The Claire and Peter Speechwriting Shop
"In a perfect world," Claire wrote yesterday, inviting me to help her compose a presidential address, "[Obama] would deliver a clarifying speech on the subject [of Israel and anti-Semitism], one that like the Brandenburg Gate address would have the capacity to convey a moral shock. It would deliver the message that anti-Semitism is an unspeakable evil, a present danger not only to the Jews but to the entire world."
That Brandenburg Gate address took more than a month of work--several days of research; a trip to Berlin; more research; a week of writing, at the end of which I'd produced a thoroughly mediocre draft, rendering the central passage, incredibly enough, in German ("Herr Gorbachev, machen Sie diese Tor auf!"); another week of writing, at the end of which I'd finally produced the first really clean and acceptable draft, having the sense, at last, to render the line in English ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"); a meeting with the President; and, finally, three weeks of constant fighting to fend off repeated attempts by State and the NSC to rewrite the darned thing--and, if Claire and I were to spend that sort of time on this project, even the most enthusiastic Ricochet readers would have lost interest long before we'd finished.
But the first step in writing a presidential address--this was always my first step, anyway--is simply to pull together a folder of materials. Stuff you'd think the President would like if he had the time to read it and stuff you like yourself. Good arguments. Compelling writing. And as soon as I came across Claire's invitation, my mind went back to an item that appeared in the Wall Street Journal earlier this summer. In the old days, I'd have picked up my scissors, clipped it out, and made it the first item I dropped in the folder.
"Israel: A Normal Country," was a statement signed by half a dozen people, including former prime ministers of Spain and Northern Ireland and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. And my, did it ever say a lot of what needs saying. For instance:
Israel is a normal, Western democracy and should be treated as such. Its parliamentary system, legal traditions, education and scientific research facilities, and cultural achievements are as fundamental to it as to any other Western society....
[A]ttempts to question Israel's basic legitimacy as a Jewish state in the Middle East are unacceptable to people who support liberal democratic values....Israel does not derive its legitimacy, as some claim, from sympathy over the Holocaust. Instead, it derives legitimacy from international law and from the same right to self-determination claimed by all nations.
Israel, normal. Not a country that must continuously justify its very existence or apologize for defending its own citizens, but a democratic, free-market polity that is--to use the word again--normal. After dropping that clipping in my folder, I'd have jotted a few notes. "Tone: confident and calm. Defending Israel with heat or passion would play into hands of opposition. Wd suggest that Israel special case. Whole idea here: Israel as normal--as much a given--as, say, Canada."
An okay start, Claire?
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Re: The Claire and Peter Speechwriting Shop
I'm a little biased here, but I thought George W. Bush's speech to the Knesset (written by a young speechwriter named Chris Michel) was exactly the kind of speech Claire is calling for. I can say this because I had no hand in this speech at all; it was written a few months after I'd already left the White House.
Beware, however, what you wish for. I wouldn't want an Obama speech on the anti-Semitism. You may very well get one -- but that's all you would get. It would be a substitute for tough choices instead of a guarantee that he was willing to make them.
Edited on Jul 15, 2010 at 1:03pmMay '10
Re: The Claire and Peter Speechwriting Shop
Oh, good. Present at the birth, watching historic sausage be made from the bleachers here!
Re: The Claire and Peter Speechwriting Shop
This is fascinating stuff. (And to think all these years I just assumed you White House speechwriters sat around the office, like the old Dick Van Dyke Show, spitballing ideas until an hour before the speech was to be given.....)
But the difference, I think, between a Ronald Reagan speech (and, for that matter, a George W. Bush speech) and a Barack Obama speech is that whatever you thought of Reagan (or Bush), you knew the guy meant the words he said. You knew the words were a prelude to action.
So, a question to the speechwriters: did that make your job harder or easier, do you think?
Re: The Claire and Peter Speechwriting Shop
Peter, I understand your point about the wisdom of adopting a cool, reasonable tone in the speech--I get it that the subliminal message such a tone would convey is important: "It's a country, folks. Just like any other. That's what cool, reasonable people like me think, so why are you so exercised about it?" But again, I don't think the issue is just Israel. It's the rising level of a kind of anti-Semitism that most of us imagined, growing up, had been erased from the modern world. It seems to me that since September 11, paradoxically, the thrum of this garbage has been ratcheting up year by year, growing more outrageous, but by increments--just slowly enough that people don't notice the defining down of the deviancy. A story like Eve's would have been truly shocking 20 years ago; it's not now--it barely merits a shrug. And would not a hot, passionate tone be the only tone that might slap people awake? Let's put this speech in the clippings file as an example of the power of the opposite approach.