.S.S. Iowa had a terrible explosion and I think over 100 sailors were killed, a terrible accident.  The President was going to speak to the memorial service.  Now, this was the first military speech that we had written, and of course it was a very difficult moment.  And so in the speech, the speechwriter, who was a very good speechwriter by the name of Mark Davis, wrote these really wonderful memorial remarks.  And he, in it, used a phrase from a poem referring to the men behind the gun.  And at one point in the speech, there was a paragraph where the President was to say something to the effect that he remembered as a young airman, Navy pilot in World War II, coming back to the ship at night after a mission — (pause on tape) -- and then we heard the President to be sniffling and kind of … And both of us were kind of, “What?”  And as the speech went on, it was clear he was becoming more and more choked up as the speech went on.   And as we got to that dramatic moment in the speech that we knew was coming, and I thought, “Oh my gosh, he’s really going to have a tough time getting through it.”  Well, he didn't have any trouble getting through it at all because he just leapfrogged right over it and dropped the paragraph out of the speech and went on, and that paragraph never saw the light of day.  And I thought Mark was going to commit suicide right there in my office.  We're both sitting there, like, “He dropped it.”  But that is what we learned -- was that President Bush, and I think this President Bush is much like his father, that they have a great difficulty talking about the military and military sacrifices.  It is something very near and dear to their heart, and we learned to write in a way that he could get through that kind of language without breaking up.  But that's what you have to do.  It’s part of the process of learning to write for someone, whatever level.

MR. PRICE:   If I could throw in a p.s. to that one, my guess would be that—President Bush, Senior., is an old friend of mine—That particular one would have been especially hard for him because as a Navy pilot in World War II, one of the most traumatic events of his life was being shot down.  He survived, and his two crewmates did not.

MS. WINSTON:   Right, and he still can’t talk about it.  He has a lot of difficulty discussing that.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   But some presidents, I keep going back to President Reagan, President Reagan, for example, could make an emotional speech in which tears would come into his eyes and then 3 ½ hours later, you know, in the next town, he would make the same emotional speech, and the tear would come into his eye.  And four hours later.  But the thing that was always just so dazzling to me was that tears would come into my eye!  You know, and I had heard that speech … 

MS. WINSTON:   Every time.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   For 11 times.  [laughter]  But he just had that capacity to cause you to share in the emotional content of the speech.  Now, I was very impressed, Ted, with your boss’s … 

MR. SORENSEN:   Which Ted?

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Other one.  [laughter]  

MR. WIDMER:   I’m always going to be the other Ted in speechdom.  [laughter] 

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Ted Widmer.  Somebody pointed out at the beginning that we had lots of people whose names begin with W and two people named Ted.  Let me just show you this.  This is Ted Widmer’s book, The Anthology of American Speeches .  And if you are interested in reading some of these speeches, it’s a very good place to go.  I’ve been reading it all morning.  One of the things that happened in the Clinton Administration, obviously, was that like the Nixon Administration, you had a very bad patch to go through and the President was not permitted to hide in the Rose Garden and never speak.  And that, it seems to me, must have been a very difficult thing to do for you, for him as well?

MR. WIDMER:   It was, but I think you could say that 1998, which was my first full year as a speechwriter, was in many ways his best year as well as his worst year, if you can say both things at the same time, which I think you can.  He achieved an enormous amount with his foreign policy and I think we tend to forget what an effective foreign policy President Bill Clinton had.  Besides Northern Ireland, he had quite an important trip to Africa, still the longest trip to Africa of any U.S. President, an important trip to China.  And throughout the year, terribly serious things were happening that he was handling effectively and his political ratings were rising.  So it was a funny year in that he was in dire political peril, but he was performing better than ever.  No foreign policy jitters whatsoever, and the American people were growing to appreciate that.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Well, one of the things I remember was the State of the Union which came just days after all the Monica Lewinski revelations.  I mean, that must have been an amazing drafting session?

