and the black caucus. and that stabilization program for unemployed, we need to do more of that. what happens to a deficit deferred? does it dry up like raising a son? does it stick like rotten meat? thank you so much for joining us. [applause] [laughter] ..

>> including his u.s. senate acceptance speech, a more perfect union -- the address delivered in philadelphia following the reverend wright controversy, and his presidential acceptance speech. mary frances we are ri and josh gottheimer present their book at politics in rose in washington, d.c.. >> in way you don't know it -- thank you very much for coming -- i'm mary frances, and that's josh. all i'll add is that identify

been in and out -- i've been in and out of the white house in various capacities since nixon and be listened to campaigners both from the back of their heads, sitting behind, and head on. and josh and i decided to write this book, and actually we compiled the speeches and the text as written text simply because i think everybody, no matter or what party you belong to or if the you don't belong to any, agrees that one thing that barack obama can do is to deliver one heck of a campaign speech. and that words definitely helped propel him to the white house. in 2008. and what we did is to analyze some of his most important speeches that shaped his political personality and his candidacy. producing this is a joint project -- as a joint project was fun. that's one reason why we did it. ask the -- and the way we're going to do this tonight, since there are two of this, josh will

talk about the presidential discussion in the book including how speech writing as a specialty developed as used by obama, and then the process that produced these marvelous words in these speeches. he will also highlight themes obama chose to use and the process of getting these words together this these speech bees -- in these speeches with some behind the scenes war stories. and then i will discuss president obama's style and the issues with communication during his presidency that have been raised since his inauguration and compare those to what went on in the campaign and the book. josh, please, proceed. >> thanks. >> hi, how are you? everyone good tonight? thank you very much for coming out on a saturday. i know it's a saturday night, so hopefully this is a way to kick off your evening, and we can talk a little bit about president obama and candidate obama and his speeches and be

finish look at the larger expansion of presidential speeches. the week title itself, "power in words," comes from president obama's announcement speech in springfield, illinois, where he was of talking about lincoln, and he said, lincoln understood there's power in words. and that's something i think president obama understood very early on both in the statehouse when he was running for congress, when he ran for the senate and then when he ran for the presidency. he knew just how important every single word is that he picked and that it could have such a big impact, and we know that his speeches helped catapult him into the white house. so we'll talk about that and, hopefully, if you get a chance to look at the book, you'll see some of those speeches. interesting, lincoln at the time when he did craft his words and president lincoln spent quite a bit of time himself, he used to sit on his lap some paper, some long paper about this long with

pen and sit late at night and be scribble out some of the words. now, interestingly, we know that his gettieses burg address was only 278 words. you think how many words there are now when a politician speaks, you can imagine how important each word was that lincoln picked. his second inaugural was only 703 words, all this compares to president obama's inaugural address which was 400 -- 2400 words. the you've been to lincoln memorial, you know that the whole speech fits inside, inscribed on the wall. that just couldn't happen today. lincoln under the power of speaking right to people, of direct democracy. of course; he was sort of ahead of his time that way. most presidents the idea of direct democracy was not an idea that came out really until the 1900s with wilson being one of the first to really appreciate that. early on most presidents, given,

you know, that most of the country was not literate or a huge swath, only a small swath actually read the newspapers every day, every week when they came out, so often they were speaking to that small audience or to the people in washington, the members of congress in washington who could get the communication tsa because they were right there -- fast because they were right there. the if they were at this microphone, they'd be speaking to you but really speaking to the tv cameras, that's who they're usually most interested in, to the media corps to project their message. wilson, you know, got this, and, in fact, after john adams was the last president to go right to congress and deliver a state of the union address until wilson. he picked it up and be said instead of me just taking an address and writing it down and sending it to congress which was the practice for many years, he said i'm going right to congress, i'm going to deliver it to them and really try to begin this practice of direct

communication, direct democracy. the idea of the bully pulpit which you all have probably heard of is something that came about from teddy roosevelt, it's a phrase he coined. he said i can use the presidential podium to actually bully congress into enacting my ayen da. that was his approach, and he used it very effectively. you know, fdr, i think, took it to the next level. radio came about, the fireside chat that we all know about, and he really started to speak. that was the first medium to really get into people's living rooms directly, and he really understood it, ask ever since then it's all changed. and this practice has only grown. today, of course, we know that there's 24-hour news, there are or many stations that you can flip through and get news, and then you have blogs and the internet, and it's just exploded, and there's so much space to fill. jfk was the first to really

utilize tv. fdr, as i said, utilized radio. and then he changed the way we actually used venues during campaigns was, you know, most of these speeches, or all these speeches are pre-presidential. it's what happened leading up to, for president obama leading up to his time in the white house and campaigns are the first time that usually get a -- people usually get a chance to meet their candidates, to meet their future president. and this is something that fdr also got. it was actually tradition until the '32 convention that presidential nominees didn't show up at the convention. it was considered, you know, classy and appropriate for a nominee to show up himself and campaign for it. they with respect supposed to campaign -- they weren't supposed to campaign. they were asked to serve, and can you'd go to the farm and call them to service. of course, most people know that

