According to US News and World Report, ghostwriting is one of the 30 Best Careers for 2009 – along with audiologist, clergy and hairstylists. This mix clearly caters to busy people who need a benediction said while their hearing is checked in the hair salon as their autobiography is written.

Marty Nemko dishes the dirt on what it takes to become a ghostwriter – the ability to write powerfully and fast in another person’s voice with the interviewing skills to unearth interesting information from clients. Apart from emailing random celebrities and offering to ghostwrite their autobiographies, Nemko suggests other ways to break into the field.

Another source of celebrity ghostwriting work: writing speeches and articles for politicians or business leaders. You can also ghostwrite for just plain folks: websites, family histories, or Grandpa’s memoir.

The financial reward: A median salary (with eight years in the field): $56,900. Which sounds suspiciously low – are ghostwriters spiriting away their earnings from the eyes of IRS?

For the love of God, can’t we love one another just a little – that’s how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.
– The Lion in Winter

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.
– President Barack Obama, Inaugural Address

President Obama’s Inaugural Address was a measured speech, somber in places, hopeful in others. It was pragmatic and direct in addressing the current situation of the country he now leads. It was less ‘inspiring’ than many speeches he made during the campaign. He’s no longer auditioning for a role which now sits squarely on his shoulders.

On a freezing day in Washington DC, in front of a building constructed by black slaves, he took the Oath of Office and delivered a speech which, as anticipated, used many of the fundamentals of the art of rhetoric.

There was the simple tricolon:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.

and the tricolon with the third term doubled up:

The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms.

There was anaphora, the repetition of words at the start of neighboring clauses:

Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished.

and even more powerfully:

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth. For us, they fought and died in places Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

There was ethos in establishing his bone fides, such as this, delivered on the steps of what remains the grandest of capitals:

from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born

delivered by a man

…whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

There was the logos of the argument, developed point-by-point:

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched. But this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart — not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

And, time and again, there was pathos – establishing an emotional bond with a global audience (my 88-year-old father rang to tell me that, watching from his home in England, he had tears in his eyes):

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.

There was subtle alliteration:

Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions

There were words which soared to poetic heights, igniting the imagination with vivid imagery:

And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

and words which were delivered with short, sharp jabs, hitting home:

The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood.

There were passages that resonated with the references shared by all Americans:

With the Declaration of Independence:

What is demanded then is a return to these truths.

…all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

…but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

With Washington at Valley Forge:

…the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people.

With the Bible

…but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.

With hymns:

…who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

Even with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers:

Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

Perhaps the most telling analysis of the speech are these snapshots of a Java-enabled ‘word tree’ of the speech showing the number of times Obama used “I”, “you”; “they” and “we”.

On the day he assumed the highest office in the land, the speech was far more about those he was elected to serve than he himself.

On the eve of President-elect Barack Obama’s eagerly anticipated Inaugural speech, newspaper headlines are reporting on past Inaugural speeches and millions of Americans plan to engage in the unnatural act of listening to a speech from beginning to end.

Obama, more than any living US President, consciously embraces oratory and the art of rhetoric. A superb assessment of Obama’s speech-making skills appeared in the Weekend Financial Times. Author Sam Leith shows how Obama deploys the terms and tools of formal rhetoric — first described by Aristotle four centuries before the birth of Christ. “They still work the same way on the human ear and the human heart as they did in Aristotle’s day.” His article covers a lot of ground. The main points I took from it are:

Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle

The rhetorical triangle sets out the ground rules for the art of persuasion. It describes how a speaker uses ‘ethos’ to establish their bona fides, ‘logos’ to make the argument logically and ‘pathos’ to manipulate emotion.

Tricolon

The ‘rule of three’ applied in a sentence with three clearly defined parts (cola) of equal length, usually independent clauses and of increasing power. Caesar’s “I came; I saw; I conquered.” Lincoln’s second inaugural with its line “with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right … “. Obama at the Berlin Victory Column in front of 100,000 European’s last July: “As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice-caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.” As Leith notes, this is rhetorical power in pure form:

A double (“Boston” and “Beijing”), leading to a tricolon whose third term is itself doubled up, the whole mixture thick with alliteration. This is very far from informal or direct or off-the-cuff speech. It is marvelously and intentionally musical.

