During my eight years as Vice President, I wrote all my own speeches. It was not a matter of choice. The budget for the Vice President’s office in those days did not permit the employment of a full-time speechwriter. I also knew that John Foster Dulles wrote all of his speeches. Since he had several people on his State Department staff who could have written for him, I once asked him why he insisted on doing the work himself. He answered, “I like to write speeches. It forces me to think the problem through.”
Dulles’s practice was admirable, but most government officials today could not possibly follow it. Virtually everyone at the top levels of government—Cabinet officers, senators, congressmen, and governors—has speechwriters on his staff. They can be a great help to the speaker, but only if used properly.
Generally the speechwriter is a better wordsmith than the speaker. But since he is probably an intellectual, he relates better to the written word than the spoken word. The idea that his text can be put on a TelePrompTer, and that if the speaker practices it a few times no one will know the difference, just doesn’t wash. Unless he is an expert at using that device, the speech will sound just like what it is—leaden, lifeless, and insincere.
A speaker can avoid this dilemma only by spending the time to make the speech his own. He should select the message, make the basic outline, and provide key ideas and phrases. He can let his speechwriters prepare a first draft. Then I would suggest that he dictate his own version into a tape recorder. The written word, no matter how elegant, is different from the spoken word. It is often too sterile and lacks the rhythm and punch a speech needs. That can be corrected to an extent if the speaker works the language through aloud.
Because he makes so many speeches and has so many other duties, a modern President has to rely heavily on a whole staff of speechwriters. But many people erroneously think of the Presidential speechwriter as a modern invention. While Coolidge was the first to hire one officially, Presidents have always relied on others for editorial inspiration. It is fascinating to compare Lincoln’s first inaugural address to the draft prepared for him by his secretary of state-designate, William Seward. Lincoln deleted all of Seward’s pompous language, but he built some of the speech’s most memorable phrases, including the peroration about “the mystic chords of memory,” out of raw materials Seward provided. This is the ideal relationship between speaker and writer. Inspiration flows back and forth; but ultimately, a speech must be the speaker’s and his alone if it is to be effective.
When you have time to prepare a speech by yourself without the help of a speechwriter, there are no hard and fast rules, since what works for one speaker may not work for another. For those who are still experimenting to find the right formula, I would recommend keeping in mind the methods I have found helpful in writing and delivering speeches over the past forty-two years.
Before writing anything, read broadly in the field you intend to cover, including both suggestions from your staff and friends and comments by critics of your point of view. At least a week or two should be devoted to this phase of preparation. You then should set aside several days to organize and outline your thoughts. An effective speech must not meander or stroll. It must march, to drive home its message. I always make at least three outlines and usually more before I reach the point where the thoughts are tightly knit enough to get across my message to the audience.
Once the final outline is completed, either write out or dictate the first draft. In editing the typed transcript, don’t fine-tune too much, because you will tend to take out the color and rhythm of the spoken word. If you intend to speak without notes, read the outline over several times and write out key sentences. Unless you know the outline thoroughly, you run the risk of losing your train of thought, and in the process your audience.
For maximum impact on your audience, concentrate on the introduction, one or more effective anecdotes, and the conclusion.
In the introduction, you shake hands with the audience. This process might include some grace notes about the speakers or performers who preceded you, compliments to the host organization, and references that acknowledge personal interests you may share with your audience. Unless you are a great actor or raconteur, don’t begin with a canned joke; situational humor is more effective by far. Being wedded to a particular opening passage will prevent you from being able to react to some unexpected event.
I can recall two examples of occasions when introductions provided an opportunity for improvisational humor.
When we boarded our campaign train in Pomona, California, for the opening trip of the 1952 campaign, Governor Earl Warren introduced me to a huge crowd at the station. It was one of the best introductions I have ever had. He closed it by saying, “I now present to you the next President of the United States.” In my remarks, I naturally accepted this promotion from the number-two spot on the ticket to number one. Neither of us could have imagined that sixteen years later, Chief Justice Warren actually would swear me in as President.
When I spoke in Salt Lake City during the same campaign, Ivy Baker Priest, later the Treasurer of the United States, introduced the head table before I spoke. When she came to Mrs. Nixon, she said, “I now present to you the next wife of the Vice President of the United States.” I pointed out that this would be quite a surprise to the current Vice President, Alben Barkley.
Anyone who doubts the effectiveness of anecdotes should read the parables in the New Testament or listen to great ministers like Billy Graham, Norman Vincent Peale, Robert Schuller, and Steven Brown. A good anecdote can make a speech. But I must warn prospective speakers that it is very difficult to find one. Staff researchers are most adept at exhuming ponderous historical allusions or quips about what Henry VIII said to his third wife. The appropriate anecdote should give the audience relief after a period of heavy rhetoric, not more heavy rhetoric. It can also perk up an audience that is losing interest in your serious themes. Above all, if an anecdote directly supports or illustrates the basic message, that is what the audience will remember instead of some finely crafted phrase intended to make the same point.