MR. WIDMER:   It was.  [laughter]  I was only involved peripherally; I’d been there just a couple of months.  I was a very junior speechwriter.  But until about the day of the speech, I had a single line in it, which was based on a repair that was happening in my house at the time where my wife had said the best time to fix our roof is when the sun is shining.  And so I thought, “That's a pretty good line.”  [laughter]  That was about fixing the economy when things are— Fine tuning it when things are good, and that line survived until almost the moment of delivery, and then it was scratched at the last minute because apparently President Kennedy had said something very similar in a rather obscure place and time, and it was not a line I remembered.  I truly had just heard my wife say it.  And I was disappointed, it was my only line and it disappeared.  But then the next day …

MR. SORENSEN:   Wait until I tell you about President Kennedy and your wife.  [laughter] 

MR. WIDMER:   Fortunately, we don’t get C-SPAN, we don’t have cable, you can say anything you want.  [laughter]  The next day, President Clinton said, “You know, when I was a kid growing up in Arkansas, we had a saying.  The best time to fix your roof is when the sun is shining,” so a good line has many fathers.  

MS. WERTHEIMER:   But he really did knock that State of the Union speech out of the park.

MR. WIDMER:   It was unbelievably dramatic.  He never looked more confident than that day, and he was probably never in more peril than at that moment.  It wasn’t just that he survived.  In that same speech he saved the social security system with four strategic words, “Save social security first.”  So it was like watching Nureyev, it was just an extraordinary thing to watch.  I just watched it on TV in the White House with the other speechwriters, but it couldn’t have been more exciting.

MR. SORENSEN:   You know, I got to thinking listening to this, I think one thing you really have to understand in understanding the presidency itself, setting speechwriting aside, is that you cannot function effectively as a president unless you're very good at compartmentalizing.  

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Yeah.  Okay, your turn folks.  Chriss is going to make one more comment, but you might want to start forming lines behind the microphones.  Chriss?

MS. WINSTON:   I was just going to mention a story about a line that we tried to get into a speech also, which was a speech -- this was in the run-up to the Gulf War, and the President was going to speak, I believe it was at the Defense Department to employees at the Defense

Department.  And we were doing a whole series of speeches in terms of building support for the Gulf War.  And we had decided in speechwriting, we were going to make a comparison of Saddam to Hitler.  This sounds very familiar to some of you now, I suspect.  But we thought that that was an apt description, given the … Remember at this time, it wasn't that long a period of time from when he had gassed the Kurds and so forth, and we thought this was an apt comparison and we put it in the draft of the speech and it went through the process.  And it came back, and I believe it was the NSC, the National Security Council, had Xed it out.  And I went in and I argued for it, and I said, “What's the problem?  We need … “  “No, no, this is not the kind of rhetoric we want to use.”  I said, “Okay, fine.”  So we took it out.  We went off to the Defense Department, the President got up there and gave the speech.  And when he got to that point in the speech, and though he'd never seen this line, it never even made it into the Oval Office for him to even consider doing it, he got up there and he gave the speech and halfway through the speech, lo and behold, he just ad libbed it anyway.  And, of course, speechwriting was cheering over this whole thing.  

So the next speech we had to do for the Gulf War, we thought, “All right, he’s already said it, we're golden.”  We put it back in the speech, it went through the process.  Lo and behold, NSC scratched it out again.  So even when the President says it, the bureaucracy can sometimes do you in, so I sympathize.  

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Okay, let’s start over here?

AUDIENCE:   I’d like to address my opening remark to Ted Widmer.  I was fortunate enough to be in Independence, Missouri, when President Clinton -- he wasn't President then -- but he accepted the nomination of his party to run for President.  And then the next time I was in his presence was at the 50 th anniversary of D Day in Normandy.  Senator Dole was also there, and he got a much bigger response, a much bigger response from the people who were there.  President Clinton was not very popular with veterans at that point.  But when he made his speech on Omaha Beach, he closed it with the words, “They walk with a little less spring in their steps, and their ranks are growing thinner.  But we must always remember when these men were young, they saved the world.”  And my voice is cracking a little bit and that is in keeping with Linda Wertheimer’s reaction to some other speeches.