Syntheton

The balanced double words used in “Boston and Beijing” or by speakers who say “young and old” or “black and white”.

Anaphora

The repetition of a phrase at the beginning of successive lines. Consider Churchill:

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.

Now Obama at the Iowa caucus victory speech on January 3rd:

“I’ll be a president who finally makes healthcare affordable … I’ll be a president who ends the tax breaks … I’ll be a president who harnesses the ingenuity … I’ll be a president who ends this war in Iraq … ” Then: “This was the moment when … this was the moment when … this was the moment when … ” And, as his speech built to its climax, “Hope is what I saw … Hope is what I heard … Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire.”

Leith’s article includes an inventory of the debt Obama owes to the rhetorical power of his absent father; to the framers of the Declaration of Independence; to his schooling at Columbia and Harvard; to past President’s; to the Civil Rights movement and the Bible:

Obama sets out to position himself, and his rhetoric positions him, as the inheritor of the oratorical and political traditions of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and Jesus Christ.

Leith concludes by remarking the scorn republican’s poured on Obama as “a person of words” and “an elitist who works with words” – while championing the inarticulate leaders they admire (Bush, Palin and the rest). Let’s not forget, as I blogged in February, Hilary Clinton also criticized him as someone who just “gives speeches”.

It’ll be interesting to see the effect a US President with such a command of rhetoric will have on the general level of discourse in the political and commercial arenas. For too long in this country our politician’s and CEO’s have avoided eloquence as something unworthy, untrustworthy, vaguely “European”. They were proud of being plain spoken. Of being a man or woman of the people. That refusal to heed Aristotle’s simple techniques might have worked until now.

The bar has been raised.

A fascinating essay by Paul Greenberg in the Sunday New York Times notes that there Are 185,000 people in the United States “who support themselves primarily as writers of books, plays, poetry, speeches and other literary matter.” They earn an average $38,000 a year from their employment. The industry suffers from overcapacity and for a mere $37 billion, Greenberg suggests with tongue firmly in cheek, could be bailed out with government money that would pay writers to cease production and raise the incomes of those who remain.

The counter-precedent in 1930’s was FDR’s Federal Writers Project where 6,000 unemployed writers were put to work writing guidebooks and collating oral histories.

The challenge for any bail out program aimed at reducing overcapacity, notes Greenberg, would be ensuring writers actually cease writing. Most writers, unlike auto-industry workers or Wall Street bankers, are in love with their craft and would be unlikely to take money in exchange for allowing their pages to lie fallow.

A core aspect of the written word since the dawn of the alphabet has been people’s love of creating texts for their own sake. Leonard Shlain notes in The Alphabet Versus the Goddess
that

The written word is essentially immortal. To a hyper-conscious primate who had become aware that death was inevitable, the discovery of a method to project oneself beyond a single life span seemed nothing less than miraculous.

For those of us who need to put bread on the table as well as celebrate the miraculous in our work, a nice compromise would be the Irish system where creative artists and writers do not pay tax on their earnings. More a Dáil Out than a Bail Out.

I spent four days in the desert in mid-November at the National Speakers Association (NSA) Fall Conference. This is a much smaller affair than the big Summer Convention, with only around 250 registered. We stayed at the sprawling Doubletree Scottsdale, right by Camelback Mountain. Stetson-wearing Mama’s drove their SUV’s past the Saguaro outside the compound.

On Thursday Bob Pike did a pre-conference workshop Who Else Wants to Be One of the Highest Paid Professional Speakers in Their Niche? This was wonderfully well-facilitated learning experience by one of the champion trainers in the country. I’ve already implemented many suggestions from his workshop in a proposal I submitted last week and, hey, I got the business!

Marketing Intensives

On the Friday and Saturday I attended the marketing intensive tracks. Phenomenal value. These two all-day sessions were different strokes for different folks. Bob Smith – Surefire Proven Ways to Out-Think, Out-Maneuver and Out-Market Your Competition filled 20 pages of my notebook with action items and to-do’s. On Saturday Steve Miller stayed true-to-form as a maverick and did not record his material; there were too many ‘trade secrets’ being shared. One tip that I immediately followed-up on was to buy a Flip Mino video camera so I can add more You Tube videos to my blogging and podcasting mix.

