and staff to take anti-harassment and anti-harassment and anti-discrimination training. live coverage of congress this week on the c-span networks,, online at c-span.org or with the free c-span radio app. >> now former speechwriter for president nixon through obama share what it was like working for the respective offices. he also examined the current trump administrations messaging and communication style and andf the president's tweets have affected and shake his presidency. -- shape. [inaudible conversations] >> ladies and gentlemen, good

afternoon. i am a paul almeida, dean of georgetown universities mcdonough school of business. it is our privilege to host the annual professional speech writers association world conference against this year. welcome back. here at georgetown madonna we are firm believers that learning never ends. whether you are attending a conference like this one, seeking an advanced degree or working with us executive education team to develop a customized curriculum for your organization, there's always an opportunity to understand even more, to learn and to explore. by nature, universities are creators and conveners of knowledge. at georgetown mcdonough, the work of our faculty and experiences of our students are

enhanced by our location in the global capital city of washington, d.c. where we have access to national and global leaders, in business, policy, government, and much more. where else would you expect to find a section named all the presidents in? thank you for being with us here today and thank you to david murray and the entire psa team for organizing such a wonderful conference. it is now my distinct pleasure to invite robert schlesinger, author of white house ghosts, and moderator of our next session to introduce the panel. [applause] >> thank you, dean almeida. thank you to david and his team

for organizing this. thanks to georgetown are hosting it. we had a really terrific panel and i will briefly introduced in and get right to the thought because their thoughts are much more interesting than mine. going from your left to right, chronologically not an indication of left to right in the political spectrum, we have aram bakshian who actually was a hat trick president to speechwriter having served president nixon, ford and reagan. we have bob rackleff was a speechwriter for president jimmy carter and is now a candidate for congress in florida. we have clark judge who is a speechwriter for president reagan. mary carey -- mary kate cary for george w. bush, jeff shesol, a speechwriter for president clinton and sarada peri who speech writer for president obama. i think we might be joined in progress for speechwriter for george w. bush as well. we will get to the proverbial

man of the moment and our thoughts about him eventually because all conversations turn back to him these days but let's talk about the moment first. which is the age of social media and what it's like for a president and those assisting him to communicate in the age of social media. i want to start with aram and go chronologically down the line. in the case of aram and the earlier presidents, ask what would, how would your boss of handle social media? as we get down to the person who actually can answer the question with real experience, i also want come would like the panel to talk about is it a good thing for presidents to be able to engage on social media and really engage the public in the very sort of directly? >> it's a good thing for

presidents to know how to drive but some of them are more reckless and others probably. [laughing] politicians, politics is a lagging indicator because by the time they're in public officer often they've already formed, and they are going after other people have learned these things. nixon, the first president of work for, i think he would've needed physical hell. he was a total klutz when akin to pushing buttons and that sort of thing but he would've figured out the effectiveness of using social media and would've done a very cautiously and judiciously. jerry ford probably just, it would be just very meat and potatoes winter what a legislative measure something but he wouldn't be singing people. and while reagan, that would be gotten into more later but reagan was a communications of natural. early in life was in at the very beginning of several

communication ethics. radio as a factor for the first time. television afterwards and, of course, hollywood as a unifying social factor. i think they would all learn how to do it, and know what you're doing with very effectiveness with their terms of style. >> bob, carter was skeptical of two medications as artifice and not willing to seem like he was using too much rhetoric or rhetorical trickery. what do you think he would've made of social media? >> remover, it was an insurgent candidate and he gained the office of the presidency by basically going out into the grassroots and winning in iowa and remember -- winning in all these other places he wasn't supposed to win. i think he would've embraced that part of it as a useful tool. now, what he'd been good at it? i don't know picky was a very

good at speeches. he didn't like to give speeches and he especially didn't like speechwriters. [laughing] because we are part of this problem, you know, which is you want people to understand what his policies were and all the rational reasons that they were good for them, and he just didn't like, he did want to go out and explained that. it was a challenge. he would've been okay at social media. now, social media back then really was cassettes, and we would, you know, people with trade cassette tapes of speeches. whenever we would feel depressed and a speechwriting staff we would pull out a tape of gerald ford's speech to the north carolina future homemakers, and which he had this great line

that said, you know, you can be proud that you're a homemaker and a tar heel homemaker at that. and we would all roar with laughter and have great old time. we would feel much better. [laughing] >> clark, how would the great communicator have handled social media? >> the same way he handled all medium. by the way, you mix one form of music was on the ground floor which was sound films -- missed. he was one of the really, he enters the movie industry just shortly after it goes to sound, so he was very good at adapting to each form as a came along. they key for reagan's community force for his own personal discipline. he learned things. he made it a point to learn things. he made it a point to understand the dynamics of the media, of the medium, and then to adjust the way he deliver to it.

here's a thought. in 1964 1964 i think it was, te average sound bite on television was about a minute and a half. by the time you get to 1988, according to the new republic during the 88 campaign, it was eight seconds. what is eight seconds? it's a tweet. a lot of what we did, one of the things we made a point, my colleagues and i, of mastering was how to get media to quotas. that's why soundbites became so important. we have three little portals, really four owe five. the evening news shows, cnn was just coming on, didn't have much audience at the very end of our administration. "new york times" which was not

exactly -- "washington post" which was looking for its next woodward and bernstein moment, not great if you're the guy sitting in the white house. and a few others, but we had come enter into quotes would bt as long. we made a point, and the president made a point, he basically talked how to capture the media on the sentence you wanted. i think he would've done very well with twitter. >> mk, george h. w. bush very much said my predecessor was of the great communicator. i'm not that guy, didn't want to be that guy. how would have he handled this age that we live in? >> as clark said when we came into office after you guys were leaving, cnn had just started. there were huge wordprocessors with floppy disks that were about this big, and so he would