But I also hark back to President Reagan’s speech when he quoted the woman who said that they would always be grateful to the American people.  And when I go back to Europe, in Luxembourg, and in Belgium and France, and even when I meet, and I’ve been in Germany, and when people find out that I'm a D Day veteran, they—especially the Germans—they say, “Thank you for liberating my country.”  And so I'm harking back to what President Reagan quoted that woman as saying, that we will never forget what the Americans in Normandy did for us.  And since that time, I have read polls that say that they have interviewed young people, and fully onethird of them believed that the Germans were our allies in World War II.  And I'm just wondering, Linda, I mean Chriss, what has happened to history?  And why is this situation prevalent today?

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Thank you.  Chriss, you want to take a very quick … 

MS. WINSTON:   I’ll try and make this really short, and by using an example.  In working on the book that I’ve been working on for the last couple of years, at one point I sat down and read my son’s 11 th grade American history textbook, all 1,000 pages and some of it.  And this will give you an example.  Part of the problem, I think, with the teaching of American history today is how the textbook authors decide what subjects to tackle and how much space they're going to get.  And so let me just give you an example, and I think this will say it all.  

I looked at his book and I started counting words.  And there was a section called The Disco Generation, and it got 214 words.  And Steven Spielberg got his own section, and that was 381 words.  Nicaragua, Iran Contra, but a lot on the history of Nicaragua, got over 1,000 words.  And Neil Armstrong and the moon landing got a whopping 78 words, which I think is shocking.  And I actually thought very seriously today of using President Kennedy’s speech at Rice University, which is one of my favorite speeches, because I think that the space program is one of America’s most wonderful and inspiring stories for our children.  There's no downside, it’s courageous, it embodies all of our values and spirits and has brought so much new science and technology to the world.  And yet, American history today all but ignores it.

And so I would just use that example to tell you that's part of the problem.  And I would suggest that people read their child’s textbooks.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Let’s try to keep this to relatively concise questions, yes?

AUDIENCE:   Absolutely.  My question is for Ted No. 1, and I believe that President Kennedy’s favorite orator, from my understanding, was Sir Winston Churchill.  And so my question is, in your workings with President Kennedy, how much was Churchill referenced, his speeches or his actions or deeds?  And could you possibly give an example?

MR. SORENSEN:   The answer to everything you just said is yes.  President Kennedy admired Winston Churchill, both as a public figure and as an orator.  And I believe you will find references to Churchill in Kennedy’s speeches and in his off the cuff remarks, such as press conferences.  And I have to tell you that I read a lot of Churchill in my role in helping Kennedy on some of the things that he said and wrote.  And I have often, when I occasionally lecture to students on speechwriting, invoke Churchill as the example of what -- Who was it?  I guess Tom Putnam in the introduction here today cited as being one of my principles, which is don’t use any unnecessary words of which the best example is Winston Churchill after the fall of France.  He began his report to the British people over radio with what, it’s about seven words.  “The news from France is very bad.”  Says it all.  

MS. WERTHEIMER:   I was just checking—I'm not fast enough here—I was checking the index to see if I could find one.  Yes?

AUDIENCE:   Yes, hi.  I listened to a lot of President Kennedy’s speeches personally,and also downstairs a number of times.  And I’ve always wondered the source of two words that he uses repeatedly, and that's “let us.”  And I wondered if there was a history to how that started and if he used it a lot before he was President, or just this part of his way of saying things when he became President?

MR. SORENSEN:   I have to say I’ve never thought about that before, and I don't know the answer.  I learned from the master that when you don’t know the answer, don’t give one.  [laughter]  

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Yes?

