if we maintain the growth rates that we had for 180 years up to 1971, if we maintain those growth rates after 1971 on average the u.s. economy today would be 50% larger than it is now. next presidential speechwriter for gerald ford craig smith smith shares behind-the-scenes stories from his time in the white house and the importance of speechwriters during presidential elections. >> how did you get started and speechwriting? >> that's an amazing story. i was a high school debater and i debated in college and i went

on to double my major from history into communication studies prove that i went to graduate school studies but i never thought of speechwriting. i just taught speech and got interested in various areas of the field. in one when i was at the university of virginia i would ask to give a guest lecture at the university of north carolina at chapel hill. i went down to chapel hill and gave my lecture at 10:00 in the morning and president ford was speaking on the campus at noon. all of us decided to go over and hear him. how often do you get to hear president live? the president gave a speech that was really not very good. it was disorganized, was rambling. my colleagues kitted me a lot like how could you be a republican and support a man that give a speech? i went to charlottesville and i wrote out of five page single-spaced critique of the president's speech and a note to the white house. the presence of this united

states the white house in washington d.c. a week later i got a call and was asked to come up and interview for speechwriting java was open. they checked me out with certain people they knew who knew me in the debate world because i was a debate coach at the university of virginia. then i came up and i went to the interview and i got the job. it was just amazing to me that the first time i was writing a speech for anybody but myself was the president of the united states. making them match between a speechwriter in the client is something that happens after you are hired to some of the best speechwriters in the world did not get along with their clients. it's when you find a match and if you only learn that through the writing process so for example john kennedy went through a number of speechwriters before ted sorensen does legislative aide from nebraska became a speechwriter. then it clicked. what happened with me was my

first speech that i was assigned was to write the president's speech for the southern baptist convention in virginia in 1976. here you have a catholic writing for an episcopalian to speak in front of southern baptist and it looked like a very difficult assignment. we were running against jimmy carter who was born again and loved by the southern baptist and yet spoken there so was a very tough assignment raid we went down to norfolk. the president got up with my speech which had gone through 10 graphs -- drafts. he was one minute and 30 seconds into his speech and he was underpinned by applause. he kind of lost displays and got back on script and he was interrupted 15 more times by applause. the "washington times" wrote up this speech is one of the best afford it forgiven.

suddenly president ford and i were together as speechwriter and client and it went on successfully from that point forward. why did that speech resonate with the crowd? i think it's because i understood that analysis is critical to giving it good speech. aristotle tells us that the strategies that you use in a speech should literally come out of the audience so i had done advance work on that audience. there were a lot of evangelical ministers there. i had talked to southern baptists preachers and i think adapting to the evidence was the first step. the second step that made the president comfortable i think was the organization of the speech. he knew where he was going. speeches are invisible. they're not like writing and people only retain a third of what they hear so you have to repeat yourself when you tell people here's where we are now, here is where we are going.

now i'm moving into my conclusion. it makes the speaker feel comfortable and makes the audience feel comfortable and i think that's what happened in that speech. after we lost the presidency are lined up a job at the university alabama birmingham. while i was teaching at birmingham bill harris at the new head of the alabama republican party came to me and said would you help me out? i have to sell republicanism to alabama and an 6% of alabama and say they are republicans or you can see where alabama has gone from 1976 now to the very red state. i went to work for bill harris and we need to raise money. we have various republican big names to come and john connolly said no and ronald reagan said no. and we asked george herbert walker bush to command he said yesterday came and spoke at a big fund-raiser at the civic center in birmingham. birmingham was the republican city at that time. we went to the civic center and

i was sitting at the table and near me was this young man with blond hair and he said why don't you tell us what you think of george bush's speech? i said well okay i will do that. so i took notes as bush spoke and when the speech was done the young man turned to me and said what did you think of that and i said he's a very nice man and obviously very sensitive and very bright but he needs organization and he needs a sense of style. it's obvious that speech wasn't rehearsed pretty needs to rehearsed and the young man said my name is karl rove and i worked for him and how would you like to meet him right now? i could take you upstairs. went upstairs and i shook hands with mr. bush and he invited me to come to houston to meet him. with him and his wife in january of 1978. i flew to houston at january and came to the house in a three-piece suit in houston.