make a lot of jokes about the f7 button, and if somebody crossed it was a f7 that guy. [laughing] he would be the first to admit that he was not the most tech savvy. but in general, i think he liked president carter did not like giving speeches. he realized he was not a great communicator, and he was very good in small groups one-on-one. he would much rather do a press conference with questions then give a speech. and i think that side of social media, if it had existed then, would've played to his strengths. he's got a very good sense of humor and i think that would've brought it to the floor. so many people now, as i go around the country talking about him, say why did we not know how funny he was? and i think would've helped them probably get reelected. the other thing he faced was all four years of a democratic congress, and was able to get

through quite a bit of big bipartisan legislation, the americans with disabilities act, clean air act, things like that. i think having social media would've shown some of the things he was doing behind the scenes to rally those votes and to unify the coalition that he was building. and i think that would help them if people would've seen it and it would've been to his great credit. >> is firstly i i think would'e been very good. >> she would be great. she would be great. >> clinton was technically the first president of the internet age, and i remember i think it was you told me or working at aa speech and you said no, no, no, this is a speech. i just want to talk to people. how would he have handled it? >> i think he would've had trouble with 140 characters. [laughing] it's interesting to watch them on twitter now. i don't know how many of you follow president click on twitter but it's not making a lot of news on twitter. i think that's by design. he's been pretty restrained in

his use of twitter, and is trying to i think advance a couple of ideas right now. of course he's not president of the united states so he doesn't have that need to push an argument on whole region on different things at once. i think for me what it points up is he was president during a time of intense transition. maybe that has always going to be true now in the face of change. he was the first president of the information age. we wrote many, many speeches about the information age, and the world wide web and what an amazing thing it is and was. at the same time i i think he s a little uncertain about this new technology himself. it's actually very hard to put yourself back in mind, might sit of the late 1990s because it is sort of similar and yet it's pretty dramatically different in terms of what can be taken for granted. people are afraid to buy stuff

online because they didn't feel that their credit card information is safe. i don't know why not? [laughing] it was felt that the president needed to demonstrate that is, in fact, it's safe, and so we kind of setting up after a lot of careful vetting of websites and so forth to buy some christmas gifts online to show that it could be done. so we got him a laptop and set them up and west wing. he didn't have one of his own. we felt looking at it that it was sort of product placement from dell because at the dell logo on the back and it didn't feel very presidential. one of the junior people in speechwriting operation printed up on a color laser printer the presidential seal. we cut that out and we stuck it to the back of the laptop. [laughing] and president went on the laptop and somebody brought up the website that would allow him to buy a smoke damper something like that for christmas. [laughing] he's looking at online and he

starts to touch come to evening was totally out of touch with the technology could do or he was way ahead of his time. [laughing] anticipating. you have to tell the president of the united states in the oval office, sir, it doesn't work like that. don't touch it anymore. and so i think he was in transition, the technology was in transition, and in terms of its utility to us, the jury was still very much out. we felt very much at mercy is a think all presidents do now, at the mercy of the 24 hour, 24/7 new cycle. but the technological tools that we had i don't think we felt enabled us to do anything affirmative. we were dealing with what was coming at us, but we didn't have twitter. we didn't have facebook.

video technology online was not such that you could put your speeches out there and have actually be a useful thing to do. so i think we were uncertain about what we could do with it other than tout it as terrific for the u.s. economy. >> that brings us back to the started. you alone. and talk about the actual real-world experience of having to deal with this any communications since, actually for a president if full in the social media age. can you give us a sense what that is like? >> although the internet had been around by the time president obama came into office, his eight years was really an evolution of social media. twitter and facebook and all these other platforms kind of grew with his presidency. so i came on during the second term and so they already had a pretty robust digital strategy office that was integrated with

the communications team and with the speechwriters. i think what that meant for us was in addition to having to deal with this fragmented media landscape where twitter could slice and dice the speech and then filtered through whatever news channel it wanted and sent a a message intended wasn't always the message received, it also present in hopes of opportunities for us. president obama might, instead of, speech might not become the only avenue through which to deliver message. and so maybe we would start with a speech about the importance of higher education, but that would just be the opening salvo of the message. and then from there we might turn into an instagram picture of the president and the first lady in the college sweatshirts, then reminding kids to apply for college and fill other application. from that it might turn into a a facebook post which would think it shared and tweeted out and it turns into a hashtag internet hashtag sprinted in furtherance of it was actually a way to

deliver policy initiatives and direct them towards audiences that made are not watching his speech that is been shown on c-span, that the audience is need to get the message. i remember a couple of years ago, i don't how this happened but i guess the communication office convinced the president to do some interviews with youtube stars. i don't even really understand what that means, but basically seems as though there are young people on youtube who have millions of followers and, millennials or teenagers are someone who watches of them. [laughing] >> speechwriting with what is happening? what is this? so he said actually got some important messages to deliver to the junk people. let me go into these interviews with these youtube stars. as you can imagine the traditional beauty media was ny at all about these 22-year-olds, you know, , this young woman who promoted makeup styles or of something to do this interview with the president.

but it was a great way for him to reach him young people, ande junk people to the credit asked him really good questions. one of these young women asked the president very boldly about why female sanitary products are taxed. the president gave a really thoughtful answer and that turned into a policy push. i i think the president obama ws actually really sort of strategic in his use of social media. oftentimes someone like me in the speechwriting office didn't always know necessarily the latest technology, and i think maybe having two teenage daughters help president obama at least they on the curve if not had of it. he would say should we do this as a facebook life event where people can watch me talk about health care? should we do a snap story which i still don't know what that is. but it's a way of reaching -- i think was thoughtful about how to do and he also saw twitter,

you know, and contrast we are now. i think he saw as a way of really reaching a lot of people and still being the voice of the president. while they may have been informal compared to a speech and it may then obviously truncated, he very much put a lot of thought into when it was appropriate to tweet, what you might tweet and from whom he was trying to reach and why. oftentimes there were big events, things he wanted to comment on very quickly that he felt warranted that. i think overall he was a really strategic person when it came to this. >> if i could say something to follow up on that and complementary of president obama, not something you have a do very much, but president obama faced to communication revolutions, both of which he handled very well. first was cable. and you think of the primaries in 2008. every night, you may remember it

was clinton one week, obama the next, clinton the next week. it was back and forth. it's custom for the winter to wait for the loser to concede. -- winter. each were getting about ten minutes. mrs. clinton would come out whether she is first or second, and she would do what politicians have been doing forever. she would recognize everybody in the audience by name. everybody who had helped her. by the time her ten minutes was up, she was just getting to her message. president obama, at that time senator obama did the opposite. he would come up and he went right into his message. so by the time his payments was up he had reached a whole nation, or at least the whole party, with why they should vote for him. that was a clear understanding of the new media environment that no other candidate in that

campaign displayed. you now move to 2008 and the reelection -- i'm sorry, 2012, the reelection. dates are not my thing. [laughing] 2012 and the reelection. the obama campaign very much did what you are describing, which i want to contrast to president trump ..