Top Eight Sessions

What of the rest of the Conference? Here’s a list of the the eight most popular sessions (as shown in the post-conference wrap session where people listed take-away’s from each session – these eight had the most post-it notes on the wall-charts – apart from Bob & Steve’s Marketing intensives that is.) I’ve placed my order for a copy of each of them for my continuing education.

Note: each session link is to the recording that ANYONE – NSA member or not – can purchase on CD or as an MP3 download.

1. Ford Saeks – Mega Session: Social Media Marketing Secrets of Growing Your Speaking Business
2. Aldonna Ambler, CMC, CSP – Mega Session: The Strategic Working Session YOU Need Right Now–Evaluate How You and Your Business Are Really Doing
3. Francis Bologna, CPA and Vern Hoven, CSP, MT, CPAE – New Roads to Wealth and Opportunity for the Professional Speaker
4. Becky Pike Pluth – Teaching From Tinseltown: How to Use Movie Clips to Teach and Train
5. Heather Lutze – Become the Easiest Speaker to Find – Online! Learn how to achieve 1st-Page Search Engine Presense Using the FindAbility Formula!™
6. Robert Bradford, MBA, CSP – Mega Session: Sell Your Speaking When You Stink at Sales: How to Stand Out in the Speaking Marketplace
7. David Greenberg, CSP – Secrets to Creating a Killer Speech and Earning a Ton of Money Now!
8. Dianna Booher, MA, CSP, CPAE – Writing in Layers: Developing a Creative, Quality Book Quickly

Think for a moment of corporate America in terms of Medieval England.

This is of course quite ridiculous. We’ve come a such a long way since the 14th Century. Back in the Dark Ages literacy was at all-time low. A minority of the population held a passport and had traveled overseas. The rabble was distracted by jousting, feasting and Mystery Plays. And the King gave speeches no-one listened to.

I can’t possibly imagine what this era of history has in common with our own.

But what if? What if we did imagine?

What roles would we all play? What do the characters in the Canterbury Tales, or Monty Python and the Holy Grail tell us about life today?

Obviously the CEO is the King (or, in rare cases, the Queen). An enlightened monarch or raging despot ruling over the organization. The EVPs and SVPs are the Barons at Court, consumed by intrigue and power plays. Sales managers are the Knights, conquering new territory. The staff are serfs and peasants, laboring in cubicle farms.

What about the speechwriter? What roles best suit the speechwriter in this Medieval analogy?

Actually, there’s quite a number which fit the job description.

For starters, how about the speechwriter as the Motley Fool?

The Motley Fool

The fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down,
And the eyes in his head,
See the world spinning ’round.
– The Beatles: Fool on the Hill

The Fool in the Medieval Court stands behind King’s throne. While Barons and Knights give measured advice the Fool whispers in the King’s ear “That’s boring. Rubbish! Claptrap! The people won’t buy it. You’ll have to spice it up to keep their attention at the Guild Hall Luncheon tomorrow. Make ’em laugh my liege. Tell ’em a story.”

The Fool adds Laughter! Humor! Interest! He has King’s ear, for the moment. The King tolerates him (just) and values his fresh point of view.

The role of the Motley Fool is politically cool. You get to hang out with the powerful and mighty in the land. You might even spend time with the King on the Corporate Jet. But never forget that you’re the only person in the room without 5,000 serfs reporting to you and a quarterly number to make.

Screw up and it’s “Off with his head!”

As Robert Schlesinger said about his role in JFK’s White House, speechwriters counter the “diplomatic blandness” the State Department bureaucracy produced.

Lessons for Speechwriters as Fools

• Step outside the corporate bureaucracy.
• Look at issues and topics with fresh eyes.
• Inject humor, levity, tell stories – audiences love it.
• Have the courage to speak frankly to the powerful.
• Don’t show fear when the King growls.

Enough with the Jester. What other role characterizes the job of an Executive Communications Manager (aka Speechwriter) in today’s corporation? How about …

The Ploughman

Businessmen they drink my wine
Ploughmen dig my earth
– Dylan: All Along The Watchtower

A world away from the gilded Court, Ploughmen till the fields. Tedious but necessary work plays a large part in speechwriting. Doing research. Fact-checking. Ploughing through the background papers which spew from Subject Matter Experts like weeds sprouting on a April morning after a few sweet showers.