AUDIENCE:   Mr.  Sorensen, it’s an honor to speak to you.  My question is related to something you said earlier.  You referred to the American University speech as being President Kennedy reexamining attitudes about the Cold War, including his own attitudes.  And that made me think of the passage in the inaugural address, which obviously came first, “We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to insure the survival and the success of liberty.”  And that quote is obviously magnificent oratory, but it has been criticized, unjustly in my view, but criticized nonetheless as maybe raising the bar a little too high.  And do you think that in the later speech, the American University speech, President Kennedy was reexamining some of the things he’d said about the Cold War.  

MR. SORENSEN:   That's a very thoughtful question.  I have to say that he had the same help on the inaugural as he had on the American University speech.  [laughter]  And so no, I don't think it was a reexamination.  And I'm glad you said that he is unjustly criticized for those words in the inaugural because people who single out those words and focus on it as a Cold War rhetoric forget the rest of the speech in which he said—back to the lady’s question—“Let us, let both sides, join.”  Meaning east and west, Soviets and Americans.  “Let us together join in exploring the heavens and the stars.  Let us enjoin in pushing back the desert.  Let us explore the ocean depths, and let us fight the …“  I don’t remember it exactly.  “Fight the common enemies of disease, poverty, tyranny and war itself.”  No American President had ever said that before.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Here's another one.  “Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Cold War.”  This is from the American University speech.  Yes?

AUDIENCE:   This is directed primarily to Mr. Sorensen, but the other … 

MS. WERTHEIMER:   We’ve got to broaden out here.

AUDIENCE:   When did it become apparent that in working with John Kennedy that you two were of a mind, or more significantly, of a voice together, and that your writings pretty much represented his voice, or captured his thoughts and the rhetoric captured the way he preferred to communicate them?

MR. SORENSEN:   First, I have to say this is all in my book and you’ll have to buy it.  [laughter] 

AUDIENCE:   And I happily will.

MR. SORENSEN:   But I would say that our compatibility was not apparent until the afternoon of the first day we met.  [laughter]  I had worked for him almost a year before he asked me to help on speeches.  And interestingly enough, here in Boston, the reason was—I still remember him coming into my office adjoining his, or actually a waiting room in between—He came into my office and he said, “I have to give three speeches, I believe all in Boston, on St. Patrick’s Day.  How about helping?”  I’m a Unitarian from Lincoln, Nebraska, where we never observed St. Patrick’s Day, but I thought it’d be an interesting challenge.  And I turned out three speeches for St. Patrick’s Day, and he loved them, and I never got rid of the job for the next ten years.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Ted, the other Ted, let me just ask you to speak to the, as Chriss already has, about finding the voice of your principal?

MR. WIDMER:   Well, you just read his speeches.  I came well into his Presidency, I came in in ’97, and you begin by just reading.  And then you learn a lot from your fellow speechwriters.  We were similar numbers, we were up to nine or ten, I think, in Clinton. We had two staffs, by the way.  We had a foreign policy staff inside the NSC, which I was part of, and then a domestic staff.  And so it’s imitative.  You're just trying to get that voice, and for me, the best coaches were my fellow speechwriters at first.  But then after a certain amount of time, it becomes more natural.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   I remember on a couple of occasions when I was standing right behind President Reagan because I was in the tight pool, I saw him change his speech while he was giving it, into a locution that was more comfortable for him.  You know, it’s just something that, I guess, they just get good at it after they do it for a while.  Over here?

AUDIENCE:   My name is Alison Shapiro, I work at the Kennedy School and I'm a public speaking and speechwriting consultant.  My question is I’d like to hear from any of our distinguished speechwriters about the unique relationship between our speechwriter and a principal, and how that manifests itself on a presidential level, especially given the large number of speechwriters who are involved in writing a speech?

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Shall we start with Ted Sorensen?