>> but the difference between that and what we've seen over this campaign, although there's been some of that, a fair amount in this campaign is that the trump strategy for tweets and other social media that he personally controls was not really aimed at the segment of voters. it was aimed at the media. and it was his way and continues to be his way of capturing the television and newspaper, news cycles. it used to be that the-- each day began-- in news began with the new york times, "the washington post," who would-- and the morning shows would follow from their. basically they'd get the papers out and reporting and the first time the white house would really relybly be able to get into the conversation would be at the noon time news briefing

and that might get them on the evening news think of it, watch morning joe, any of the morning shows, i guess those are two nbc's and republicans to acknowledge-- that's another joke. [laughter] >> , but think of it. you get the new york times and "the washington post" still have their stories, they're all primed up, the shows are primed up to focus on that, and along comes the tweet, and it controls the show. so, it's a different strategy, there's still the obama strategy of slicing, but the power of this strategy is that it's taken social media and used it to drive all media. >> oun one other thing of that. >> it's the way of taking all of the air out of the room.

even when trump does a tweet that may turn off some people, annoy some people, puzzle some people, he has dominated that day to the exclusion of those of his opposition, or they're just reacting to what he said. he's dictated what they're going to react to. in addition, he tweets so often that people fairly rapidly forget the last thing they were allowed at. >> get annoyed again. >> get annoyed again, there's a gradual numbness that sets in. >> does that hurt the effectiveness of presidential communication though where if people become benumbed to presidential pronouncements, does that cheapen the presidential worth? >> it works, yeah, it works. i mean, how can you argue with success? so, he dominates the

conversation with these ridiculous tweets and they keep coming and every day there's another one and he is so-- he's such a moving target, you know, as a democrat i don't know what to talk about him and discussing issues. so, i go after paul ryan. [laughte [laughter] >> i guess i would draw a distinction between dominating the news, which he is definitely doing, and leading the discussion. he's dominating the national discussion without actually leading it. and what i mean by that is that, he has shown, again and again and he's probably done it while we're sitting up here, that he fires off a tweet or makes some stray statement and nobody can talk about anything else for the next 24 hours. now, he throws everyone, as you just said, throws everyone off their stride, but what he's not doing is what every president

represented on this panel has done, which is to try in a sustained and disciplined way to lead the nation toward a particular outcome and how do they do it? they do it by all sorts of means, but speeches and public statements are a huge part of that. it won't price you that all of us will say that, but i think we all believe that very deeply, that if you're going to try to get anything done in this country, whether you try to get something done through congress or try to turn public opinion in your favor on a particular issue or try to get your allies to subscribe to a particular policy change you're trying to lead. you've got to be out there consistently and speaking with clarity and you've got to lead a discussion. it is difficult to do because you're not the only one who gets to occupy the stage and there's more than more noise out there now than there's ever been before. right now the noise is coming from the oval office. it's effective in the sense that everyone pays attention to it although i'm not sure it's

going to work forever. it's not effective in actually getting anything done. there's not anything that president trump has done during his time in office that's the result of the careful effort at the bully pulpit. he's signed executive orders, as all previous presidents have done, he's done stuff by fiat. but he has not led the nation to do anything that it was not going to do already and that's a huge failure, i think, of rhetorical leadership and presidential leadership. >> i also think that -- [applause] >> i think that all the presidents that we worked fwor, they all saw their role, not only to sort of advance an agenda or drive toward an outcome, but to, at moments, unify a country that was divided and be the president of all people who even didn't vote for them. and you know, clarke don't have a lot to say either, but where

trump is, everything that's horrific and happening and the way that he sort of communications in terms of not leading the news, he's not creating any kind of cohesive narrative that all of us can follow. even presidents we must politically disagree with would sort of tell a story of america that they believed in ap provi provide cohesiveness and he doesn't have that as a leader and done things to erode his credibility or never develop any, and it's a problem at moments when the country really does need to come together and when people need to seek a leader, there's sort of a vacuum, there's an absence there, and he's very much the president of just a few people and the bully pulpit and all the avenues of social media we have now are an opportunity for the president to use to actually offer that narrative. even if it's one that doesn't necessarily--

that everyone doesn't necessarily agree with and he's not really doing that. it's very sort of fragmented. >> there's an element here, why is he different, the way that he's different. everyone for years has been saying what we really need are citizen presidents who aren't politicians, well, we've got one and one of the differences between someone who has never been in public life before and suddenly, at a high level runs for office, people who have been in public life for long time do have a structured set of values, aims, policies that evolves over time, but that's what they've been spending their lifetimes working and thinking about. this is the first president that doesn't fit into that mold in this century, and we shouldn't be too surprised. however, the evident would seem to indicate that, whether you're on the left or on the right, the path that he used is increasingly a tempting path

for non-politicians to go for the big one and we have an audience dumbed down in many senses culturally and everything else, and celebrityhood has become a key the way it couldn't have been in past generations. >> i'm not sure i'd agree with what was said. first of all, one of the goals of the tweeting is to keep others from dominating the news cycle and then in an environment that's as hostile as this one has been, no honeymoon, starting off the night of the election, the opponent didn't even come out and concede until the next day, and that reflected that she may been incapacitated, but that reflected a general view within that party. this is the kind of environment that is extremely challenging. at the same time he has had a message. i disagree with that, it may not be your message, but the