Lessons for Speechwriters as Ploughmen

• It’s boring work, but learn to live with it. With any luck you’ll have the fields tilled by nightfall and the King will invite you to the feast that evening.
• Have systems in place to take care of the boring stuff. Tracking forms; checklists; everything to speed the plough.
• Divide up tasks. It’s less overwhelming to focus on today’s furrow than worry about the rest of the forty-acre field.
• Take breaks, quaff ale, be strong behind the plough.

The Fisherman

Fish supplemented the Medieval diet. Carp was delicacy plucked from the castle moat by Fishermen. It’s always fun to throw a few lines in the water and see what slippery items of information you can catch. Today’s fisherman uses email and voice mail to leave requests for information with subject experts across the kingdom. Bait your hook with the name of the CEO. (“I’m doing some research for a speech Mark is giving next month and wanted your views…”). Always use the King’s first name. When the fish bite, reel them in.

Lessons for Speechwriters as Fisherman

• Plan ahead. The fish might not be biting today. You need to get your lines in the water early on in the process.
• Have patience. But if you don’t get an answer after a few days, fish in another part of the corporate millpond.
• Don’t forget to bait your email requests with the first name of the executive you are writing for.

The Miller

The Miller is an important member of every Medieval community. Without him, there would be no flour and no loaves of bread. Bread and circus’s are what keep the serfs fed and happy. Every Miller is dusty from grinding wheat into flour; separating wheat from chaff.

Subject Matter Experts (SME’s – rhymes with please) will bring sacks and sacks and sacks and sacks of data to your mill. Each direct report likes to provide at least 45 minutes of content for a 15 executive minute speech. If the executive has 10 reports that means you’ll have to sieve through eight hours of content.

It’s the speechwriters job to grind it down, then bake fresh loaves to feed the audience.

Lessons for Speechwriters as Millers

• This is your biggest single value-add. No-one else wants to stand there while the mill-wheels are a-turning.
• Edit ruthlessly – throw out 90% of the data the engineers and SME’s send you.
• Say ‘No’ to requests for more data and facts from Knight’s and Baron’s who pile on the grain as a CYA strategy.
• Keep the mill-wheels turning. Don’t send un-milled sacks of data to the court. They are paying you to sift and select.

The Alchemist

The Alchemist turns base metal into Gold. Like Rumpelstiltskin’s daughter you’ll take their words and sit in your room all night spinning them into gold. And next morning no-one will know how you did it.

Lessons for Speechwriters as Alchemists

• Study the book of spells – text-books on speechwriting such as those listed at the end of this parchment.
• Safeguard the Mystery. Don’t reveal your secrets to the other members of the Court.
• Practice makes perfect. Alchemy is an art, not a science. Cultivate your Craft.
• Understand that what you do is magikal to ordinary mortals.

The Monk

Scriptorium: a place for writing – commonly used to refer to a room in medieval European monasteries devoted to the copying of manuscripts by monastic scribes.
– Wikipedia

Monks spent hours, days, weeks, months, years in the Scriptorium illustrating manuscripts like the Book of Kells. Everyone admires their artistry but wonders why they spent so much time coloring basic information and making it, actually, harder to comprehend.

That was then. This is now.

The speechwriter today spends hours, weeks, months, years in front of the computer illustrating presentations in PowerPoint. Future archeologists will gaze in wonder at the endless decks of slides. Beautiful, mindless illustrations of…what? Will anyone be able to comprehend these charts in the future? Can members of the audience comprehend them today?

Who cares. Monks may have had a diet of thin gruel, but illustrated manuscripts occupied them on winter evenings.

Lessons for Speechwriters as Monks

• Learn cutting-edge PowerPoint skills. Take time to study and learn techniques.
• Develop a good relationship with your graphics team who support you in this.
• Read two of the Bibles of the modern era: Nancy Duarte’s slide:ology and Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen

The Wandering Minstrel

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to.
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me,
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you.
– Dylan: Mr. Tambourine Man

OK. I saved the best for last. All of the previous roles are aspects of life at Court, inside the hierarchical corporate world, bound by proscribed roles and strict protocols.

The Wandering Minstrel travels the land a free man composing sonnets and madrigals for clients.

Today the speechwriter as consultant wanders freely, far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow. If this sounds like the life for you, there’s important lessons you need to learn.