MR. SORENSEN:   Occasionally, since I left the White House, I have been asked by others if I would write speeches for them, which I have for the most part not done.  And I have tried to explain to them that for ultimately 11 years, I was with John F. Kennedy day and night.  I knew what he thought and what he said on almost every subject.  Between the convention of 1956 and the convention of 1960, we traveled to all 50 states together.  We ate together, we lived together, we formed a bond that unless you have that kind of bond, you don't have the same relationship.  And with a stranger calling me up on the phone asking me to write a speech for him, it’s not going to be in his voice the way I was able to help JFK with words that he was comfortable with.

But I would add one other important fact at the presidential level, as you suggest.  We've heard quite a bit today about speechwriting and research departments.  We didn't have a speechwriting and research department in the Kennedy White House.  Occasionally, and on some important occasions, Arthur Schlesinger would help.  He was our resident historian.  During the first ten months of the presidency, as during the Presidential campaign, that is the post convention campaign, Dick Goodwin was a very good speechwriter who made a lot of contributions.  But the speechwriting department was essentially John F. Kennedy and me.  

And I had the advantage of being counsel to the President, special counsel to the President and policy advisor, as mentioned by Tom in his introduction, so that I was able to take part in the policy decisions, and the great speeches are communicating great decisions.  And I would listen to the evidence being presented to the President and watch his reaction.  I could tell what impressed him, what ideas, what themes, what thoughts, even what words or what data made a difference to him.  And then walk down the hall to my office and put it together in the form of a draft speech.  That is so much easier than being across the street at the executive office building, in a speechwriting and research department with six or nine other people and getting a phone call from the Chief of Staff, “The President wants a speech on agriculture. Who wants to write the speech on agriculture?”  Thank goodness I didn't have to do that.  And I sympathize with Chriss and the fact that the clearance process sometimes interfered with good lines, except on State of the Union messages and on the Cuban Missile Crisis speech, which was a totally different story.  I didn't have a clearance process.  My drafts went to John F. Kennedy.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Would anybody else like to add something?  Chriss?

MS. WINSTON:   Only, you know, the phrase good old days comes to mind because it would have been wonderful to have that kind of a relationship.  I think maybe a couple of things changed over time.  One was the demands of the numbers of speeches that presidents gave.  I know I was working on a book and I called Franklin Roosevelt’s Presidential Library to get a five or six month schedule, a particular time to look at his speeches, to see where he’d given speeches.  And in that five month period, he gave four speeches, which was staggering to me.  I just assumed presidents gave lots of speeches, they didn't.

I think that's one change that is different.  And I also think the intense media scrutiny of speeches, now there's so much.  There's just so much more media out there to cover speeches; I think sort of intensifies that.  But, you know, I agree with everything Ted said.  The ideal is the kind of relationship that he had with President Kennedy.  I mean, you can always do a better job if you're very close to the principal you're writing for.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   I'm going to move on because we can really only take, I think, one more question.  We have planes to catch here, people are about to leave.

AUDIENCE:   To those of you who’ve done both, which is more challenging and which more enjoyable: writing for the presidential candidate or writing for the man in the Oval Office?

MS. WERTHEIMER:   That's a good question.  Ted, do you want to start?

MR. WIDMER:   I haven’t written for a campaigner, I only wrote for President Clinton.  The first speech I ever wrote was for President Clinton, and I haven’t written any after.  So I can’t compare.

MS. WINSTON:   No, I was on the campaign but I had other responsibilities on the campaign.

MR. PRICE:   I’m not sure how to answer.  In the ’68 campaign, I was part of—His key writer, and I did a lot of speeches there, although a lot of these—We did our policy things in ’68 campaign on radio.  We didn't use television, we used radio.  That worked much better.  It was cheaper, and—[laughter]  No, quite seriously, we could buy half an hour of radio for 2,000 bucks, and also we wouldn't preempt “I Love Lucy.”  And we got anywhere from half a million to two million people actually sitting and listening to what was said.