The most important part of the speech is the conclusion. Sometimes I write it first. But usually it is best to work up to it and then to reserve plenty of time to craft it. For example, when I was preparing to speak to the American people about Vietnam on November 3, 1969, the phrase “silent majority” came to me only after I had written the body of the speech.
A speaker and his speechwriters should bear in mind several other factors as well: length, delivery, cheer lines, humor, surprise, and repetition.
As Lincoln’s 271-word Gettysburg Address so dramatically demonstrated, a speech is measured not by its length but its depth. Sometimes a politician’s staff thinks it has done him a favor by scheduling “brief remarks” instead of a major address. But short does not necessarily mean easy. Woodrow Wilson, another of our greatest Presidents, was also a gifted speaker who had the reputation of writing all of his own speeches. A widely quoted anecdote about his speechwriting technique is revealing. Once, when he asked how long it would take him to write a five-minute speech, he said it would take about a week. Then he was asked how long it would take to write a half-hour speech. He said, “About two days.” How about an hour speech? He said, “I can deliver that one right now.”
Except for a State of the Union speech, which too often ends up as a laundry list of the Cabinet’s pet ideas, in this day of huge television audiences with small attention spans Presidential speeches should be no longer than twenty minutes. Those hyperactive politicians who take an hour to say something that could be said in five minutes remind me of Winston Churchill’s brutal characterization of his son Randolph: “He has big guns but too little ammunition.” I have heard thousands of speeches. I have heard many criticized for being too long. I have never heard one criticized for being too short.
A leader should never speak “off the top of his head.” His words are important, and he owes it to his audience to think about them before he speaks. Even Lincoln’s few off-the-cuff speeches are generally considered to have been poor. I first met Randolph Churchill at the Republican National Convention in 1952. Eisenhower had not yet selected me as his running mate, but Churchill, then a political correspondent, had heard rumors that I might be chosen and was interviewing me for a London newspaper. The campaign headquarters was so noisy that we left and sat on the stairs that led to the lobby of the Congress Hotel in Chicago. I said how impressed I was by his father’s ability to deliver such brilliant extemporaneous speeches. He smiled and said, “My father has spent the best years of his life writing his extemporaneous speeches.”
How a speaker prepares depends upon him and his audience. My practice is unorthodox, and I would not necessarily recommend it to others. Because of my strong conviction that a speaker must look natural, I have never watched myself on television nor listened to myself on radio. I know that if I did, I would become self-conscious, and my speaking would lose whatever natural quality it has. I also never used a TelePrompTer for a speech. Billy Graham, among other friends, urged me to do so, but since I had developed the practice of delivering my speeches without notes, except for major policy statements that I would read from a written text, I never took the time to learn to use the device. In retrospect, this was probably a mistake. Delivering a speech without notes requires a great deal of concentration. If I had used a TelePrompTer in the White House years, I could have made far more speeches with much less effort. Still, a speaker should resist the temptation to read a speech unless he has taken the time to become completely familiar with the text so that it does not appear that he is seeing it for the first time. No one will be persuaded by a speech if the speaker has only a passing interest in it himself.
When a public speech is being carried on television, the speaker should focus his delivery on the TV audience of millions rather than the audience of hundreds or even thousands before him. He should always remember that television is a conversational medium. You don’t shout when you are talking to someone in his living room, and you will not reach them if you shout at them from their TV screens.
Superficial reporters judge the success of a speech before a live audience by the number of times it is interrupted by applause. But cheer lines are just speechwriters’ gimmicks. They serve a useful purpose at political rallies, which people attend to cheer, not to be educated. But it has been my experience that the most effective speeches for changing public opinion have no cheer lines at all.
Humor can be a deadly weapon, both against its object and against one who uses it and fails. Starting a speech with a canned joke that falls flat can destroy the effectiveness of a speech. President Reagan was a master at his use of humor. No one on the American political scene today is in his class. Those who attempt to imitate him could not make a greater mistake.
One of a speaker’s most effective weapons is the element of surprise, especially when he is a President. His press secretary will jump up and down and insist that the speech will not be adequately covered unless reporters get an advance text. Many White House aides go even further, earning brownie points with the press by leaking out the essence of a speech to favored reporters. They always argue that this is the way to build up the audience. Exactly the opposite is true. If a speaker has a major statement to make, he should be the first to make it. That means no advance text and no leaks. The element of surprise will increase the size of the audience and massively expand the impact of the speech.