wasn't actually went on, it was a lot of politicking behind the scenes. they didn't have campaign ads like they do today, but there were many forms and means of politicking, and they did it. fdr went to his convention in '32, and he said the appearance before a national convention of a nominee for president is unprecedented and unusual, but these are unprecedented and unusual times. my friends, may this be the symbol of my intention to be honest, to avoid all silly shutting of the eyes of truth in this campaignment you have nominated me, and i know it, and i'm here to thank you for the honor. and there it went. wilson, too, when he did it the state of the union, people ran ads, i mean, ran commentary making fun of him. all the then-pundits said, this is ridiculous, and everyone said, well, that was really smart. same with roosevelt, and it all changed. now, as i said, it's all really become a 24-hour cycle.

truman in an average presidential year would deliver 88 speeches to the public. so 88 times a year he'd go out to some form of podium. reagan, who was the great communicator as you all know, delivered 50 speeches -- 350 speeches a year on average where he would go out to the public and speak. clinton, it was an explosion to 550 times a year that he would actually go speak. now, keep in mind speaking is not necessarily going just before congress and giving a big, formal speech. every time a president goes or a candidate goes out whether it could be a little event this a courtyard somewhere or at the state of the union podium or this rose garden, it's an opportunity to be heard. and president obama then candidate-obama really understood this. he knew that every single time he went out, it was a chance to sway the public about his message which was, as you know, change and hope.

and that really, he pounded that message day in and day out, every single time he had a chance. which brings me, of course, to all those poor people who have to write those speeches. you know, back in the day, as i said, many of presidents had a chance to sit around because they were delivering fewer speeches to really dig in more as i said lincoln did. but now with the demand if you have to imagine writing 550 speeches a year, and obama did about 450 his first year, it would just be impossible if they wrote all their own speeches. they would just sit inside the oval office all day and write and never get a chance to do anything. so they needed somebody to help. the truth is, actually, presidents have since the beginning had people helping them as ghost writers. presidential speech writers are supposed to be behind the scenes. as somebody who was a speech writer for a president, you were, if asked, your stock

answer was always, of course, i just really do the typing. somebody else dictates, and i'm really just a scribe. and you would never want to take credit for any of the words. that have not your job and, really, they were all the president's brilliant words and ideas or the candidate's, and i would go to my grave saying that. now, the other speech writers, i'll speak for them. the washington's farewell address which is a very famous speech actually just written, he never delivered it -- again, this is the way things were published in newspapers -- it was written by madison ask hamilton, believe it or not. those were his speech writers. then if you tsa forward to president -- fast forward to president harding, he was the first one to actually have a formal presidential speech writer in the white house. they called him the literary clerk. his name was judson welliver.

there's now a society of former speech writers, and people don't remember much of what harding said in history, but his speech writer came up with the phrase founding fathers which we all do know. so that's one of the great things that he contributed. but ever since welliver, presidents have formally had someone in the white house who was their speech writer. many of these people actually come from campaigns. there's always a connection between who helped the president get elected during the campaign and the person who goes into the white house with them. you'd imagine that person or those people get to know him pretty well. and that's what happened on this campaign which i'll get to in a minute. one of the first people who's very famous in their connection is ted sorenson, the late ted sorenson who just passed a few weeks ago who was a very good man and a friend and, really, was very kind and wrote the forward for this book. ted developed a relationship with then-senator kennedy from the matts, and he went to work

for him when he was only this his early 20s, and they developed a quick bond on policy and on speeches, and it lasted until he went to the white house and be he then joined him in the white house. michael again win was president bush's speech writer, and he went to work for him in the white house. and now president obama's chief speech writer who was his campaign chief speech writer is a gentleman named john favreau. i worked with him on the kerry campaign when i was a speech writer for john kerry, and he was just then 22 and out of holy cross. he's now just, you know, i think he started with obama when he was 23 in the senate with the junior senator from illinois similar to sorenson, and they an immediate bond. -- they had an immediate bond. you saw very quickly there the campaign great connections that he's almost -- he's been called his muse or alter ego, and

there's a reason why. he knows his language, he understands his intonations. we used to all sit and i used to tell dr. berry this, you'd sit this front of your screen and throw on your southern drawl, your kansan drawl ask figure out as -- and figure out as many southern expressions you can come up with. we were taught many. you know, my favorite one was if you -- he used to explain the jobs situation. he'd say, well, this didn't just happen. if you see a turtle sitting on a fence post, you know it didn't happen by itself. it always took me a couple minutes to understand what he was talking about. then with time you get quite good at these, and you think you can be from arkansas yourself. [laughter] so i think john favreau has gotten very good at this, and so has his whole team of speech writers. and his process was an interesting one that john told me about, and can john spent a lot of time and several of the speech writers spent be time talking to us, very kind. many, many hours explaining