i was very formal in the morning and mr. bush came to the door and he was in an izod t-shirt. he said if you will get out of that silly vest i will cook you breakfast. so we went into the kitchen. he handed me a cup of coffee and i'm standing there with the coffee to he's cooking the eggs and mrs. bush, barbara bush comes in the room and she looks at george and then she looks at me and she says george that young man standing there with a cup of coffee. we have the chinese delegation coming in tonight. i don't know what got into me and i said mrs. bush with all due respect i came to your door in a three-piece suit and i'm not going to spill a drop of this coffee. she laughed and george laughed and we hit it off from that point on and were friends. i became a consulting writer to george bush during his campaign and the run up to 1980. we won the iowa caucuses. we lost in new hampshire. the battle went all the way

before george h.w. bush pulled out in ronald reagan became the nominee and he put bush on the ticket with him. tonight continued to consult with mr. bush vice president bush all that time and then into his next presidential run in 1988. the biggest challenge for me in writing speeches for george bush senior was that he didn't like where her sing. he thought it was unmanly to rehearsal night to convince them that ronald reagan or hearst and other people i had worked for had rehearsed and he really needed to rehearsed speeches. many rehearsed it was really good. in fact wednesday night of the 1980 he gave a terrific speech. reagan was watching and he didn't he said i didn't know the guy could speak that well because he rehearsal. >> we need a winner to lead aarp party to victory in the fall.

our party regardless of -- want a republican in the white house after four years of jimmy carter fumbling in the american leadership raid we have such a winner and his name is ronald reagan. >> every once in a while he would not rehearsal and speech wouldn't go so well paid the best beach in the world is delivered badly is a bad speech and sometimes a bad speech delivered very well is a good speech regardless of how badly written it is. delivery is kind of a bottom-line for me when i work with clients. one of the things i do as i delivered a speech to them before and let them look at it so they can hear it first and then they can look at it. they can see the rhythm and they can see the phrasing because that's really important. when you know a speech doesn't

work it's usually pretty obvious they rarely happen for me. i don't mean to brag or anything but but my speeches generally went very well because i monitored them and i made sure that i've are hearst with the client but when i was working for president ford to representatives came to the rose garden to give him an award. i had written a speech for him and was put on cards. he took it out and delivered it dutifully and everything went well. the next week the mormons came to give him a kind of little statuette reminiscent of the mormon pioneer statue in salt lake city. i had given him the speech and the kind of flubbed it, stumble than i stumble than ipod what happened? what was wrong? we were walking back from the rose garden to the oval office and they said mr. president with all due respect to boys nation speech went terrifically, today not so much. what happened? he said they had a motion picture camera going and i said i don't understand how what's

the problem? p7 makes me to rest when i see a motion picture -- no one had determined he was camera shy so when we went to kansas city to give the acceptance of the nomination in 1976 he were hearst in front of five cameras live and we kept going to the speech. by the time he got up to deliver he had gotten over his camera shyness and he did great. >> tonight i can tell you straight away this nation is sound, this nation is secure, this nation is on the march to full economic recovery and a better quality of life for all americans. [applause] >> the speech i wrote that received the most attention was when i was consulting with governor steve wilson. he had a short-lived campaign. he had lost and we had trouble

fund-raising by this announcement of candidacy was given in front of the statue of liberty and he talked about law and order how much he supported police. we talked about illegal immigration which was one of the things who is trying to shut down. the speech made the front of the the -- the front page of "the new york times" with the statue of liberty behind it. i must say that the best reaction i have ever had to any of the speeches i've written. the bicentennial speeches that i coordinated all of them and wrote two of them in full for the president got a lot of attention also in a lot of press going into the bicentennial we were 33 points behind jimmy carter and everybody had written off ford in this campaign. by the time we finish the bicentennial speeches we world me 10 points behind and at the end of the acceptance speech in kansas city ford was only about

five was behind it after the first debate -- so you can make a difference with speeches that you deliver for a presidential campaign. debates are tricky and we have so many of them now. apart from my opinion it's difficult for speechwriters to do as much good as they can with stump speeches. i felt so bad for senator marco rubio when they had given him a line that he kept repeating which was not directly responsive to the question and was the beginning of the unraveling of his campaign. you also have someone like donald trump making fun as if you were in junior high of people saying women don't look very good referring to carly fiorina space. speechwriters would never write things like that so there has been this deterioration in the rhetoric of the candidates and you don't see the opportunity to

write a good speech. there are exceptions. marco rubio has a very good acceptance speech on campaign days. hillary clinton has gone from a strident speaker in 1996, if you look at her victory speech after the south carolina primary that speech speeches extremely well-written, extremely well for hearst and very well delivered. it's the best speech i have ever seen her give. >> instead of building walls we need to be tearing down barriers. [applause] we need to show by everything we do that we really are in this together. >> there's a place for the speechwriter. they're still doing things. i know jeb bush called and sent people to give them hell for give them health and improved him in the debates but it was too late. the debates are really difficult things could go wrong. when i was coaching president ford as i said we won the first

debate and the race was dead even. we were very optimistic that we could win. the second debate ... policy. we knew the president would be asked about his policy and soviet union. answering a question the said look, yugoslavia has remained a dependent of the soviet union, romania is moving in that direction, poland is not dominated by the soviet union and "the new york times" asked a follow-up paid. >> i'm sorry to find her standing to say sir that the russians are not using eastern europe as their own sphere of influence and occupying most of the countries they are and making sure that their their troops that is a comment somewhere is on our side of the line the italians and the france are. >> i don't believe mr. franco that the yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the so