And so for serious policy things, we used radio.  That's more cerebral than television is.  But in terms of satisfaction, I'm going to suggest a different thing.  The first presidential campaign is an exciting thing in itself.  The second campaign is less exciting.  The presidency is very demanding, the campaigns are very demanding.  And my guess it would be more, not so much more one to the other as within each one, was more or less.  

MS. WERTHEIMER:   Mr. Sorensen?

MR. SORENSEN:   There's a total difference, vast difference, between writing speeches for the presidential candidate and writing speeches for the president of the United States.  First of all, the campaign, I warn those of you who want to be a speechwriter, is the most exhausting ordeal of your life.  The candidate gets a little sleep at night, but the speechwriter doesn’t.  That's when he has to work.  

Second, the speeches themselves are much easier to write.  When a crisis arises during the campaign, the candidate can give a speech raising the right question, pointing with alarm, demanding an investigation.  That's no good when you're president of the United States.  You're in charge, you have to come up with the answer.  And every word the president utters is fraught with implication.  If it’s in foreign policy, the president’s words become the policy.  Not in domestic, because Congress has to authorize it and appropriate the money for it.  But in foreign policy, every word is policy.  Moreover, as president, you are simultaneously addressing many different and inconsistent audiences.  Your supporters and your opponents at home, Congress, the allies, the adversaries abroad, every one of them is going to look and listen to that speech very differently, and all of that has to be weighed.  So it’s much tougher for the president.

MS. WERTHEIMER:   I think that this is it for us.  And thank you all so much.  My apologies to the people who are still waiting in line, but we have a group that has to leave.  Thank you all so much.  [applause] 

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What's it really like being a government speechwriter?

By James Doughty

18 Feb 2017

Words don’t come easily to everyone, but speechwriters have a head start. Department for Work and Pensions wordsmith James Doughty shares some trade secrets

Speechwriting is a job quite unlike any other in the civil service. It’s a job of contradictions. You work alone and with everyone, you’re a specialist but also a generalist, you’re creative and constrained, you’re in the thick of it and standing back.

It’s a straight-talking job title. Yet, the lid on the speechwriter’s world is very rarely lifted. For speechwriters, like spies, anonymity is the name of the game. Spies work in the shadows. Speechwriters, more specifically, work in the shadow of their master. Their words are often in the spotlight, but they are not. 

Here are five insights into the world of a speechwriter and the speechwriting profession and how they add value to organisations and the wider civil service.

Seven things every government press officer knows are true Special advice: What's it really like being a spad? What's it really like being cabinet secretary? Six men who've done the job spill the beans

What is speechwriting anyway? When many people think speechwriter, they think Sam Seaborn from The West Wing. The reality is somewhat different. Think less fast-paced corridor walking and talking, more painstaking research and midnight-oil-burning writing and rewriting.

In essence, a government speechwriter helps ministers communicate their vision, policies and objectives. In a world of short-burst social media, delivering a single speech from a lectern to a room full of real people is still the vehicle of choice to do this. A speech affords the space and time to develop his or her ideas, to take the audience on a journey, to tell a story – something you simply can’t do in 140 characters.

What goes into writing a speech? It often starts with an initial meeting with the minister to get a broad understanding of the main points they want to make. Then, it’s about having detailed conversations with policy teams – often multiple teams, analysts, political special advisers and press officers. During this process, the speechwriter is the conduit through which the ideas flow. They are the lightning rod, capturing every thought, every angle and every idea offered up. It is through the speechwriter that those ideas are then distilled, ordered, reordered, refined and woven into a narrative that makes sense and fits together. 

To do that, a speechwriter needs to be able to convey complex information simply and compellingly. They need to bring it all together into a coherent whole that, like a piece of music, ebbs and flows to hold interest and create contrasts – quiet bits and loud bits, long flowing passages and short staccato points, poetry and policy prose. After the extensive collaboration, this is the part where the speechwriter needs quiet solitude, which can be in short supply in a government department. I hear one department has plans for a “speech bubble” – a pod dedicated for speechwriters.