Lessons for Speechwriters as Minstrel

• Aim for niche markets. Become an expert in a specific industry. You’ll make good money if your expertize is an inch wide and a mile deep.
• Work fast, bill clients a flat fee, clean up and move on (just like Joe the Plumber).
• Stay at the top of your game. You have to be good, darned good.
• Work by referrals. People love to hire a Minstrel who has performed for the crowned heads of Europe.

That’s the end of my tour of the Middle Ages. If you’d like to hear how this sounded when I delivered it as a talk to a District 57 Toastmasters meeting in Oakland, California, on November 15th 2008, click on the podcast icon below. (Since this is 35 minute presentation, you might prefer to choose the Download option to save it to your computer.)

Book of Spells

Here’s some reference books I keep close by:

• Writing Effective Speeches, by Henry Ehrlich Practical advice from a master of the craft.
• Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln, by James C . Humes Notes from Nixon’s ‘Rose Garden speechwriter’ with an anglophile twist.
• Say It Like Shakespeare, by Thomas Leech Speechwriting illustrated by the dramaturgy of the Bard.
• Powerwriting, by Suzan St Maur UK-based St Maur offers advice on business writing in general.
• Writing Great Speeches, by Alan M. Perlman Experienced corporate speechwriter shares his secrets.
• Speeches That Changed the World: The Stories and Transcripts of the Moments That Made History Study the text of great speeches.

As useful as reading books is, you should also spend time listening to speeches. Here’s a list of 100 great ones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:06 — 7.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

NSA/NC Meeting Report: Saturday November 1, 2008

Over 75 members and guests of the Northern California Chapter of the National Speakers Association attended Saturday’s meeting at the Burlingame Hyatt. The meeting theme was ‘Telling it like it is – selling it like it is’.

Selling it like it is

National President Sam Silverstein, CSP brought his No More Excuses approach to an interactive session.

Sam’s marketing and sales expertise focused a wide-ranging discussion on:

• How to get the most value out of NSA?
• How to pick a niche market?
• How to best invest time and resources in our speaking business?
• What’s the effect of changes in the economy and technology?

Sam used a powerful conceptual framework illustrated with a Venn diagram of three equilateral triangles to show how we can position ourselves for success:

• What are you GOOD at? Avoid the common mistake of not valuing this.
• What do you LOVE?
• How do you make MONEY?

The point where these three overlap is your ‘Power Core’. It’s bounded by knowing WHAT you deliver of value to customers; WHO you deliver to and HOW you deliver products and services.

For NSA members, the #1 thing you deliver is a speech. Simply record this to make an audio file and deliver a CD, then transcribe it and deliver an article or booklet. Multiple streams of income follow.

Sam recommended we read The E-myth Revisted

Telling it like it is

NSA/NC member Linda Vanderwold, CSP delivered two presentations which showed how to develop content that tells it like it is.

As a professional speechwriter, I found her material incredibly useful.

Her first session detailed the value of mind map diagrams. Many people use free-form mind-mapping on a blank sheet of paper. Others invest in high-tech mind-mapping software.

Linda has structured a mid-tech solution. She’s developed a series of templates to use either in hard-copy or an a PowerPoint file. These VanWrite Maps allow us to write less and say more.

This example enables us to set priorities – choose a menu for each day of the week; plan a vacation or list items to pack

There’s a series of maps available for free download.

I’ll make use of Linda’s mind-maps to plan my next writing assignment and FAX the outline in map form to the client for instant verification that the project is on the right track.

As good as Linda’s morning session was, the afternoon session blew me away altogether. It also made it a challenge to write this blog entry! (Checked with the trial version of the Sentence Aerobics software.)

Linda took us through her unique Sentence Aerobics system which is the core of her VanWrite method. This is based on actual business documents, not academic theory. Linda conducted primary research to define “strong” and “weak” business writing. Then she “bottled” her observations in objective, measurable fashion, and formulated a very easy-to-take cure for the business communicator’s headache.

Her presentation, full of humor and sparkling wit, kept those who stayed wanting more.

Oops, I meant to write:

Her humorous and witty presentation kept those who stayed wanting more.

Thanks Linda!

Review: White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters

A review of a book which details the activities of White House Ghosts is appropriate not because it is Halloween; rather, it is appropriate because we are on the eve of a long overdue change in the Presidency. The Ghosts described in this book are not the spooky variety; they are ghost-writers – the professional speech writers whose job it is to put words into the mouth of the person occupying the most powerful office on earth. Hopefully they’ll soon have a more eloquent practitioner of spoken English to work with than the poor creatures who have had to avoid stepping on terms like ‘misunderestimated’.

