>> next, former presidential speechwriters talking up communicating policy from the president's point of view. we hear from john mcconnell who wrote for president george w. bush and vice president dick cheney. university hosted this 90 minute program. >> my name is kevin millman and director -- on behalf of the center at new york university, thank you for coming to the event. tonight marks the first of many summer events in the young leaders' network series. the brademus center seeks to create programs that would enrich the time students spend at their summer internships and

in washington, d.c. we hope events like this will help interns like you build a network of relationships with mentors and peers. maybe encourage you to return to the nation's capital to start a career in public service after you graduate. tonight we are joined by former presidential speechwriters during the george w. bush and bill clinton administrations. john p. mcconnell served more than 10 years on the white house staff in two administrations as a senior speechwriter for president george w. bush and vice president dick cheney john john was part of a three-person team responsible for all of the president's major addresses. in the bush-cheney white house, john held the unique position of both deputy assistant to the president and assistant to the vice president. in his career, he has also worked as a principle speechwriter for vice president

dan quayle, presidential nominee bob dole, and speaker of the house, paul ryan. june shih began her career as a reporter for a florida newspaper. but left to assist then first lady hillary rodham clinton with her syndicated newspaper column in speeches. in 1997, june became a special assistant to the president and presidential speechwriter writing speeches for president bill clinton on a range of issues from civil rights and race relations to education and healthcare policy. june then went on serving as chief speechwriter for the first senate campaign in 2000. june will be joining the n.y.u. family this fall as communications director at nyu shanghai. tonight's event will be moderated by vaughn hillyard, an award winning journalist and political reporter for nbc news notably covering the special election senate race in alabama between roy moore and doug jones and the entirety of the 2016

presidential campaign as an embedded reporter from the ottawa coffee shop stops to election night at trump headquarters in new york. he first started at nbc news in july of 2013 as a tim russert fellow. this event would not have been possible without the coordination and support and staff of the center along with our colleagues at nyu, washington, d.c. please join us in the lobby for a light reception after the event. thank you and enjoy the program. [applause] >> hello, everybody. we all good? you guys hear me? yeah. all right. we'll talk here too. thank you all for having us this evening. thank you to kevin. this is june. this is john.

and so over the next hour here we'll take some questions afterwards. this is exciting for me. because i have been here in d.c. for about five years so i haven't been around the scene that long myself here. so this is an opportunity for me and i think that for a lot of the people here the question is where are you going to be in the next couple years and what are the opportunities to present themselves? for june, how old were you when you started with hillary clinton? june: i was 23. vaughn: and she was the first lady. june: yes. vaughn: kind of along the lines here, as we'll discuss, are those opportunities and suddenly you find yourself in those situations. june: yeah. random. very lucky. i was a reporter down in florida, and, you know, i definitely was much more of a partisan and democrat and he i knew i had to get out of journalism because i wanted to take a side. and so i wrote a letter -- no. i called my friends.

my friend was interning in d.c. so i called one friend and he said, you know what? hillary clinton's speechwriter would love you. he was interning in the white house and just had this thought. i'm like, ok. so this is fax. fax me a resume. and a cover letter. i'll get it to her. i'm like, ok. i just never, ever thought it would work. i didn't sweat it. i just sort of like, you know, i'd sent so many cover letters before and took hours agonizing. this one i didn't sweat because i thought there was no chance in hell. i just wrote it. it was like a paragraph or two. i faxed it to my friend and he got it to her and, you know, nothing happened. luckily, my parents live in d.c. i had a meeting with hillary's speechwriter and said i'm coming to town. would you do an informational interview?

she said yes. it was awesome. i got to go to the white house and i got to see the old executive office building if nothing else. this was amazing. we had a good conversation and then i went back to florida and nothing happened and then out of the blue a couple weeks later her assistant called and said we have an opening. hillary is going to write a column and needs an assistant to research it and write early drafts. i'm like, all right. i tried out for that. i sent, you know, you do a blind audition kind of thing. you write a sample column and they judge it. this is a long story. i'm sorry. to shorten it, i got the job. it took a while. because they were agonizing over what to do and i was ready to go to florida. i was like i'm coming up anyway. i'll volunteer. a week into my volunteering she said you got the job. that was like, all right. whoa. and i just never, ever thought it would happen. and months later she told me the reason she even kept me in mind was that she loved my cover letter.

you just never know. >> i think what we'll get at and we'll go into personal anecdotes along the way. because ultimately you stayed with the clintons through the administration. >> i did. vaughn: you were with hillary. june: back in the state department, yes. vaughn: so when you meet these people it as matter of where this can take you. june: yes. like college. the friends you meet in these campaigns or political families you're always connected. vaughn: that worked out for john. what is your story? john: a similar story. just out of law school, 1990, and i was clerking for a federal judge in new york city. and the clerkships are a year long. i wanted to do something political early in my career.