things. so each speech that's in here actually has a very long introduction explaining what was happening, what was going on this pretty l call context, what was happening when they wrote the speech, why they wrote the speech they did, what was going on with the hillary clinton campaign, and i had helped on the hillary clinton campaign. so it was very interesting seeing -- i knew some of the stories from the other side, so it was very interesting seeing the juxtaposition between the two. and can so in this -- when they were this senate which was a practice that continued for a long time, they would john would go sit on his couch in the senate, in the senator's office, and obama would start dictating and say for this speech coming up here's what i think, here's what i think we should talk about, and be he would spew for a while, and john would just bang away as fast as he could on his laptop, take it away and start working on the speech, and they would go back and forth for days depending upon how big of a speech it was. president obama, of course, is a very good writer himself.

he had written a book at the time, had written a book after law school. he was working on his second book when he was in the senate. he was used to writing but realized like most people at that level they just don't have enough time to write all these speeches. that especially happens on the campaign, with the pace of the campaign trail. late height pizza and red bull -- night pizza and red bull to keep them going. i don't know if they were drinking that to keep themselves awake, pull an all nighter. as he got more speech writers, john explained and the others explained how they'd sit around the screen, around the computer screen and all write together if it was a big speech, and they'd all work on pieces and can chime in. it was a real group effort. adam franco was one of his speech writer and sarah, so they would bring lots of perspective that way. and as time went on, john as the campaign heated up, john didn't have time, of course, to always

travel everywhere with the president. he had to sit in his office and write, so the president, then candidate obama, would call from the road with his ideas. he spent a lot of time red lining which i always found be funny, probably the first president to have a laptop and red line back and forth for those of you who use microsoft word, have documents, he would pull up his laptop and send documents with red lines on the side and that's how they would communicate with drafts. senator obama was also fond of grabbing reggie love, his assistant's blackberry, and he would write at the top, this is barack, and then write out a few comments. this is some of the ways they communicated with each other which brings me to the themes because i think what you do see and what we got from reading so many of his speeches going back, again, to his time in the statehouse is the consistency,

interestingly, the consistent is sayses of themes throughout his time leading up to the white house. again, we didn't look at his time as president. if you, if you read some of the pundits, they'll say there isn't enough of a message now or there's not enough consistency. and president obama himself has said when he got elected, you know, his words were a bit of a rorschach test to people, everyone sort of got out of what he had to say that they perceived it themselves. but i'll tell you, actually, we found reading his speeches up to then there was an incredible amount of consistency. ask, in fact, john told me that all these -- bless you. all these journalists used to come up to him and say, how did you come up with that phrase? you know, it was a brilliant phrase in this speech, and he said, oh, actually, we've been saying that for four years now, you just haven't -- you've got to go read that speech, go read this speech.

he says the language was incredibly consistent, and that's what we found as well. it's a very important idea, actually, that we got out of this. and here are the themes. one, the hope and change. we all know that, you can't have seen that campaign and not known about hope and and change. and changing the system, changing washington, changing the constitutions, changing -- institutions, changing the way we do business, the way government does business, all of those themes. changing the way we approach government. he was changing the war in the iraq, changing the way the tax system was built and how disadvantaged certain communities. so it was a theme that came across. there was also a big theme which we found which is personal responsibility. it's manager that president obama talked about in his books, and it's a theme throughout his campaigns. the idea that you have responsibility as being a citizen for working hard, for being a good parent. ha's something that, actually, from a values perspective we saw quite a bit in his writings, and the responsibility theme in

springfield in the 1999. he said, ultimately, what we want to do is encourage folks to be more self-sufficient. when he announced his presidency, he said each of us in our own lives will have to accept responsibility for adapting to a more competitive economy, for strengthening our communities and sharing some measure of sacrifice. again, very heavy responsibility themes. the hope and change stuff you all know, but it's very clearly directed. we even see when he ran for the state senate, he said, i want to inspire a renewal of morality in politics. from the moment i announced my candidacy for the state senate, friends and associates have warned me of all the corrupting influences lurk anything springfield -- springfield, illinois -- then he ran for congress, the only race he didn't win. he told supporters, i have no fancy response sponsors, i am not even from chicago. my name is obama.