How do you keep hold of the pen and your nerve? For any one speech, there will have been an army of people involved in some way, from fact-checking to policy advice to analytical input, No. 10 steers and engaging those who have a powerful story to tell that will bring a speech alive. The speechwriter has to manage all of these different actors and ensure they are all happy and the speech beats with a single pulse and purpose.

 "A speechwriter can often find themselves at the centre of a kind of frenzied scrum"

In doing this, a speechwriter can often find themselves at the centre of a kind of frenzied scrum, particularly as the date of the speech approaches. This can, ironically, be one of the loneliest, most difficult and skilful parts of being a speechwriter – keeping a tight hold of the pen whilst surrounded by persuasive and often quite senior officials making their case for a line to be included – or more often than not – excluded.

It’s an interesting place to be and a test of nerve. I think it’s always important to remember whose speech it is: it’s the boss’s speech – the person who actually has to stand up and deliver it, whose mouth the words will come out of and the person whose name and reputation hangs on them. They are always the best speechwriter, we just play a supporting role. 

Because they are the boss, it can feel like a brutal and bruising profession at times. You need to be prepared for your carefully crafted lines to be crossed out or rewritten. That’s a healthy part of the process, if a little hair-depleting. A speechwriter colleague of mine had all but two words taken out of an initial draft of a speech. The two surviving words came at the end: “Thank you”. 

Some are based within the press office, some work from home, many work within the ministerial private office – from where you actually get much better access to ministers. Some are brought in because they have a history of working with a minister. Others have worked in the same department for successive ministers. Some are career civil servants who occupy the role for a period of time before moving on. Some have come from outside the civil service, mainly journalism. Whatever their background, many become career speechwriters, choosing to specialise in speechwriting as a vocation.

The numbers between departments also vary. Some have one, others have whole teams. Some double up the speechwriting role with being a private secretary to a minister. Others have experimented with relatively new approaches that merge functions together. For example, in the Department for Work and Pensions, alongside my speechwriting duties, I also head up a team of communication officers who provide dedicated support to ministers on briefing and communications.

Increasingly, speechwriters are diversifying and becoming generalist copywriters too, alongside writing speeches. They are turning their hand to writing and editing key departmental products that require strong, compelling prose, such as green papers or annual reports. In the past, I have known of departments commissioning external copywriters to do this. Departments are increasingly looking in-house to the existing talent of their speechwriters.

I like the sound of this. How do I become a speechwriter? No formal qualifications are required. A flair for writing, an interest in politics and public affairs are important, as is emotional intelligence and the ability to completely absorb the language and tone of another person. I have acted in the past, so being able to become someone else is a real advantage! Resilience and a thick skin are also needed to withstand the never-ending deadlines and pressure that are brought to bear on a speechwriter.

In terms of training, there are some excellent short courses out there for aspiring speechwriters. One of the best is a course run out of the Groucho Club in Soho by ex-Whitehall speechwriter Simon Lancaster, who now writes speeches for some of the world’s top CEOs. Simon has also written a book on writing speeches, Speechwriting: The Expert Guide. It is my bible. Whilst it is hard to teach someone how to write well (in my view it is something innate that comes from deep within), there are rules and recipes you can follow to ensure a speech is as good as it can be. I’d recommend it as a good read for anyone wanting to make their writing have more impact.

Speechwriting jobs are like gold dust, but it’s worth sounding out departments about any future positions in the offing and to register your interest. I also run a Whitehall Speechwriters’ Network and we are always happy to talk to budding speechwriters about opportunities. Many of the big companies now count a speechwriter as an essential part of their corporate entourage, so it’s worth looking into those too.

A final word Speechwriters add enormous value to an organisation. They write with a birds-eye view of the organisation and the wider horizon. They bring perspective, clarity and purpose, cutting through the complexity of policy and making it resonate with the outside world. 

Speechwriting is a job of contradictions, but that’s what makes it one of the most interesting, challenging and rewarding jobs in the civil service.