The two most effective speeches of my political career illustrate this point. On September 23, 1952, I was scheduled to appear on television to answer the false charge that a political fund for office expenses had been used for my personal benefit. The demand that I be dropped from the ticket swept the country like a firestorm. The media hounded my staff for an answer to the key question: Would I stay on the ticket or get off? I told the staff to answer with the truth—I had not yet decided and would announce my decision in the speech. The anticipation was immense. The audience was the biggest ever for a televised political speech, and the response by telegram, mail, and telephone was the biggest in history, too. Before the speech, most of the nation’s newspapers, including the major Republican ones, had come out for dropping me from the ticket. After the speech, because of the overwhelmingly favorable public reaction, the situation was reversed. Without the element of surprise, the audience would have been smaller and the impact less, and I might well have been dropped from the ticket.
In October 1969, hundreds of thousands of anti-Vietnam War demonstrators marched into Washington. They demonstrated, sometimes violently, around the White House and the Capitol and in the downtown area. Peace-at-any-price senators and congressmen demanded that I withdraw American forces from Vietnam in return for our prisoners of war. Even some of my own political friends joined the pack. They contended that since Kennedy and Johnson had sent American combat troops to Vietnam, I would gain politically by bringing them home, regardless of the impact on American foreign policy. I was inundated with conflicting advice from the Cabinet, my staff, and members of Congress.
I scheduled a television speech for November 3. I knew that it would be the most important speech of my Presidency so far. I also knew that the conclusion of the speech would determine whether it was a success or a failure. At 2:00 a.m. the night before the speech, as I sat alone in the study at Camp David, an idea came to me. I wrote it by hand into the text. It read:
I have chosen a plan for peace. I believe it will succeed. If it does succeed, what the critics say now won’t matter. If it does not succeed, anything I say now won’t matter. And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support. Let us be united for peace. Let us also be united against defeat. Because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.
The White House press office was besieged by reporters who insisted on getting an advance text. I ordered that not only would there be no advance text, but there would be no leaks whatsoever and no speculation about what I was going to say. I was not going to run the risk of a televison commentator coming on after the speech and saying, “As expected, President Nixon announced . . . ”—especially since I knew most commentators would oppose my position.
Again, the speculation was immense. Was I going to announce that we would withdraw or that we would stay in? That night we had the biggest television audience ever for a Presidential speech. The reaction by telegram, letters, and telephone was the biggest ever. My approval rating went up eleven points, the biggest increase as a result of a Presidential speech in the history of the Gallup Poll.
These kinds of big plays must be worthy of the occasion. To build up suspense and then have a dud of a speech is the worst of all possible worlds. The “Silent Majority” speech met the test. Any doubts I may have had about it were removed when dovish senators and congressmen who had urged me to order a withdrawal of American troops began to wear American flags in their lapels. The silent majority in the country had finally spoken, created a new majority in the Congress, and given our Vietnam policies a chance to succeed.
Before I was elected to Congress in 1946, I had the privilege of sitting with Dr. Robert Millikan, the Nobel Prize-winning chairman of the executive council at CalTech, at a black-tie dinner in Los Angeles. It was a prestigious audience, and I told him I was worried that some in the audience might have heard some of the remarks in my speech. I knew that he was much in demand as an after-dinner speaker, so I was reassured when he told me, “Don’t worry about it. The ten percent or so that have heard you before are probably your friends. Only friends really bother to come hear a speaker a second time. Direct your remarks to the ninety percent who have not heard you. Your friends won’t mind, and the rest of the audience will probably like what you say.”
William Jennings Bryan tried out his famous “Cross of Gold” peroration in his speeches a number of times before he used it in his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in 1896 and as a result won the nomination. Lincoln made his “House Divided” speech several times before it became national news when he delivered it at Cooper Union in New York. Today, because Presidents and many other officials are covered so intensely on television, it is difficult to repeat a speech verbatim without being yawned off the air by the reporters covering it. But an effective line should still be repeated. Just because you know it’s good doesn’t mean reporters will write it down. Only by repetition does a message finally get across to a mass audience. There is one exception. Once you have told a joke on national television, don’t repeat it. If you find a really good joke, save it for the biggest possible audience.
Above all, be your own most severe critic. I have made thousands of speeches over the past forty-three years. No matter how well some have gone over, I have never been completely satisfied with any of them. Only by trying to do better than before can you make a speech that is worthy of the occasion. A final warning: All of these suggestions about preparing and delivering speeches are useless unless the speaker has a message. If you don’t have something worthwhile to say, it is best not to make a speech at all.