nobody sent me. i'm not part of some longstanding political organization. very proud of this outsider status. we saw this when he ran for president as well, ask it was very consistent. and it was very consistent. into the speeches, to dig in to see some of these themes and, again, if you pick up the book if you have a chance, you'll see we talk about these, and you'll get a chance to -- i really encourage you to read the speeches themselves because that's the way, a, it's more interesting than what we have to write, of course, but it's also the way to, it's also the way to dig into the speeches themselves and to see what themes you find. the, on the idea of change, his iraq war resolution remarks which became famous because he said unlike then-senator clinton and former senator edwards, he said i would have if i were a senator voted against the resolution for the war this iraq. it was a clear dividing line, it was a way he appealed to the

left, and what's interesting is when i went pack and we went back to looking at the clips, he wasn't even the headliner. reverend jesse jackson was the headliner, and you could barely find mention of then-state senator obama. and then you see he talked a lot about change in his 2004 convention speech which is where we all first really, most of america, met barack obama. no one had heard of barack obama really. he was a state senator who was running for the senate in illinois, so some people around there had heard of him, but nationally he wasn't a known figure. then he came out in the 2004 convention speech, and that all changed. it was funny, you know, i said i worked on the 2004 convention, and i remember when we were talking about who was going to get the keynote address. that's what he had. the slot he had. and there were several names being thrown about, and it's amazing that by the campaign picked him, senator kerry picked

him, he changed history by putting him on stage. there's not a liberal america, there's the united states of america. this idea that he was this great unifier came by very quickly, and he was very out on a change message even then. and also this values message. this we are our brother's keeper, we are our sister's keeper, these are themes that continued throughout. when he left the convention, he was mobbed, people pulled his cuff links off. he sold 75,000 books within a matter of weeks. this was his book that was out of print. somehow the publisher, somehow the publisher found time again. his race speech -- then if you go actually into a year later you fast forward into his when he runs for president there are a few big speeches that i encourage you to look at. one, his iowa caucus speech. if those of you hadn't met him

in 2004, you definitely met him then. if you couldn't help it, he wins the iowa caucus, he's the underdog, he beats hillary clinton who came in third, he beats john edwards who came in second, and he comes out and says, they said this day would never come. it's a huge moment, and he uses it with great effectiveness. he puts up the teleprompters, he delivers what seems like a national presidential address. i don't know if you remember this, but no one had really done this before. down the road hillary clinton has her concession speech, and it's sort of a small room and some people around her from the clinton years, but it wasn't seen the same way as this great moment of change with this new i figure. and from there he goes to new hampshire. he loses in new hampshire, but it doesn't matter. his speech writers told me they didn't, they didn't even write a draft for him losing. suddenly, he loses because he was up eight points in the poll. suddenly he loses and they look at each other, and they say, uh-oh, we didn't even write a

speech for him losing. they threw a line on top that said congratulations, senator clinton, and then he went out and gave the same speech he was planning on giving anyway. [laughter] it was as if they planned this. no, to, no, these things were just fortuitous. it didn't slow him down. in iowa he gave a major national address because he knew he had all the eyes on him, and the same thing happened in new hampshire. the last story we'll talk about, i'll talk about before going back to mary is his race speech which as you all know was seen as the pivotal moment in the campaign be, make or break time. reverend wright had come out with some pretty incendiary comments captured on youtube, and president obama -- sorry, senator obama was definitely this a bit of trouble. he went out on the cable stations ask tried to extick wish the -- extinguish the problem. they put out some statements,

nothing was working. so he decides i've got to give a national address. so david axlerod calls john favreau and says, okay, please, get going, have the speech by tomorrow. favreau says, i have to talk to president obama. i can't write a national address on race without talking to him on his own. so favreau was sitting at his new group house that a bunch of friends had taken this chicago. he didn't even have a computer yet. he waited for barack obama to call him, so he waited and waited. all his friends were out, it was st. patty's day, they were all at the bar, and finally barack obama calls, he downloads for go and a half hours and can then says, don't worry, this is it for me. make or break. if we do this right, i'm saved. the not -- if not, we probably are going to go home a little early. and they knew this was sort of it. john was under just a bit of pressure. he had until 3:00 the next afternoon to get it done.

he did what any great speech writer would do at that moment, he closed his laptop, went to the bar and had a few drinks. [laughter] with that, i'll turn it over to mary who will talk a little bit about presidential style. >> thanks, josh. i will talk just briefly, and then we'll have some q&a if anyone has any q&a as i tell my students all the time. this any case, when obama -- people talk about him using the teleprompter. the first time he used it was at the 2004 convention speech. and for him using the teleprompter was useful and is because it permitted him to talk without ever getting off message and to use the kind of style and delivery that he uses. and he's very effective with it in larger crowds. and so what obama did was not just a matter of words, it was the pageantry, it was the power, it was the power that came from his physical persona, his looks,

his delivery. all of that. we all know now that he's better in large crowds, and we know he doesn't emote the way bill clinton can feel your pain, and we all know how bill clinton -- those of us who worked for him -- let a tear come down every now and then when he needs to. i used to like to watch when he did that. anyway, or the way ronald reagan who was an actor could put any face on anything that he wished. campaigners, presidents have, of course, different styles and be small groups, his staff has said, somebody on his staff anonymously said bore him. but it's the crowd, it's the rally, and that's what campaign is about. someone once said what he ought to do like someone told jfk is to learn to speak more irish and less harvard. that obama speaks less harvard when he's at these rallies. what he really is doing is using the style of the black preacher. anybody who's ever been to a