make america great again slogan encompassed with it a message of renewal, reform, renewal. it also encompassed a message of alarm, at the current state of affairs. both of which, he has been effectively communicating as he went along. the fact that we're still in the process of an a long legislative struggle, both on health care reform, tax reform and other areas, indicates how divided both his own party is and the country is. we say the republicans are controlling congress, not in the meaningful way. both parties have within them, in the senate, independents who are caucusing with their party. obviously, senator sanders, i think senator king are both examples on the democratic side. on the republican side senator macowski was not elected on the ticket, she was a write-in

candidate. and senator mccain is clearly-- views himself perhaps for personal reasons, perhaps for reasons of principle, independent of his own party now. and both parties are facing that. the democrat ic independents stick pretty loyally to the democratic party. the republican ones obviously are more problematic, but that is the character of the country. i wouldn't write off or even make a judgment on the legislative program just yet. we know that the republicans are continuing working on health care, they may be working with some democrats, too. we know the same is true in tax reform. we've got a very challenging environment in washington, much closer-- closely divided than people think. the president sometimes has been brilliant at bringing-- at mobilizing and other times

has stumbled. one thing to the tweets, twitter issues, to get back to that, it's emblematic of the new age which is fairly unfiltered. i've been dealing with my communication for a decade and all that time we've been dealing with people there's an authenticity is a big issue. what does authenticity bring with it, you don't have remarks as filtered as they once were, it's true in business and it's true in government and politics. sometimes he really missteps. other times if he hits home runs, but that's the nature of the new age. if you're going to use the new social media, if it's scrubbed to a shine, people will see through it and you won't be effective. you've got to find a way to be authentic, immediate, and not

blow yourself up. >> i think it's fair to note that mrs. clinton's hesitancy to concede on election night could very well have been reflective of more similar explanations like wanting to make sure all the results were in. i do want to, however, come back to the question at hand, to what extent is this, you know, we've seen the diminution of the sound bite. the rapidly of communications and the noise. we've talked about, jeff, you've written about the notion that the president has abandoned the bully pulpit, even if he hasn't shut up. are presidential speeches and speech writing as we move forward in the information age, are you all going to be obsolete? >> i sure hope not.

>> artificial intelligence-- >> i can't think of anything more unrewarding than being one of donald trump's speech writers. i mean, it just-- all the things you learn about what it takes to write a good speech and how you-- the process of writing and vetting and getting up and giving a speech, it's just completely going out the window. and do i think there's a future for it? of course. you know, i can't -- i have to believe that people want more than just angry torrents. they do want some coherence and they want to be inspired, they want to think that the future is going to be better for them. i'm running in a district that trump won 66% of the vote, so, i'm an optimist. [laughter] >> and i grew up among people like that and i was an enlisted man in the navy.

i know the kind of challenges that people like that face and i'm going -- i'm going door-to-door and i'm also giving speeches and i've put them up on the internet and i've gotten good responses, and you know, i think that -- you know, we'll get -- this is not normal. [laughter] >> you know? >> you're an optimist, is this normal? >> i'm an optimist. every friday i have to be on canadian tv explaining to the canadians what happened in washington. [laughter] >> and it's a joy. and-- >> like south park. >> so as a result of that assignment, i actually watch a lot of donald trump's speeches. i've gotten to know some of his speech writers. so, i would respectfully disagree with bob. they are actually very hardworking, mid career professionals. they're not 22 year olds. many of them have come from the

leadership offices of capitol hill or from governor's offices. and if you listen to, for example, his speech to the u.n., he had a great defense of democratic capitalism in it. he said the problem with venezuela is not that socialism was implemented incorrectly, but that it was implemented 100% correctly and that's why there's a disaster in venezuela. however, in the same speech, i don't think the speech writers did this, put in the reference to rocketman and he rolled it out there and the press went for the shiny object just as he thought they would and nobody covered the defense of democratic capitalism. his values summit speech last week, which was on -- i i had to sit live and listen to it with the canadians and immediately comment on it, had a great discussion on religious liberty and why that's important in this country. and so, his speeches are

actually advancing his agenda. they have a very coherent, p populist reform and that's why he continues to be so popular outside of the coast of this country. there's more to it than the press is reporting. >> yeah, i -- i mean, it won't price me that we're doing a little-- we're respectfully disagreeing with one another, but i hope we're doing it respectfully. >> washington, actually respectful disagreement isn't so much washington. [laughter] >> it was, yeah. >> i would raise the success of donald trump's speeches by your ability, this is a tuned in group of people, your ability to turn to the person next to you and tell that person what his position is on tax reform,

except that we should have it. i would ask you to articulate to someone at home what his position is on health care, except that obamacare is a disaster and that apparently we learned yesterday it no longer exists. he doesn't have a clearly articulated position on the issues that are supposedly at the center of his reform agenda. his ability to articulate those has not yet been established. his level of understanding of those issues has not been established in the open sort of press availabilities that he does. everybody has seen that he changes positions from one day to the other. that he makes misstatements of fact that are statements are that purposeful or ignore facts. i don't doubt that certain

speeches articulate ideas and there's efforts made, but that is consistently undercut by a president not able to stream together a coherent or consistent thought within a given 20 minute block or from day-to-day and again, i judge know that not from my bubble in northwest washington d.c., but by the inability to-- of anyone who really pays close attention to this to actually intuit what the president is arguing. there's a basic reformist impul impulse, he why yes, he thinks the system and establishment are failing, and he wants to make america great again. toward some notion of greatest that he has yet to articulate. never mind the republican party with diversity of opinion stands for, what does this one man elect today this office believe on any of the central issues of the day. that has yet to be established

and what we see in his speeches is this sort of weirdly split personality, where the speeches that require something formal that is written and that is teleprompted, feels a little like a hostage video. like he's delivering it under duress. he looks uncomfortable, he seems to want to get out of there, it's not that clear whether he believes what he's saying and he often then contradicts it the following day, when he gave in the middle of the crisis that he helped to create over charlottesville in the middle of that when he sort of took back what he had previously said. he did it in a en extraordinariy inert statement delivered from the teleprompter. this is not me talking, i am reading. we will get through this together. the next day he says what he thinks again, that he was right the first time. those are the two modes, sort

