Posted to findingDulcinea by Josh Katz
Political speechwriters operate primarily behind the scenes, but the words they put to paper often have lasting effects on American history. President Roosevelt’s inaugural speech helped him reach the hearts and minds of a struggling population as the country fell into the Depression, when he declared, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Winston Churchill was able to cement Allied resolve through his words during World War II, and President Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech appealed to Germans during the Cold War.
While speechwriting has become commonplace in modern times, it was not unheard of in the past. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton helped write George Washington’s famous Farewell Address, according to a Fox News blog entry. Abraham Lincoln, however, authored his own speeches.
When John McCain made his acceptance speech last night at the Republican National Convention, he had plenty of help from his longtime friend and speechwriter Mark Salter. Salter began writing McCain’s speech a month ago at his secluded Maine cottage. According to Newsweek, the only speech he looked back on for inspiration was the one George H.W. Bush delivered at the 1988 Republican Convention. Peggy Noonan wrote the infamous “Read my lips: No new taxes” speech that helped Bush overcome the 20 point deficit in the polls to defeat Michael Dukakis.
Salter has had to deal with certain McCain shortcomings. Unlike Barack Obama, Sen. McCain is not known for his ability to give “long, formal speeches,” according to Newsweek, “and it shows in his sometimes awkward delivery.” McCain excels in the town hall meeting atmosphere, where there is no script. The Wall Street Journal mentions that McCain often has difficulty handling the teleprompter and he “tends to be wooden when speaking from a prepared text.”
Bob Lehrman, an associate professor of communications at American University and a former speechwriter for former Vice President Al Gore, said Salter takes a more “literary” approach to his speeches than is customary in the trade, according to the Journal.
Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s speech at the convention was highly anticipated because of the questions surrounding her experience and the surfacing of the news that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant. Matthew Scully, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, can be credited with penning the words spoken by the Alaska governor.
He began working on the speech a week before it was delivered without knowing who McCain’s running mate would be, according to Time magazine. When Palin was chosen, Scully modified it to include information about her personal and political life. He also opted to avoid “ideological touchstones,” reports Time magazine, such as Palin’s thoughts on abortion.
Scully constructed a speech that painted the Republican Party as the party of change, or “reform,” instead of the Democrats, a party he portrayed as elitist and out-of-touch with working-class American values. He retreated from the Bush administration and admonished the idea of big government. In other words, Scully made the McCain-Palin team the ticket of “Middle America” and bipartisan values, while thrusting Obama-Biden to the left of the political spectrum, Time magazine writes.
Scully has a history of fashioning such centrist policies through speech. He was “A former protégé of the late pro-life Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Bob Casey,” and “his specialty was crafting Bush’s pro-life message in a way that would not offend soccer moms or mainstream Catholics who get nervous around some of the more extreme Evangelical rhetoric,” according to Time.
Obama’s personal speechwriter doesn’t have the lengthy resumes of those on the Republican end. But Jon Favreau, only 26, used to write speeches for Sen. John Kerry because, as an intern working for the Kerry campaign, he “was one of the few people left in the office” when the campaign “showed signs of imploding,” according to Newsweek.
Favreau, then a 23-year-old graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., met Obama backstage at the 2004 Democratic National Convention while Obama was rehearsing his speech. Favreau helped the senator fix a problem and their relationship began.
In a January 2008 New York Times article, Favreau said that during the Obama campaign his usual sleeping schedule had been 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. Coffee had been an essential part of his workday.
The difficulty with writing for Obama, he said, is that he is such a great orator and writer himself. “You’re like Ted Williams’s batting coach,” Favreau told the Times. He said that he’s come to know Obama’s voice and, whenever he writes, he channels that voice. Favreau says he looks to Bobby Kennedy as a muse for writing speeches. “I see shades of J.F.K., R.F.K.,” he said, and then added, and “King.”
But Obama is very involved with his speeches, according to Time magazine, as he “takes an unusually hands-on approach to his speech writing, more so than most politicians.”
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