black church, a church where there are black preachers as i as a baptist spent my life and still spend it or think black church on sunday, you're used to that style. what the black preacher does, he uses rhetoric combined with substance. and the way it's done is you start very low. the preacher starts out with you can barely hear what he's saying. it's usually a he. you can't hear what the preacher is saying, but there's a text, and there's substance. and then it gets a little louder and a little louder and a little louder. and finally the message is reinforced and delivered, and there's a crescendo. and by then the congregation is all excited. and involved. and then what happens is that it does what we call, we call that rising high, striking fire which is what he does then as martin

luther king sang, free at last, free at last, good god almighty, free at last. and then he sits down. and by then the audience is just overcome. that's the general style. and what obama did with the 2004 speech at the convention which electrified everybody, he became what i have labeled an incipient race-transcendent star. that's what he became. and people saw him. and he cometted with this approach -- continued with this approach throughout the campaign. the other thing he does with good effect in speeches in the black preacher style of the campaign is to use martin luther king and be other civil rights icons and civil rights landmarks and mile posts very effectively, sometimes even when he doesn't mention martin luther king, that's what he's channeling when he does that. so he does it even when he's doing nonracial speeches.

so with this theme, the themes that he used that josh mentioned in the his style, he was so good during the campaign. then i saw this as i was commenting on cnn most nights during the primary season, most forgot, really, what it was he was saying in terms of policy. if you would ask them what specific policy measures did he mention tonight, they couldn't have told you. but, in fact, they were overwhelmed by the power of it and the logic of it and can the substance and the feeling and the emotion. for example, some people thought he promised a public option for health care, but he didn't. and some people thought that he promised that we were going to get out of afghanistan; but he didn't. ask some people thought he supported an individual mandate in the health care reform in the campaign, but he never did. in fact, he differed with himself about that. -- hillary clinton about that. but this was not the debate. we didn't write about the debates. that's a whole different story. it is the campaigning and the effect that it has now to reach

today's politics. some people have asked us, isn't it strange to publish this book now when everyone is saying that obama has no power of words? and that his speech making is ineffective and doesn't work and that it's boring and he's got a communications problem? some people say that. and some people even said at a scholarly meeting recently that he did not, was never an effective speaker anyway. people just thought he was. [laughter] and i thought, hmm, be the people thought he was, i guess he was. but anyway, in point of fact he is a great speaker, and he is an effective one in large settings. but, and some people say that the failure in the recent campaign had to do with the failure to communicate and be persuasive and effective.

well, when you become president, we have to remember what mario cuomo said, that you campaign in poetry, but you dporch in prose. -- govern this prose. and campaigning is different from being president. most of the speeches that presidents give are boring. most of the statements presidents give are designed to be informative. they're not designed to move you and get you to jump up and down or anything like that. ask so all of -- and so all of those speeches that the speech writers write in the presidential -- in the white house speech writing office where each one has an assignment of an area where they're writing this or writing that, they are incometive, but they're not -- incometive, but they're not designed for that purpose. so, in fact, that is the challenge when you become president. you make a statement. you may be a great communicator, but you may not with able to use

all of what you have available to you in terms of your style. now, what is it that obama, then, can do about this? i don't know. he didn't campaign for health care reform. will he campaign for any of his other initiatives, taxes or what messages will he learn from all of this comparison of the campaign experience and the experience of being in the white house? he tried to campaign in the last few days before the recent election, but that was too late. folks were already demoralized. if you look at the power that he does have. his professor style is not the one he used during the campaigning and the rallies, and that doesn't work to inspire people. the greatest strength he has is his messaging and his delivery to large groups. the passion and power in words

as we explain in the book. people say, well, he's no drama obama. well, in those campaign rallies he was lots of drama. will he get his groove back, someone asked me the other day, or and then someone else put it as will he get his mojo back? i'm not sure they knew what mojo was. but in any way, will he be able to fire up his base? partly, it will depend on whether he understands what his greatest strengths are, what his rhetorical can strengths and stylistic strengths are as we explain in this book, and only time will tell. thank you very much. [applause] we can answer questions. who's going to -- okay. any questions or comments for either one of us or anybody that would like to make a statement or testify? [laughter]

>> okay. >> yes. >> sir, thanks. >> one thing i find very interesting that's often not really emphasized but you two did today, how do speech writers kind of -- do they struggle with this kind of ghost authorship or lack of authorship that's being fully recognized? how do they deal with that? it's just something that i'm interested in. >> well, usually there's plenty of ego to go around. so that's usually not the issue. but it's a great question because as a speech writer, you're not there to communicate what you think. you're there to communicate what your principal who you're writing for thinks. and can to write in their words and their voice. and be so that is a challenge.