of free socialing trump and by the book, buttoned up, i don't really mean it trump and it's clear where the real trump is, but that trump is not a consistent thinker, and so we're waiting for it, but we're not seeing it and i think this is more than growing pains, and this is more than intraparty divisions, but it's a lack of clear thinking. >> you wanted to jump in? >> well, trump has a theme, he doesn't have a program. he also landed in a political situation where the parties were more antagonistic towards each other than ever before and more divided within themselves. he's as much a symptom as a problem if you're talking about the other problems that we're dealing with today. and in fact, he reflects a condition that existed before he got there. we've had policy wonk presidents. jimmy carter was the ultimate presidency wonk president and

he didn't like to give speeches and the senior bush was the same way. my job is to do the right sorts of things. i shouldn't have to explain that to people. well, of course, you've got to make the sale first. trumps does deliver serious speeches from time to time on major issues. they are-- if the audience can't remember them specifically, it's not so much because of what he did or didn't say in that speech, it's that he was simultaneously driving the headlines with these other things. it wasn't that he-- it wasn't that his speech was deficient or the speech writers hadn't done their jobs or even the speech of record didn't matter because it will matter with the constituency. when he speaks to the u.n. it matters what the message was to the constituent countries of the united nations more than what it does the tv audience reacted to. >> yeah, i think to follow up on that, a lot of what you see trump doing is reflection, also, not just of the divisions of the country, but also of his assessment where the media is.

the media is not interested in serious policy. he geives lots of serious policy speeches. if you had to pick between him and clinton in terms of who got policy messages through to the public, not to wrote 10,000 pages of policy papers, but got serious policy messages through to the public, he won hands down, that's what drove his campaign. it wasn't that he was such a nice guy. we know that. but that's another thing you're supposed to laugh at. [laughter] >> thank you. but he does have a sense of the -- of the frivolity or the way that the media goes to things and he'll give them that thing that they'll go to. >> i don't want to relitigate the 2016 campaign, but those are fighting words. democrats, do you want to-- >>. [laughter] >> . [applause] >> i'm sorry, i don't have

much of a poker face. there's a lot to unpack there. let me just touch on a couple of things. so, if trump's policy message got out, it was because-- and there have been studies to show this, the media was excessively interested in litigating this and relitigating the faux scandal of secretary clinton's e-mails and not in her platforms, and in this sort of make america great one-liners, policy, build a wall, ban and that was interesting and salacious and that wasn't a coherent policy platform, if trump is a symptom of thinking, it's sort after disintegrating republican party that had an internal war about basically between the donors and the base. you know, people who elected donald trump, who claimed he was going to cut taxes for the

middle class, were not-- were not voting for paul ryan's agenda and the people who the entire time were supporting this, and frankly, the republicans in congress who for eight years were claiming they were going to repeal obamacare had, you know, seven years to do it and couldn't come up with a policy and basically were the dog that caught the car. they didn't think they would end up in this position and now they have to do something and if make america great is anything other than sort after slogan, based on policy, based on the his actions the fights he's having legislatively, it seemed to be to erase the presidency of barack obama. i wonder if it base, in the campaign willing to give him a chance and willing to say this guy is going to shake things up, let me see what happens, i don't know if they're going to be as-- maybe they will, as forgiving if erasing the obama agenda actually makes their lives worse. if you take away their health care and you just cut taxes on

millionaires are they going to be okay with that? i don't know, but it just seems at some point there's got to be some point of reckoning, what it's going to look like in people's lives. there's much more to unpack, but i'll stop there. >> very quick. >> i think of this as the dawn of the age of the post mobilism. you know, for the last half century we've been enbarked on this great experiment of globalization, with lower tariff barriers, let's increase trade, let's farm out some of our economic activities to other countries, and i think there-- the failure of that has been that we haven't spent enough time to the people who did know the benefit from that. i'm running in a district that is 57% rural and it's been-- rural america has been in decline for decades now. no more agricultural

employment. small manufacturing went away, 20, 30 years ago. long distance commuting is about the only way to-- for people to make a living if they live in a rural county, in my part of florida. and we have to begin grappling with that and i think that in a sense, trump was good at diagnosing the problem and recognizing it and we democrats did not. but the solution-- you know, the solutions just are not coming, there are not any solutions. let's get angry all over again and angrier and angrier, we're doing great with getting people angry, so we need to, and that's where, you know, i think of writing as a form of problem solving, you know, you get a problem, you have to write a speech. that's the problem. so, what's the issue? i mean, take the issue apart and put it back together in a coherent form, you come up with

some solutions that make sense and when you read through it, it makes-- it's logical and rational and compelling. >> i want to quickly-- i want to quickly take it back to the broader topic of speech writing and we have microphones in either i mean. if people want to start lining up, we'll open it up to questions to the audience in a moment. as speechwriters professional speechwriters, 140 words or less, what advice would you give trump or his speechwriters? washing our way down. >> think. trump is a man of instinct and impulse. he has great strengths in that direction. his instincts and his ability to spot vulnerabilities of the opponents are sometimes there, but sometimes you have to think beyond that. think more and use his skills to better effect than he has so far. >> my advice is quit your job.

