JFK speechwriter Ted Sorensen’s book Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History is required reading for anyone calling themselves a speechwriter. Sorensen witnessed many historical moments in his 11 years as JFK’s chief speechwriter and Special Counsel to the President. This book reveals the challenges and rewards of such unparalleled access to one of the greatest American presidents.

As I reported in February, Sorensen gave the closing keynote at the Ragan Speechwriters Conference. I purchased my signed copy at that event and have finally finished it.

There’s over 500 pages of compelling narrative in his striking honest autobiography. It covers his Unitarian origins in the soil of Nebraska, to Washington DC and the Kennedy years, to the recent past. While it does not include his endorsement of Barack Obama there is no doubt that his political sympathies are on the left of the Democratic Party.

Speechwriting Tips

The book contains a fascinating number of insights into speechwriting and the role of the speechwriter:

• Speechwriters should have a “passion of anonymity” so as not to diminish the principals’ stature by accepting any credit for the speech. (p. 131)
• Sorensen writes speeches in longhand, with painstaking precision, requiring uninterrupted time, with piles of notes gathered on the floor around him, each pile reflecting a different topic in the outline. (p. 136)
• The six basic rules of speechwriting (p. 138-141) are:

1. Less is almost always better than more.
2. Choose each word as a precision tool.
3. Organize the text to simplify, clarify, emphasize.
4. Use variety and literary devices to reinforce memorability, not confuse or distract.
5. Employ elevated but not grandiose language.
6. Substantive ideas are the most important part of any speech.

Nevertheless, Sorensen warns, “Saying it so doesn’t make it so” :

Rare is the speaker who has the power to make others listen, and, if they listen, to act, and if they act, to do so in the manner he advocates. Nevertheless, I do not dismiss the potential of the right speech on the right topic delivered by the right speaker in the right way at the right moment. It can ignite a fire, change men’s minds, open their eyes, alter their votes, bring hope to their lives, and, in all these ways, change the world. I know, I saw it happen.

Kennedy’s impact on the world

As fascinating as the ‘inside baseball’ view of speechwriting is, the real value of the book is Sorensen’s role as witness to the defining crises of JFK’s Presidency. Supreme among these was the Cuban Missile crisis, the thirteen days in October 1962 when the world teetered on the brink of destruction. Sorensen had a ring-side seat as a member of the ExComm group who met daily in the White House as the situation unfolded. Many senior advisers encouraged Kennedy to invade or bomb Cuba. Former secretary of state Dean Acheson advised bombing both Cuba and Soviet missile sites in Russia.

Kennedy, as we know, chose the option of blockading Cuba against that of gung-ho military aggression. Sorensen notes that “It is not difficult to amass public support for a belligerent policy against a national adversary… (but)… I believe that a president who refrains from going to war may actually be showing more courage than one who follows the more politically popular course and launches military combat.” (p. 296)

Sorensen’s role as trusted policy adviser during the crisis elevates him far above that of any other speechwriter in history. His drafting of key communiques to Khrushchev helped save the world.

The chapter on Kennedy’s assassination is heart-wrenching for any of us alive on November 21, 1963. More than anyone except Kennedy’s immediate family he felt the loss which robbed him of his future.

Sorensen’s view of 21st century politics

His epilogue reveals his utter contempt for the Bush/Cheney policies. In early 2004 he stated:

The damage done to this country by its own misconduct in the last few months and years, to its very heart and soul, is far greater and longer lasting than any damage that any terrorist could possibly inflict upon us.

Nevertheless, he remained optimistic that “a one-man aberration, however disastrous, is not permanent…Inept political leaders can be replaced.”

He’s lucky to have lived to see the replacement take office. It remains to be seen if Obama fulfills the promise that Kennedy heralded.

Virtual JFK

Coincidentally, the weekend I finished the book, I saw a remarkable movie in San Francisco which was a nice visual coda to many of the highlights in the book.

Koji Masutani’s compelling movie Virtual JFK: Vietnam if Kennedy Had Lived emphasizes the contrast between Kennedy’s approach to international relations and that of LBJ and every President since, save perhaps the current one. It examines the challenges Kennedy faced, from The Bay of Pigs to Berlin and the crescendo of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We are shown documentary footage of press conferences and speeches which all confirm Sorensen’s eye-witness accounts in Counselor. The movie implies that, had Kennedy lived, we might well have avoided the loss of 2 million Vietnamese and 58,000 American lives in that conflict.

The movie is on very limited distribtution, if it’s not showing in your area, at least take a couple of minutes to view this trailer on YouTube:

News that Obama is being criticised for relying too much on a telepromter should not surprise professional speakers. The President seems to require the twin panes of glass be there whenever he speaks. Critics rightly claim it strips him of authenticity.

Communications expert Bert Decker has noted that it causes a metronome-like quality to his delivery as he switches from one screen to the next. The solution, according to Decker, is to find a new focal point apart from the screens and vary the intervals with which he switches between them.