you have to get over very early on that this is not about you. you're not writing under your byline. and it's a very -- a great question because it's a really, it's an important thing you sit down any speech writer and say if you feel like you need the limelight, this is probably the wrong job. you're the ghost. and when you get to the white house, now, you will get plenty of attention because you're in the speech writing office in the white house, and so internationally there's lots of stories and all that. but that is not, but that's not your job. and i think the you get too much attention -- if you get too much attention, well, you ruin the point of being a ghost writer, and i think that's very important. one thing i remember very well is there was a speech i was working on for the late, for president clinton on the late ron brown who was commerce secretary who passed away, and his wife had set up a foundation, and every year they'd have an awards ceremony. ask it was very important to president clinton, and he went every year. this was a chance for him to

give a real good civil rights speech and talk about what ron brown had contributed. i'll never forget, it was one of the speeches that i was most proud of. i had worked for several days on it, i stayed up all night just getting it so because i knew the president would pay attention, and we get into the loyal mow, and be the -- limo, and the president says, this is great. i was very happy. i'd worked hard on it. we get to the hotel where the event is, and they take his speech, and they put it right up on the stage here on the podium, and someone comes up and introduces him and says all these wonderful things about bill clinton and ron brown and introduces bill clinton, and bill clinton gets to the podium, and he starts delivering this speech. and i'm sitting in the back, and i'm listening and listening and listening, and i don't hear a single word. i said, this just can't be. he thought the speech was so good. in the end he sees me in the back dejected, and he says, the funniest thing happened. he says, you know the guy who introduced me? he took hi speech off the stage

with him too. [laughter] so that teaches you very quickly that you're really not important and that most of these people can handle it fine without you. and i think that always puts it in perspective. >> i don't know whether speech writers will ever get, will ever get to the point where they get recognized, where the president says something about them. if you think about since we're book people here, if you think about authors over the years and important people who write, are ghost writers, who write things with them, and for years to one ever knew who they were. and in recent years people sign contracts where they get to say and done with, you know, on a book, you know, this is the author, the politician or whoever it is, and it's done with so that person gets their name put on it so that people know that they had -- and that's quite common, commonly done now. it was not done years ago. so i don't know if we'll get to the point where a president will or there'll be some kind of

public acknowledgment that the speech writer wrote whatever it is. >> start by acknowledging the speech writer. >> yes. >> hi. >> good evening. president obama doesn't seem to resonate the way with candidate obama did two years agosome. >> let me try to say more about it. yes, i do have an opinion. i don't think he has an opinion about that, that he wishes to share. [laughter] i, i do have an opinion about it. i think it's what i tried to say is that we both try to say in the book. when you are president, i think what happened to him he got in office, and when you're president -- and we both watched this happen -- there's so many things you have to do in this a day. and you also have the idea in your head now i'm president. i have to make sure i am presidential. whatever that means. in the way i behave and the way i dress. it's like him telling some guy

who visited the oval office he liked his socks, and if he weren't prime minister, he would wear -- president, he would wear stock socks like that, but he can't because he's president. so it's down to your socks. and what the president has to say he will say when he has to, but he has a whole agenda of other thing to do. and i think he didn't recognize, forgot or the staff didn't impress on him -- my opinion -- no one pushed him very hard to understand that what we say in this book about the power he does have and thinking about his campaigning and thinking about how he connected with people that he needed to spend some time in that kind of persuasiveness and connection like before, even before health care reform was an idea. instead of giving it to the congress and saying you guys figure out what to do and then we'll -- perhaps if he had gone out and used the power of his words and his persona to sort of persuade people in the beginning

before it was defined by folks who don't like him -- death panels and all that stuff -- maybe it would have been different. i don't know. but i do know that when he is in the setting where he can be persuasive, he is persuasive. so i think that just being president, and sort of like with the speech writing office and the whole bureaucracy of the thing. it's like what max neighbors says about what happens when you pure rock cratize things. it's sort of a hardening of the arteries. all presidents are not good the way obama is with campaigning or persuading or using his personally and his intellect that way. but that's a great strength of his. and can it's sort of like -- it's sort of like not using your greatest strength. >> i just have a slightly different take but close. i think the issue is, it's tough

as dr. of berry said before. it's tough giving 40 health care speeches 40 days this a row, right? people just -- it's hard to keep coming up with new stuff. somebody who used to do this, there's only so many ways you can write about the economic numbers. it's just -- or the education bill. it's hard. that doesn't mean, actually, the speeches aren't very good. they are. if you look at them, the texts are very good. but people get tired, and the media who covers them, they get tired. they say, i've heard this 70 times before. and then the moment of the 50,000 adoring fans courtrooming like he's -- screaming like he's a rock star when he comes on stage, you don't have that everywhere you go because you do events every day several times a day. t just different, you're in the white house now. the cuomo piece about government in prose and campaign in poetry like you do when you campaign.

