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This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Speeches
At FiveThirtyEight — you know, the site that does opinion poll analysis and aggregation based on baseball sabermetrics and has pretty much been treated as a Delphic oracle ever since Nate Silver called the 2012 election? — they’re running a pukemaking pair of columns called The Perfect Democratic Stump Speech and The Perfect Republican Stump Speech.
They asked two well-known political speechwriters, Jeff Nussmann for the Democrats and Barton Swaim for the Republicans, to write the ideal, focus-group-tested, entirely-pandering stump speech for a generic Democratic or generic Republican presidential candidate. The speeches they wrote are based on the positions and phrases, according to polls and their experience, that most appeal to the target audience. Both include margin notes explaining why they chose those words and phrases, tips on how to deliver the lines, and the data they used to decide which positions the candidate should take.
“Here,” writes Nussbaum in the margin, “I’d advise a speaker to slow down and enunciate each syllable, matched with a forceful chopping gesture.” What’s the carefully-crafted line that requires this? Might it be something like, I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! or perhaps, You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold? Afraid not. The line is, “We’re going to get to work.” (Chop. Chop. Chop.)
Neither speechwriter reveals so much as a hint of shame about how deliberate they are in making sure they never commit the candidates to doing what the speech insinuates they’ll do. Swaim, for example, puts this line in the Republican speech: “We don’t need to take America back to some Cold War mentality, but we do need to speak and act with moral clarity about the naked aggression of Russia.” In the margins, he notes proudly that this is really good because,
Declaring an intention to speak and act with clarity or resoluteness is a nice way to criticize the present occupier of the office (in this case President Obama) — thus capitalizing on people’s suspicions that he isn’t decisive or doesn’t take principled stands — without obligating yourself to pursue specific policies once in office.
He published that comment. Proud of it, I’d guess. Just the way it is, right?
So I get it, now. You all know how baffled I’ve been by the insistence among all the Republican candidates that we don’t need to have a Syria policy, we just need a president who’s willing to say, “radical Islamic terrorism.” (Chop. Chop. Chop.) I truly didn’t get why saying that was supposed to help, but now I do. Their internal pollsters have figured out that those are winning words that make them sound principled and decisive. But heaven forfend the candidates feel obligated to pursue a specific policy once in office, particularly if they’ve been elected with a mandate to carry it out. Therefore that’s all the speechwriters let them say. So I’m guessing we should look forward to exactly the same policies, only this time, the president will say “radical Islamic terrorism” three times quickly every morning while turning seven times in a clockwise circle and wearing the pair of lucky socks he hasn’t washed since the Cowboys won the Superbowl. Or something.
I know. No one promised me democracy was a rose garden, only that it was better than any other system anyone’s ever tried. I’m not a child, I get it; all the stirring speeches in the world mean nothing if the candidate can’t get himself elected.
But here’s my question. Why does this sort of thing get a candidate elected? Why do people like it? Read both the perfectly-pandering Democrat stump speech and the perfectly-pandering Republican one. Look at the notes. Try to pretend you haven’t read the notes and don’t know, for a fact, just how much contempt these speechwriters and by implication the candidates who hire them feel for you. Imagine listening to the speech. Would you be anything but annoyed? Does it not sound to you like exactly what it is — a series of overused and vacant clichés? Can you imagine being moved, despite yourself? Do you not feel that both speeches sound like every speech Obama has given in the past eight years? Would you not sense, immediately, that the candidate believes you, the listener, to be really very, very stupid and easily manipulated?
If you would, does this not suggest that Ricochet is very different from the rest of the electorate? If we are, why? But most important, why does the rest of the electorate now prefer this sort of blathering, patronizing speech, when really, within living memory, it fully expected — and demanded — presidential candidates who would if necessary be able to make this sort of speech?
I’m baffled, honestly. What changed and when? Peter, you’d have the best insight of any of us — what’s happened to speechwriting culture?
Published in Culture, Elections, General, Politics
Rather than this man’s ability to make a speech. Which is hard to tell, based on speeches : – (
This probably has much to do with the decline in serious reading and consequent decline in connected and critical thinking. Neal Stephenson developed some interesting thoughts on the distinction between “iconic” and “textual” modes of communication, which I discussed in my post Metaphors, Interfaces, and Thought Processes
I’m glad you think they’re better than I do, that’s fine, but they’re not miracles. I’d rather see or read several works by Marsten, Ford, Webster, or Marlowe before I’d sit through them again, or read them again. Also with Shakespeare there is the question of editing and collaboration that we will never be able to solve at this late date, so I’d also be careful with extolling the Bard too much. His works were highly collaborative.
No one will ever stop me from loving and seeing the great works for what they are, towering works of genius, but the tower wasn’t some miracle. I leave the miracle to the implantation of genius in the soul by God, the rest is effort, effort, effort. If anyone truly comes close it is probably Mozart, but even there, there is so much that has been distorted and hidden (especially by his father) to foster the genius = miracle routine that I dislike it.
Hitler was a genius, and an evil man, but his evil and his genius and his moment in history were uniquely combined, but that is a warning not just an exception in human history.
Also, not calling them miracles makes them greater in my mind.
Also, calling them miracles not only diminishes what they actually achieved, but it also diminishes their culture and their lesser contemporaries, because I don’t think it’s an accident that in most of these cases (all I’d argue) you have a whole crop of brilliant (fill in the blanks) working in a similar genre or field and from this group of outstanding artists, thinkers, scientists, one or two rise above the rest, who firmly stand on their predecessors and contemporaries shoulders.