[laughter] >> and before it's too late, and you'll have a nice little, you know, eight-month entry on your resume' and that will be good and then you can get a good job in the private sector, like i did, and listen, my career has been in corporate spee speechwriting. there's nothing to be gained by staying on with that man. [laughter] >> that's career advice. i know careers, i've been doing this. >> clarke, speechwriting advice? >> scott adams the cartoonist who does dilbert says he's the best brander we've ever seen so there are a lot of-- there's a lot to be said about his communications ability. he wouldn't be in the presidency spending two-thirds of what his opponents spent or less and getting the kind of hits he got in the media, we

all know about that seemed to me much more serious than what happened to mrs. clinton, but maybe they fought to a draw on that. but, without having substantial communications skills and having got a message across, his presidency will rise or fall, in my judgment, on how he deals with korea and how he deals -- whether he can come up with an economic strategy, including health care reform and tax reform, that gets us over 3% growth. if he can do that, he'll be reelected and he'll have a successful presidency. if he can't, he won't. so, my advice to him, that's your-- what do they say -- focus on the donut and not on the hole. well, that's your donut. >> i completely agree with clarke on 3% growth would solve a lot of problems in this

country. but my advice to the speechwriters, would be more humor. i'm going to see president bush friday night and every time i see him he says mary kay, do you have any jokes for me? so i ask around before i head down to see him and everybody i've asked lately, got any jokes for me? nobody has any jokes right now. we need more humor in political rhetoric, in our city right now, and i would get a ghost writer joke writer on retainer. >> i know that bob stole yours so what's your other piece of advice? >> i don't think these speechwriters can solve. i remember when i-- at the end of the clinton administration when i a few of us started a group western writers and proved it to the private sector. one of the first corporate

clients i had brought me in and said, look, our ceo is bob dole and we want you to turn him into bill clinton and i said, you know, with all due respect, i didn't turn bill clinton into bill clinton. he elevated us by his ability and he challenged us to help him raise his game. and speechwriters can do that. there's a lot, i think we all believe that speechwriters can do, but i don't think any amount of creative or deft or thoughtful work by the speechwriters is going to solve the set of fundamental problems at least some of us on this panel see in this presidency. even the purely rhetorical piece of this presidency. he's got to figure out, actually, what he believes. he's got to figure out exactly what he thinks he's going to do with his time in office. and you can write it any way you want to write it, but he's got to believe it, he's got to own it and articulate and do it consistently as we've been

saying and that discipline has been, as far as i think any of us can see, it's been lacking in this presidency. as i said before, i think these are more than growing pains, i think they're basic deficiencies. i don't question his ability to get attention. i don't question his ability to grab the nation by its throat and i don't question his ability as he demonstrated in 2016, to articulate some very basic yearnings that a lot of good americans are feeling, as well as a lot of bad americans are feeling and he gives voice to those as well, but he has not yet understood how to speak like a president. and i don't mean speak like my president or yours or president reagan or president bush, but the solution is not to make nim a policy wonk and read him from the teleprompter. it's to get him to arctticulate

in a clear way what he thinks and we don't yet know it. >> too important not to repeat. i would tell his speechwriters to quit. not only you need to be able to sort of look your kids in the eye and, you know, talk to your grandchildren one day and tell you what you did during this time and you're working for somebody who is corrupt and, you know, flawed in all of the ways, but he lies, and as a speechwriter, truth is actually really important. and i know we've come-- we're now sort of in a speech where people are questioning whether trump has changed rhetoric. has he changed the way that presidents communicate and gosh, i hope not in that sense. you know, again, not every president does this and not every president has to, but we had an office of fact checking, i think you guys all probably did. your speeches went through i go r rigorous fact checking and there's a truth.

and when yours is like this one, it's hard. i would say this is going to make your job impossible and there's so much other work out there, do something else. >> all right. let's go to questions. >> [inaudible] >> i currently write for president clinton. excited to see you here and thank you so much. my colleagues and i are still in mourning, we're not going to join your club of being white house speechwriters. my question for you, bob, you mentioned that speechwriting itself is problem soming or solving a puzzle. how in the voice of a former president when you're supposed to show restraint and respect for the person occupying the office do you respond in this age of trump? do you have any advice for anyone who, for a former president or someone in the public sector who has to

respond to these issues and has to show restraint, but also respond thoughtfully. thank you. >> well, i think that first off, just say what i said before, which this is not normal. this is-- and it's not sustainable. you -- as far as, i look at the policy prescriptions for the problems we have today and the impact on the rural people in north florida that i care so much about, and it's going to make things far worse, dismantling health care. the rural health care system is on its last legs right now. to get-- we have -- the wall street journal did an article about maternity-- maternal deserts. and that's most of rural america, there are no ob-gyn's within 50, 100 miles of expectant mothers.

so it's not-- the, you know, just keep, keep trying to think logically and constructtively and i think my colleagues here have been very good about things like that. you know, but this is-- this just isn't going to last. >> i would just add briefly, nice to meet you, and our first client coming out of the white house was president clinton and we worked with him for the first four years of his post-presidency and occasionally afterwards. i was very much a part of the transition he made to post-presidency and understanding what the limits really were on his voice and his freedom of maneuver and how he could be most helpful to -- in advancing the ideas and the policies and programs such a part of his presidenciment one of the things that struck me at that time and still strikes me about bill clinton in his

post-presidency and i think it's true very much of the bushes and their post-presidency and president carter. president reagan didn't get quite the post-presidency that the others had because of the onset of alzheimer's. the restraint they have shown. the respect they have shown for one year in the office. i think one of the really heartening stories in modern politics the genuine friendship that bill clinton and both bushes have developed. it's real. there's a real fondness there. and they were, i mean, president bush would have been president another four years, the first president bush, if it hadn't been for bill clinton. so, he didn't have to be accepting of bill clinton in the years afterwards and that's a very special thing and i think, with the restraint that we've seen from president obama during these first months of his post-presidency is very much in keeping with that set of values. at the same time, i really do believe that we're in different territory now and that what is

jeopardized is not simply a program that you pass or a surplus that you developed in the federal budget, but something more fundamental than that. so, i think that president clinton, the presidents on the other side of the aisle, president obama, they are going to be tested in the years forward as to how restrained they can be outside the context of the campaign and you know, i think that president george w. bush has subtly and i think appropriately indicated his displeasure with both the campaign and the presidency that we have seen so far. i think he's abouten awfully restrained about it and you can only imagine what he actually really thinks. >> does anyone else want to-- >> the most important speechwriting done, political speechwriting between now and a year from november are the speeches for candidates running

in the mid-term elections because to the extent that the issues, whether i agree with your interpretation or whether i take mine, to the extent that those elections clarify things and the competition of the legislator shapes up in the more orderly way, that will determine, a, what will stop things you might not like about clinton -- about trump or accelerate real programs where he'll have to deliver and if he delivers, he may deliver things some of us like, he may deliver some things some don't. it won't be rhetoric anymore. but the important speechwriting will be done in the mid-term elections around the country not anything written for the president or past presidents. >> my name is dan, a speechwriter from canada. so, looking-- you listen to mary kate every friday? >> hello, my one viewer. [laughter] >> so, the-- i want to take up the point you