that's what makes it so difficult, keeping the attention. so i don't think necessarily his speeches or his rhetoric has gone down compared to the campaign. as dr. we are ri said, it's just a different time, and you're not in campaign mode, your in governing mode. and that's just slogging it out with congress every day on the budget. you're going to see this. imagine, you've got to go out every day, and you're talking to -- your audiences are also changing. you're talking in a lot of ways to congress, directly to them to try to move them to your policies. so i think that's part of it. >> and you don't -- and to tag on to that, you don't also have anybody taking up the slack. the obama campaign organized all these people with the structure and people who were excited and so on. it's not like there's somebody else in the campaign who can go out ask inspire people -- and inspire people. i mean, i don't know who that would be, but at least -- and it might not be as good. in order, there's to focus on how do you get the energy, i

mean, inside when they're talking? how do you sustain that energy? what do you do to sustain that energy? and i think that's the problem. but you can't expect him to be out there every day either because of all the things -- it's a conundrum. >> he's got to do, right? >> yes, thank you. you mentioned, you made a comment about being more irish than harvard, and, you know, there's also an anti-intellectual attitude among some elements in the country. but i think, also, that sometimes he uses words that are very academic and that the general public or people who may be less educated, might make them feel uncomfortable and and, you know, provoke feelings of inferiority which i think the race issue might be a cover for some of that. so often i, you know, kind of find myself wishing he would talk more, you know, down home or communicating the same ideas in a way that more people could

get. so could you comment on that? and also as much as he tries to, you know, reach across the aisle and be wisconsin partisan -- bipartisan in policy issues, there are also a lot of rhetoric that's alienating and, i think, doesn't really take us any farther, get us to think more about, you know, what's going on. i guess i wish there would be ways to talk more about substance in issues rather than get outside the right and left framework. >> you talk about that latter part, and i'll talk about the professor part? >> well, i think most of -- my own experience is that when a president isn't tuned in because they're either busy or they're moving on and there are things that could be changed about it, okay? that that's a staff problem.

that there ought to be somebody around who says, what you just said. wait a hadn't, you know? let's figure a way to do this. there has to be somebody who understands it and can say to a very busy person, look, let's figure out how we can do this and this, i think it's essential to do that. and the other thing i've seen all these years is the staff that brings the president to office, the campaigning staff, is not always the right staff every single person to be there when they're in the white house. i've seen it over and over and over again. and can -- some presidents quickly learn that and put different people and do all kinds of things, reconfigure. this is not an argument for dumping all the staff. i hasten to add. but i and others don't. some of them i've seen did it too late, or they didn't see what the pieces were. but the president can't see everything himself, and so there

has to be some kind of staff perspective and somebody that they listen to that will tell them this. >> i was going to say and to your former point, your first point about his language, you know, i think you concern if you actually read -- if you actually read his text, i think what you're picking up on is a lot of his style. sometimes when he's in this a smaller -- in a smaller crowd or if he's at the lectern the east room, he gets more into what his staff used to call professor mode, chicago professor mode. where he was an's e teemed law professor -- esteemed law professor and a beloved one at that. but it's a different type of language, and it's a different -- >> [inaudible] >> it's a different approach, and he's a scholarly, very smart, thoughtful guy. you know, and it's something that clinton used to tell us, very entering, we'd sometimes

submit a speech, and it would have some flaw erie -- flowery language, and he would say words, words, words and slice 'em right out. and can you'd say, my god, it was such a great line. but he'd say you don't need to use nickel and dime words to talk about big -- you could talk about big ideas by using, but without using big words. and it's the idea that you can talk big concepts, very complex stuff with the american people without having to use fancy words, and i think that's a great lesson for think speech writer. i think that his folks do that. i think sometimes it's just hard and, you know, a smart guy and sometimes you fall into it a little bit. >> i think, also, a word for -- since i am a professor -- that one of the things professors do is not to just use big words to use big words because professors have to connect with their students. and if you think of every audience as an audience in terms of who it is you're dealing with, and i think that, again, that some staff people ought to

be emphasizing that if that is a problem. >> [inaudible] >> okay. [laughter] >> thank you. >> hi. thanks a lot. real quickly, thank you for clarifying about the differences between campaign speeches and elected, official speeches. that was good. and also i just really quickly wanted to comment that while i was waiting for you, i read the first speech, and i said, i've got to buy this book. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> anyway, i just -- >> somebody does, that's great. >> i'm sorry? [laughter] >> at least somebody does, he says. that's great. >> oh. just at the risk of getting too convoluted, i just wanted to know you're, obviously, experts on speech, speeches and speech