The book describes the men and women who acted as speech writers to every President from FDR in 1932 to George W. Bush in 2001. Each administration is given a chapter. Each President’s relationship with his speech writers is outlined with an analysis of one or more key speeches. Sometimes an Inaugural Address; sometimes the State of the Union address; or a speech on foreign or domestic policy; once a resignation speech.

What’s fascinating is the unique relationship each President had with his speech writers and other close advisers. The games they played. The office politics. The late nights. Who ‘owned’ the speech and at what point and to what extent the President gave direction. The best were intimately involved. Sorensen and Kennedy were so close that someone observed “When Jack is wounded, Ted bleeds.” Carter kept speech writers at arms-length and “didn’t much like the idea of using them, ever.” It showed.

In some administrations, White House staffers would rail against the power of a speech writer to make policy. In others, the speech writers were emasculated scribes left out in the cold.

What’s absolutely fascinating for anyone who has worked in communications in large commercial organizations is how eerily familiar many of the trials and tribulations of the role supporting a CEO is to that of the White House Ghosts. Here’s some which had a familiar ring:

• Eisenhower’s speech writer Bryce Harlow only agreed to take on the role “on the condition that he get to spend a great deal of time around the president so as to best understand how Ike liked to express himself, what his concerns were, how to capture the man’s voice.” (p. 82)
• Eisenhower advising Harlow not to circulate a speech too widely for review. Ike himself was a speech writer (for MacArthur in the Philippines) and is quoted as saying “..one thing I know: If you put ten people to work on a speech, they’ll kill anything in it that has any character.” (p.85)
• JFK used speechwriters to counter the “diplomatic blandness” the State Department bureaucracy produced. Echoing the same tin ear that many high-tech Product Marketing departments have when asked to submit speaking points for a CEO speech, the recipe the State Department used “was evidently to take a handful of cliches…repeat at five minute intervals…stir in the dough of the passive voice…and garnish with self-serving rhetoric.” (p.131)
• Speech writers in the Kennedy White House influenced strategy and policy “The two roles – writer and policymaker – were symbiotic. .. Active participation made accurate articulation likely..” (p.149)
• In the Nixon White House Kissinger put the speechwriter “through so many drafts with short deadlines and with such insistence on his own organization and language” that the writer said “I’m sick of being Henry’s stenographer.” (p.206)
• Regan’s speech writer Josh Gilder observed that “writing the speech was a small part of (the) job”. “Navigating a draft through the rounds of edits required political skills, negotiations, and compromises.” (p.343)
• In the Clinton White House the speechwriters claimed that the president only stuck to the written text about half the time. (p. 408) The writers would boldface the text they needed him to say. Been there. Done that.

I’m greatly looking forward to meeting both the author, Robert Schlesinger, and Ted Sorensen, the world’s greatest living speech writer, at the Ragan Speechwriters Conference in Washington DC in February.

Light relief from the inane world of corporate PowerPoint in this delightful European satire on graphics gone wild:

The video is inspired by Jessica Hagy’s wonderful Indexed blog.

Media trainer and speaker, TJ Walker, warns against cramming too many points into a speech. “The bigger a corporation or organization you are in, the harder the pull will be on you to add more and more points to your presentation. There won’t be anyone advocating for you to have fewer message points. Everyone will be making a forceful and compelling case to add more messages. There is only one little flaw with this strategy—it doesn’t work on audience members.”

Walker advocates no more than 5 points in a speech, which means the writer has to learn how to decline the request from the marketing director for 15 points, the sales director asking for 10 points and legal wanting some other clauses or conditionals added. Adding points to a speech is the easy option. No tough decisions to make. Pleases everyone in manamgement, but puts the audience to sleep.

TJ outlines the way a professional should approach this:

“Instead of setting yourself up for failure, you need to list all of your message points in a numbered fashion and then go though them all and put them in priority. Isolate your top five ideas. Those are the ideas you should speak about. All of the other ideas you can give in a handout, email people in a slide format, give them a t-shirt with the bullet points on it—whatever! Just don’t talk about more than five in your actual spoke presentation.”

Sound advice. Read the full article.