I can heartily endorse Laurie Brown’s The Teleprompter Manual for anyone wanting to know all the tricks of the trade when it comes to effective communications using a teleprompter.

My good friend David Murray has done a brilliant job advertising his freelance writing services with a YouTube video that takes you all the way back to the golden days of the silent movie. See the thrills and spills as David saves a damsel in epistolary distress.

Brilliant job, David!

Back in August 2006 I speculated if we’d ever see bards in business class to entertain airline passengers with poetry and epic stories on long-haul flights.

I was pleased to read in Tuesday’s FT that Yorkshire-born poet David Whyte is helping stir imagination in the workplace. He has made it his mission, through corporate speaking tours and seminars, to help businesses harness the insights and metaphors that poetry can offer to broaden their language, improve interaction within the workplace and stir imaginations.

He’s worked with blue chip companies like AT&T, Microsoft, NASA, Boeing and Kaiser. Thus his muse has helped people reach out and touch someone; know where they want to go today; reach for the stars, line their dreams and thrive.

Of interest to corporate communications staff and speechwriters, Whyte stands for precision in language “listening and talking to a group until he is able to articulate an uncomfortable and unspoken truth.”

As I noted in my article on The Medieval Speechwriter, aspects of modern corporate life recall life at Court. Whyte agrees:

“All these organizations are like Shakespearean plays writ large, with the nobles telling their truths from the podium while the gravediggers are telling it like it really is in the bathroom. And every epoch ends with a lot of blood on the floor”.

He sees real value in poetry as a tool to help managers make sense of their work. It enables novice managers, overwhelmed, desperate, hungry for some ground in a world gone mad, to analyze things:

“The idea is to get deeply into experiences where they have different images and metaphors to use out of the poetry. A lot of the images will have to do with being lost, with not having the usual bearings, and therefore looking at the world in a different way.”

Whyte has a new book, The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship. In it, he explores three commitments we have in life: to our partner; our work; our self. He calls for perspective to keep grounded in oneself.

Michael E. Lara, MD maintains a private psychiatry and psychopharmacology practice in Belmont, California, where he specializes in the treatment of mood, anxiety, and memory disorders.

He earned his undergraduate and masterʼs degrees at Stanford University and Harvard University respectively, then his doctorate of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine. Dr. Lara completed his residency training in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford University Hospital and Clinics. Dr. Lara is board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.

Dr. Lara has been the recipient of several research awards in the areas of cross-cultural psychiatry, including the University of New Mexicoʼs Annual Award for Best Original Research in the Area of Cross-Cultural Psychiatry (2001). He has participated in several key clinical trials, as well as served as an invited presenter at numerous national and international medical conferences. He is the principal author of “Understanding the Role of Culture on Treatment Adherence” in the comprehensive textbook, Best Practices in the Behavioral Management of Chronic Disease.

Pro-Track Profile

Dr. Lara signed up for the the Northern California National Speakers Association (NSA) Pro-Track training this year.

You can reach Dr. Lara at 650-592-1229 or on his website www.mlaramd.com.

To hear what he told me about how his medical interests fit with professional speaking and his expectations about the 2009 NSA/NC Pro-Track program, click on the podcast icon below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:30 — 820.2KB)

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A week into the Financial Times’ “major new series” on the future of capitalism and my head is about to explode.

What is it called – cognitive dissonance – when two contradictory ideas live side-by-side?

That’s what reading the FT feels like these days. They still print on pink paper. There’s still the stock, commodity and currency quotes on the inside pages. The weekend edition still has the ‘How to Spend It’ color magazine with full-page adverts for Swiss timepieces and exclusive real estate.

But in light of this series I’m expecting to soon see survival gear and guides to communes in the Oregon woods.

The paper reads like the Marxist sociology texts I inhaled at Leicester University in the 1970’s. Consider:

• “Another ideological god has failed.” (Seeds of its own destruction, Martin Wolf, 8 March)
• “The idea that unfettered, unregulated capitalism would invariably produce the good outcomes was a wrong economic theory regarding how capitalist societies behave and what causes their crises.” (A failure to control the animal spirits, Robert Shiller, 8 March)
• “Our world is broken – and I honestly don’t know what is going to replace it. The compass by which we steered as Americans has gone.” (Bernie Sucher, head of Merrill Lynch’s Moscow operations, quoted in Lost through destructive creation, Gillian Tett, 9 March)
• “No one can read the chronicles of those earlier crashes without sensing – with a chill – that history is repeating itself. The story of the modern capitalist economy is a rhythmic repetition of cycles, syncopated by eerily similar crises …This is not the bankruptcy of a social system, but the intellectual and moral failure of those who were in charge of it: a failure for which there is no excuse.” (Editorial, 9 March)
• “Ideologically, the manifest failure of market fundamentalism is the starting point … The financial crisis has turned (the) old political logic upside down. As the recession deepens, cultural issues pale in significance next to economic ones. Public anger towards Wall Street … has transformed the Masters of the Universe from heroes to villains.” (The audacity of help, Chrystia Freeland, March 11)
• “…executives and their companies have been caught in the grip of a storm that will revolutionize business. The deep freeze of capital markets, the implosion of financial groups and the resulting rise in governments’ sway over the private sector have called into question some of the foundations of Anglo-Saxon capitalism.” (A need to reconnect, Francesco Guerrera, 12 March)

So, if the FT is right, the ideology has failed; the economic theory is wrong; the compass we steer by has gone; history is repeating itself; financiers are moral and intellectual failures, villains even; the storm of revolution is upon us (emphasis added).