made about truth at the end of this sort of panel discussion without sort of throwing stones at anybody in particular. we're starting to see a little bit of the same thing in canada, you're also seeing it in europe with the rise of the sort of the polarization of the body politic. it used to be more or less common agreement on the facts and disagreements on the solutions. and now the disagreement about sort of what the facts are and it's hard from a rhetorical standpoint to try and build an argument when you're talking to half of the body politic about this issue and the other half says that's not the situation, that's not reality for us. what advice do you have just in terms of speechwriters trying to overcome that barrier and talk to the country as a whole. >> i'm a historian by training. something you learn in history, i reject the idea that we're

more divided than we've ever been. have you ever heard of the civil war? >> in my defense, we didn't have one of those. [laughte [laughter]. [applause] >> when i got engaged to my wife 12 years ago i said, honey, let's honeymoon in toronto, i really said that and she said, are you nuts? [laughter] >> so, but it's -- you know, of course we're divided. we've always been divided. we're going to keep being divided. what makes a difference is the level of civility. in this case it's destructive. >> if i could jump in on this, you should take a listen or a read of the lincoln-douglas debate. high-minded and they said a lot of nasty things about one another in a civil way and they've had lots of

disagreements about basic facts, like where one-- whether one had endorsed his own party's platform or where -- things like that. some of this is to be expected in a period where the country is very divided. basically hasn't made up its mind for a while on what direction it wants to go. and we've had very able men, all of us here represented able men. and the country is not sure where it wants to go and i think we've got to keep at it to give him his due. president trump is certainly keeping at it, so is senator schumer, so will whoever comes in against president trump for-- in the next time around. and at some point, the public will make up its mind, but right now, it's repeatedly sent

very narrowly divided senate, often narrowly divided houses and sometimes the president who isn't with both the house-- the senate and house in the same party. in other words, very balanced constitutional orders and sent them back and said effectively you guys have to figure out how to do this. >> isn't there an element though to which the fracturing of media and the multiplecation of news sources and the rise of social media increasingly is where people get their news, some of it real news, some testify actually legitimately fake, madeup news. does that make it harder as t the-- as the -- our canadian friend asked to make it legitimate, it's harder to have a common set of facts? >> as i say i think it's reversion to mean.

i think the period of the major networks and a few national newspapers was an abberation. >> i think it is, obviously, much more difficult, but i think there, again, there are opportunities and i think about the times that president obama was governing in obviously a pretty divided time and had many tepeople who did not like him, but a popular president, but there was a network dedicated to taking him down and yet, you think about the speeches now we look back on and universally lauded like selma, i think what he did really well there was, again, tell the story of who we are honestly, who we've been and who we could be. and there was sort of a, you know, honest reckoning of all that has passed and yet, kind of a hopeful sort of no. i know there are some who mock president obama's message of

hope and i think that's what people wanted and in a way, that's actually what trump was sort of offering us as a country, a hope, that america could be what whatever they imagined it was once. and and making a pro i am about that, but i think if you can help your speaker sort of tell the universal truth in a really honest way, that you actually can break through. mrs. obama did this beautifully, pretty consistently. she just, she would always, as my friend sarah horowitz, her speech writer would say, say something, say something true. and i think by doing that, and again by being that authentic speaker, she was able to break through to audiences who may not necessarily have always given her a chance and speak to the entire country as first lady. so i think there are periods, that's harder. >> the fragmenttation is not only just the media and news sources, we've had for about two generations now, a politics that started on the left, but now, you see it on the right,

fragmenttation of identity politics, of going after this group and that group and dividing and that building of little coalitions, but not common ground. you know, politics of color, politics of gender, politics of region, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. age brackets. and what has finally happened is that after all the other minorities were identified, what is no longer a majority, but the sort of average white american, has become the biggest minority group and they've begun to respond to the same messages that all the grievanced minorities used to respond to, identity politics and it is a logical, if not necessarily fortunate, progression, but it's part and parcel of something that some of the same people that are decrying it now set into motion. >> i guess i would say that this-- just to return to a point that

was made earlier from the perspective of history, there are some aspects of this that are not at all new and the idea of appealing to the grievances of white people is not a new strategy in international politics. it was important to the victory of richard nixon in 1968, so-called southern strategy, appealing to the same whites who had grown disaffected with the democratic party's embrace of african-americans, and civil rights, and so forth. and the same voters that wallace, in 1968, had stoked and stirred up, who emerged from rallies of george wallace chanting white power, were appealed to in a more sort of deft and subtle and politically effective way. the same signal that ronald reagan with all due respect sent to that group in going and making a campaign appearance in 1980, i believe, in

philadelphia, mississippi and understanding the signal that it sent to speak to that community in the language of states rights. so, i don't think that even as the demographics in the nation have shifted, that the resentments of white people in the south and other parts of the country who have hated elites and intellectuals for a long time, hated the coasts for a long time, that these are new phenomena. so in that sense what we're seeing from this president is not new, but i think that what you say with president nixon, what you saw with president reagan, is that on assuming the presidency, there was an understanding that that they had been elected to be-- they hadn't been elected by all the people, but they were in fact president of all the people and that the role of the president was to be to the extent that any one of these men in a divided country can, to be president of all the

people. we have not seen as consistently and openly divisive performance in the oval office as we're seeing right now and that is what i think is new about this very old appeal. >> jeff, if i may say with all due respect, if this were the nixon period and you were reading the press you wouldn't have that kind of interpretation about what richard nixon was doing, but what i would also say is that the cast you've put on those attitudes is the very reason the democratic party has been in decline, because it shows a contempt. it is the wrong interpretation for what wide swaths of people who voted for trump and voted for all the people you mentioned had in their minds. i see some shaking of the head in the audience, but i will say that these people are responding to real problems in their lives and they are not related to gender, they are not related to ethnicity, they are rela related to an economy that's

ago stagnating because of the heavy load of taxes and regulation and in the world slipping because of passivity in the previous administration. there are a lot of role problems we've been responding to and turning up your nose at them and casting them as you just did is not a way to talk to them. >> let me just be clear-- >> i would agree with that, we learned that last year. let me be clear clarke-- let me be clear where my content is directed. bill clinton would not have been elected twice, would not have won back a number of the southern states that had been considered to be permanently lost to the democratic party, would not have won back a good measure of who were called reagan democrats if we collectively had turned up our nose at economic concerns of working class white americans in any region of the country.