It also let’s the rest of us off the hook, and that is the worst part of all.
This is the kind of shame no production can put to rest. The only punishment that fits the crime is a scene-by-scene reading of Timon that does justice to the insight into politics & the claim of virtue to make man whole or at least to make man wholly man.
Also, Cymbeline read in light of Julius Caesar not only spells out the end of a world, but is supposed to evoke thoughts of providence. Just like Anthony & Cleopatra serves as an introduction to Christianity, too, strange as it may seem for such an erotic play.
If you think that your Shakespeare, be him one man or a million, had a great interest for comprehending political phenomena on the greatest scale of which they admit comprehension; if you admit that that is finally only possible for one who looks at them also from beyond politics, or how else conceive surely of their limits?
If you look merely to his Roman tragedies, they give you the early republic–Coriolanus--& the end of the republic & the beginning of empire–& then the late empire–Titus Andronicus: compare that bloody insanity with the promise of empire in its beginning!
If you look merely to his English histories, they start with the initial of kingship in an aborted attempt to cut off from Rome while overthrowing a silly king with crusading ambitions which detract from the seriousness of English politics–King John–& end with the completion of that overthrow–Henry VIII. But see here.
David, I don’t disagree with this, but I would add something: there has also been a decline in serious speaking. There are many very intelligent, well read people who cannot speak effectively. I am a decent public speaker, but put a lot of time and effort into it. Most don’t, to their detriment.
Science killed public speaking. The American taste for facts–Ricochet is, I suppose, old enough to remember ‘give me the facts, ma’am, just the facts’–would not have done it. Lincoln & Webster, Clay, & Calhoun had been adequate to the task of facing up to it & facing it down. Not even the TR or William Jennings Bryan school of histrionics could have done it in. Would a sturdier America have survived Wilson’s moralism? He was so American!
But had it not been for science, you would not have faced this new American English, continuously importing a specialized language lacking for the most part in ability to describe the human phenomena. It beclouds the mind; it makes scientist-types unable to see how far their consciousness is from the natural–but then they’ve redefined natural, too, haven’t they? It also makes more natural people less natural because it feeds the democratic desire for a few general ideas that always stand between them & the world in front of their eyes.
& what has science done, so irresponsibly–it has turned academia into a new work of vulgarization. What is college but theoretical & applied democracy in the hands of people who are not quite the democrats in America? Every American mother’s son or daughter now swears by the American character of words & thoughts imported from Europe–from Germany especially, because of the so-called social sciences, especially. Would be insanely foreign to Mark Twain: But he’s the foreigner now!
Great post and terrific questions for reflection Ms B. And there are quite a number of very good responses regarding these answers.
A few of my own random thoughts, humbly submitted …
Agree. I am especially appalled at the number of people whose jobs are *substantially about* public speaking but can’t do it very well. This includes a lot of professors and many executives…I’ve even seen commissioned business-to-business sales people who couldn’t give a really good customer presentation. One would think people in such roles would focus on improved speaking skills as a matter of mere self-respect, not to mention financial benefits.
I would like to see Rhetoric returned as a core part of liberal arts education. Should include (a) formal logic, (b) persuasive public speaking, (c) ability to debate both sides of an issue.
Part of the problem is the fear of making a fatal mistake in front of a very large audience….and *any* audience may turn out to be a lot larger than you thought it was, if someone records, tweets, or otherwise forwards some of your remarks to a larger venue. I’m thinking of someone I used to know well in business: very witty and quick-thinking in small-group meetings, quite decent persuasive presentation skills. Since he became CEO of a Fortune 50 company, I’ve seen him being interviewed on TV a few times, and you would not know it was the same guy. Very wooden. Quite possibly the result of caution.
Sure. So also with politics; so also with sports; this is what you call democracy. The more democracy advances, the more moralistic the audience gets. The more people have to make sure they’re blameless…
Playing on fears and concerns – or acknowledging them?
Sorry, Claire, to be so slow in responding: Have been in meetings back in Washington for the last few days (as it is, I’m attempting to type this on a flight back to California–I the post seems to evaporate halfway through, blame the wifi on United). You ask why speeches like this win in elections, and my instant answer is this: They don’t. Think of the top five candidates right now. Cruz and Ted are in total personal control of all their own material–as far as I know, Ted doesn’t even have a speechwriter–Bernie is giving speeches he himself has honed over the decades, and The Donald? Sticking to prepared texts? Inconceivable. Hillary and Hillary alone is delivering material that has obviously been written by others who were focus-testing every phrase they jotted down. In a given news cycle, maybe this helps her make a headline or two. Over the longer term? It hurts. It hurts a lot. People sense the insincerity.
There is one way and one way only for speechwriters to prove of use to politicians: To steal from the politicians themselves, giving them, so to speak, material thoroughly informed by their own positions and personalities. In the Reagan White House we never–not once, not ever–focus-tested our material. What we did instead was read every speech the President had written before coming to office, spend as much time with him as we could, always (always) listening to him deliver our material to pick up on his ad libs, and studying, really studying, the way he edited and marked up our texts. Ronald Reagan came to office fully formed. We were never trying create a persona or invent a voice, just giving the great man his own material.
Give the candidate himself. It may sound odd, but that’s the way it works–over time, that’s the only way it works.