Which means?

Well, (dusting off the texts from Leicester) an alternative was once proposed:

“The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. Thus integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.” (Capital, Volume I, Chapter 32, Karl Marx, 1867)

“In every stockjobbing swindle every one knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every one hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbor, after he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in safety. Après moi le déluge! is the watchword of every capitalist and of every capitalist nation.” (Capital, Volume I, Chapter 10, Karl Marx, 1867)

However, that alternative came up short in a few places over the last 150 years.

One thing to consider is the transcendence of the whole panic and crisis mentality; the dialetical thesis and antithesis; winner and loser; boom and bust. Rather than looking for a solution in political economy or the labor theory of value, perhaps a more radical (or root-source) alternative is needed in this time of crisis:

“The root-source of disturbance in the human realm is not a financial crisis, or the crisis of global warming and extreme weather, or the problems that arise with the migration of people to everywhere, or the breakdown of the international system in the United Nations, or the epidemic nature of disease and poverty.

The root-source of disturbance in the human realm is the (by-now-paradigmatic) presumption that human beings exist in the world merely in order to consume, to acquire, to luxuriate in conditional experience of all kinds, to exploit the possibilities of enhancing their own “self”-interests — with no other principle or countering force to which they must be accountable.
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The present world-chaos must be clearly and thoroughly understood – not only as the total and final collapse of all past civilizations (or of ego-culture and the “tribalization” of separate and opposing human socities), but as the consummate critical moment of opportunity for humankind as a whole and single order of mutual responsibility on Earth.
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The old moral, social, and political “order” of humankind is now dead. A new and true and right order of humankind is, now, and forever hereafter, necessary.
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Only everybody-all-at-once can change the current chaos.”

Not-Two Is Peace, Adi Da Samraj.

Duncan Davidson, a professional photographer at the O’Reilly tech conferences, has some great advice on how to look good on stage. He’s based this on his experience watching thousands of speakers over the years.

Check out the growing list of comments which supplement the main article. I liked:

…slowing down is a great thing to do. A short 10 second pause can feel like an eternity to the speaker, but can give an audience just enough time to absorb a few things that you just said.

Also, there’s never anything wrong with taking a 5 second pause to take a sip of water. Nobody will ever hold that against you if you need it. Just don’t carry the water bottle around in your hand for the rest of the presentation.

Thanks to Antoni for showcasing this excellent presentation on advertising from The Economist of Nov 22, 2008 ‘Managing in the Downturn’. As stunning as the graphics are, the conclusion (slides 56/57) is worth repeating:

There’s never been a better time to steal market share than in a downturn.Advertise consistently and intelligently, speak to the right people, and you can gain an edge over your competitors.

To win, you need to be an Ideas Person: with the right mindset, you can treat the downturn as an opportunity. With the right flexibility, you can change the game.

Win not by surviving the storm, but by changing the game.

What Smart Speakers Do Differently in Tough Economic Times

Saturday’s meeting of the Northern California chapter of the National Speakers Association featured a panel of Past Presidents who discussed ‘What Smart Speakers Do Differently in Tough Economic Times’.

Host Barry Wishner talked with:

* Michael Soon Lee, CSP
* Marilyn Manning, PhD, CSP, CMC
* Craig Harrison
* Patricia Fripp, CPAE, CSP

In this fourth and final highlight from the event, Barry asks the panelists what is the one piece of advice the audience should implement on Monday morning.

In the video you’ll hear:

* Why you should call your 10 most loyal customers – now!
* How to convince a client they would be crazy *not* to hire you
* The one question to ask when a client says they found you on Google
* How to improve your skills as a professional speaker
… and much more …

What Smart Speakers Do Differently in Tough Economic Times

Saturday’s meeting of the Northern California chapter of the National Speakers Association featured a panel of Past Presidents who discussed ‘What Smart Speakers Do Differently in Tough Economic Times’.

Host Barry Wishner talked with:

* Michael Soon Lee, CSP
* Marilyn Manning, PhD, CSP, CMC
* Craig Harrison
* Patricia Fripp, CPAE, CSP

In this video, the third highlight from the event, Barry asks the panelists to share what’s the greatest risk they’ve ever taken and what’s the funniest thing that ever happened to them onstage.

In the video you’ll hear:

* How Marilyn Manning ‘worked the room’ when the room was filled with armed police…
* Which of the panelists has appeared in Playgirl…
* Backstage stories from Patricia Fripp on the time she descended onto a stage from a spaceship, dressed as Wonder Woman…