so these speeches that i know how to write because these are politics directed to people economically distressed with some success and some failure by every administration represented here. where my content is not directed to people economically distressed. by contempt is saved for hopely racist appeals, for scapegoating of those concerns and appointing of those concerns at elites, at intellectuals, at black people, at immigrants, at muslims, any other groups. i think that that -- [applause] >> so, you know, i'm not going to get painted into msnbc's corner on this. i think it is-- it is a methodology of the republican party there's contempt on any side for voters who are-- >> jeff.

>> very, very quickly, then to the the office. you're right about president clinton and he's alone among recent democratic party president. the messages that came through loud and clear this last time were in the word deplorable, but in a lot of other ways were exactly the kind of mentals, whatever was intended, that i just described, and you can turn up your nose at them, but that's not the way to talk to people. >> and i want to say, obviously, i agree with jeff, but i think you know, again, secretary clinton's comment was taken out of context. i disagree with her having that and she was directing it to the people that jeff was talking about not the entire electorate that voted for trump. he was not held to the same standard, he could say deplorable things about any number of people and given a pass and the other point i wanted to make quickly, we are going to have a really difficult time coming to any kind of politics that mean

something to people that -- that unifies people, that advances the policy agenda if we continue to talk about bringing up the concerns that legitimate policy concerns of women, minorities, and call them identity politics, as long as we do that, we're really not going to get out of this. >> well, i am an expert on-- get back to the-- >> i group up in the deep south in the 1950's and identity politics was alive and well and it was-- it enshrined a system of racial segregation and racial superiority of white people that was every bit as cruel and oppressive as south african apartheid. that lesson has stayed with me. that was identity politics. [applaus [applause] >> one more last question. >> i'm in heaven here.

i'm a political junky, historian and now communications advisor, canadian. [laughter] >> your other viewer, mary kate. >> i had a quick question and a comment. a comment for me i was surprised when you mentioned optimist, you didn't mention trump's speechwriters are optimists, i think the same thing over and over and keep giving the speeches clearly, and doesn't read them. there's my plug. i'm wondering has trump irreparable damaged, historically he's taken us to a place we've never gone before. i don't see that we've ever had this mud slinging, this name calling, out and out bullying. i don't see that having been dop anywhere before. granted we didn't have social media, we didn't have the open access that we have now and things were not preserved to prosperity forever and ever

amen, as we have about of. has he damaged it forever or-- >> an uplifting question. >> fdr awarded crosses to people who were critical of policies, saying in effect nazi stooge. and the name calling is it not to american policies. things said about thomas jefferson were true and nothing that we discussed in discourse. what happened, the political discourse is more and more like the social discourse what you see on television sit comes. when abraham lincoln wrote a speech, he could appeal to everybody after every educational level and drawn from documents like the king james bible. the language, i'm not talking theology here. today to sort of hit the universal language you would have to write in a tone that

was half seinfeld and half homer. >> simpson. >> simpson, yes, he is deplorable. but, anyway, there's been a debasing of the popular culture which is being reflected. politics has been a lagging indicator of what's been happening around us and you can see it in the social stats. you know, behavioral and down the line. and this is not a political issue on one party or the other, it is something that's happening to america. it is a more fragmented, disoriented period of questions what true values are, what traditional values are there? where do we go from here? it's not the first time it's happened in history and in the long-term we're all footnotes. >> can i end on a little lighter more positive note. so, i'm involved with the miller center down at uva and the miller center launched the first year project to advise whoever won the election, this

was when we had seven people running on each side, basically. so i was tasked with researching the changing nature of political communications. and so, i thought i would share with you that the 2016 election cycle really did break new ground in terms of the number of people who got their political news from youtube, which is shocking to me. i feel like, how do you watch political news on youtube, what is snap chat and it was new to me and i learned all about it and the number of people who have now regularly listen to podcasts equals the number of people on twitter. what those two things tell me, despite all the cultural debasement, the name calling, all the craziness that we're seeing, that says to me that there is a hunger out there on the part of voters for content that they are educating themselves, they are not just sticking their heads in the

sand and saying you people are all crazy. there's a tremendous yearning that i've seen-- i made a film, a documentary about president bush. i take it around the country to young people, tremendous hunger for stories about american greatness, about bipartisanship, about what can we learn from the current situation and i think there's great hope for us coming through this period with a better educated citizenry. i think there's a real feeling in a lot of people's minds that we need civics education in our schools again and i think there's great hope and so, if i could end on that note, and not about the divisions that we hear about so much every day, and think about where do we go from here and how do we improve our situation here in this country. [applause] >> and i would just-- >> i would just aed to it, i think this panel which had a lot of very strongly held and strongly expressed disagreement, but i think that very respectfully expressed, also gives us that hope so i'd

like to thank them. [applause] and i'd like to thank all of you. thank you. [applause]. >> thank you. [inaudib [inaudible conversations] ... >> [inaudible conversations] >> live this morning the senate h.e.l.p. committee, help steny for health, education, labor and pensions holding a hearing this morning on reauthorizing the higher education act it would expected about simplifying the application for federal student aid among other issues.

witnesses entities and include the president of the national association of student financial aid administrators, justin draeger. nancy mccallin will appear, president of the colorado community college system and senior fellow in the tax policy center at the urban institute, kim rueben also seated at the witness table. we will be hearing from judith scott-clayton who is an associate professor of economics at columbia university teachers college and also from a shoulder specialist for the ywca of richmond, virginia. expecting this to get started in a moment. you are watching live coverage on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

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