writers and with, i don't think anybody would dispute that. martin luther king with probably few or none exceptions was, you know, a great speech, gave great speeches or sermons or talks or whatever you want. and i was wondering if he wrote his own speeches or sermons. did he do all of his writing himself? >> i would think that he did because most of the things that he did were sermons that he had given over and over and over again. like the one at the arkansas on washington. march on washington. that's, he had given that sermon in churches. he, the one that he gave about, i mean, i'd get here with you, but we will, you know, someday. most of them were thinkings that

he had said over and over and over again from the time he first started preaching. and there may have been a few that somebody once he got a big staff was able to do, but these were all ideas that he had just been using and themes and language that he had been using before. >> in that same vein, i think one of the greatest speeches or talks i ever heard was that jesse jackson gave at ron brown's -- the eulogy. you know, i was really moved by that. and i was wondering once again, is that the same case that he, did that come from be his own mind, or did somebody work with him? >> i don't know specifically about martin on everything, but i do know that jesse had a speech writer. he probably still does. a wonderful speech writer who wrote large numbers of his speeches. but he worked at them the same way that josh was describing

that other people work with speech writers. he would give them themes and ideas, and then the person would work on them. >> and just with the president, you write a draft for the president, but you go back and forth, right? i mean, a big speech the president really digs into just like barack obama did on his race speech. he wrote his 2004 convention speech be, he wrote longhand. he used to -- he was in the statehouse at the time. he would go sneak into an anteroom in the back off the floor and write on yellow legal pads and scribbled out his 2004 convention speech. he came up with lines on the back of napkins, he would shove them in his pocket. he worked on that speech for weeks himself. so host of these guys, including jesse jackson, reverend jackson, know how to deliver a great speech and how to write one, and i think there's a great interaction between them and the speech writer. >> and just one thing that's really over the top. sadly enough, you know, i guess

it can be agreed that a lot of people said that adolf hitler was a really powerful communicator, and i was wondering you, as experts, if you knew whether or not he wrote all of his speeches -- >> i don't know, and i'm not going there. [laughter] >> okay. yeah, i -- >> we'll leave that one alone. >> that was off. [laughter] >> thank you. >> thanks for your questions. >> hi. i have to say that i'm so glad to actually meet some of the speech writers because there was so much talk at least this my circle at the time -- in my circle at the time that really we were hearing kind of a return to oratory that i don't think we'd seen maybe since jfk or maybe that ability to sort of enthrall and, you know, inspire a group. it's good to kind of meet the people, some of the people who are behind that with barham.

barack. i'm wondering if in some way this has less to do with speech writing and more how his presidency is evolving. but maybe you'd know some of this behind the scenes. i think that jumping on health care when, in fact, it was very prominent, i but what he was doing was, i think, during the campaign -- during the primary there was so much struggle with hillary. and that had been her cause celebre for the last ten years even when he was first lady. i wonder if maybe that, the heat of the primary changed his focus to something that while really important and necessary, i mean, most, frankly, white americans were pretty happily insured. then they had, you know, disputes with their insurance companies and the costs may be rising, etc., but they were fairly comfortably -- so it was

hard to really invoke that cause as being the primary standard bearer. but because of the bitterness of the primary battle, i think it maybe took an ascendancy that it perhaps shouldn't have. on the other hand, maybe he knew that his window would be narrow and that maybe he had to jump on, on that -- i don't know if you have a, if you have an opinion. rather than, you know, the elephant in the room which was, which was jobs. and the economy. >> well, i think that if he wanted to choose health reform as the big issue, he should have being aware of his own strength and power where his strengths are, okay? you can't use strengths that you don't have. and you have to use the ones you do have. so i urged, and i even wrote piece about it early on that if

he wanted to do health care, what he ought to do is decide what he wanted, do it this first month when he got, after the inauguration, spend some time campaigning among the public to persuade them to answer the question you just asked. so that his own base and the people, a majority of people would agree. and that it was such a big issue that you needed to do that and then let the congress, you know, fool around with it. but they didn't do that. so my view is, and as i said, by the time he got to it way over in the summer at the end of the summer, it had already been defined to death by all the people who were opposed to it. and his own base was torn apart about this part or that part or the other part. and so i think that that was a strategic misstep. and, but i believe in the power, his power to persuade, so i think if he had tried it, he would have been able to do it.

but we'll never know because he didn't. and is so whether i would pick that or not, then i think that if he wants to do big things and get big things done while he was in office, that was one of the biggest things he could choose on the domestic front. but one of the things he did was they didn't want to do, the message was they didn't want to do what hillary did. and, therefore, the white house wasn't going to start anything because hillary had done that and had not turned out. and my view on that, which i wrote at the time, was that you're not hillary. you're different. you're you. you've got your strengths, and you've got your base, so you do what you have to do. you don't have to do it exactly like hillary did it, but you can have a proposal from the white house. and as i say, we'll never know which one is right, but i think he could have persuaded people if he had started early on and tried. >> i'd just say there's plenty of time, the next two years are