and three-quarters of the way to the clerkship, i came down to washington and i talked to everybody i knew in washington. that took about an hour. [laughter] i wasn't quite sure how to go about this. i had a law firm, couple law firms waiting for my own answer about whether i would come to work for them after the clerkship but i was holding off. i thought it would be really great to go do something political in washington. the short of it is, because i was telling all my friend what i wanted to do and my judge knew what i wanted to do and my professors, former professors knew what i wanted to do as a result of my letting all of these people know generally i was interested in coming down to do something political, a person i'd met in law school knew someone in the vice president's office and they were looking for a speechwriter and they wanted

someone who was available soon who had good recommendations and was willing to work for very little money which is how a lot of people get their start in washington. and i came down and talked to the deputy chief of staff spencer abraham, later a senator from michigan and secretary of energy and the chief of staff of the vice president's office was bill kristol. they hired me and it was as a speechwriter. and as spence abraham told me, well, the vice president never really had a speechwriter like the one we're hiring. that is someone to work on political speeches and things other than major addresses. he had a guy on the staff who was a foreign policy expert who did these major foreign policy speeches, but they needed someone to do everything else. vice president quayle had never really had someone full-time doing that. he had just done his own thing. he had been a senator prior to

being elected vice president of course. this is the mid-term elections in 1990 and they said we'll see how it works out. i was hired in august. if this works out we'll keep you after the election but it might not. this is just kind of a, we'll see if we need you. and i thought, well, the worst possible scenario is that i work for two and a half months on the white house staff, but the best scenario is they hired me for two months and forgot the two months and kept me on. finally i mentioned to spence abraham wasn't this a probationary job? he said, no, you're fine. don't worry. that's how i got into it. it as serious point i'm making about making sure your friends know what you want to do because this is really how -- you talk to people with interesting jobs in washington, and just about everyone will tell you if you're being honest they will think of a person who thought of them or

connected them to someone else or just decided to give them a break. dick cheney, you hear him talk about his career coming to washington 24 years old, 25 years old. ph.d student and how he ended up white house chief of staff and he was 33 or 34 years old and it was just people along the way. seeing what he was interested in. a talking to b and b talking to c and things following from that. another good way of becoming a presidential speechwriter is go to work for a governor who gets elected president. just got to find that governor. vaughn: i think often times younger people hear the words it's about you who know. and i think that often times there is a pejorative meaning to that. and, yet, it seems like from what you both articulate it's a matter of relationships.

what type of people have you seen from not only you guys but your experience having worked in these offices that -- you you last week -- you said you saw dan quayle last week. that's a relationship that is more than 20 years, 30 years strong. how important is that when people are presenting themselves as individuals in a very competitive sphere? what are they looking for? how does that relationship last in the long run? by speaking and questioning? by establishing a friendship? what does it look like? john: i called one of my best friends as soon as i got this job offer to go write speeches for the vice president then it hit me that this is not a job you ease into. on day one, you're given an assignment to write a speech and

it is probably going to be due in 48 hours or 72 hours and it sort of is this heaviness settled on me that as soon as i started i really better be at the top of my game. i remember saying to one of my best friends from law school, calling him to tell him what was about to happen. and he said, don't worry at all. he said just make yourself indispensable. and i thought, well that's good advice. how exactly am i to do that? and of course you think about it. nobody is indispensable. but what he was saying to me was just be -- just work very hard. be reliable. and be a good colleague. i think one of greatest experiences i've had is working for the george w. bush for president campaign in austin, texas, in 2000. that just was a magical gathering of people. wonderful people. if there were rivalries or pettiness or anything like that i was immune from it. i was definitely unaware of it. it just was a very congenial, friendly, smooth operating team. everybody pointed in the same direction. and everybody moving forward. campaigns tend to be that way. otherwise they don't turn out well. but it is really important to

like the people you work with. to be liked by them. and even more than that to like the person you work for. that takes away some of the -- some things that would be burdens on you. and so i just think indispensable, to me, just means being reliable and being someone that people like dealing with. june: yeah. i totally agree. it's like you get the speech and so often it's like a last-minute deal. and you're panicking. ok. i cannot mess this up. but it is a lot of stress but if you can deal with it and produce a good product most of the time you get a great reputation and it's also key. -- being a good colleague, low drama, you know, like i definitely took assignments and

went away and produced decent copy or decent speeches and then when people have edits, i was diplomatic about them. i wasn't a prima donna, oh, my god, you don't understand genius, you know. [laughter] even though i might have been thinking that but it's all about being very diplomatic. being a good colleague. being someone who is easy to work with. and not complaining. and so, also, i had this, because i was young, i was 23, 24, 25, i was grateful for the opportunity. so i sort of just kept my head down and got things done. looking back now that i'm a middle aged woman i feel like maybe i should have been a little more pushy. because i was so like oh, my god i can't believe i have this. i wish i had been more assertive. but over all your reputation will carry you very far. if people know you're reliable, you don't panic. you don't fail. you're easy to work with. you're not going to be a prima donna that reputation stays with

you and people 20 years down the line will remember and you never know when, but it will help you at some point. they have warm feelings for you and you have warm feelings for them and you can tap that network. john: and also the principal knows you are reliable and i remember vice president cheney saying one time, i always wrote for him, the entire eight years i wrote for both and he just, i remember one time he said don't let anyone make your life difficult. he said, you're doing things the way i need them done and i didn't hold that out, hold it over anyone but i just remember appreciating that level of confidence. vaughn: i think a lot of people in this room are familiar with john favreau the speech writing

director for president obama. and he is now operating as podcast, pod save america. the people that hear him now he is a very outspoken activist on the front lines. for you, and i think often most people that come to washington, are getting involved in politics because they want to be politically engaged. how can they make a difference? when you are a speechwriter you're essentially representing the principal, speaking for the principal, writing for principal. to what extent was that balance like when working for your principals when you were politically -- i know, june, you worked on a lot of domestic issues that you were passionate about -- what was that process like in infusing your own thoughts, opinions, knowledge base with that of trying to accomplish the goal of representing the principal and what you wrote? june: it was pretty easy. i definitely, hate to say it, i am still a clinton democrat.

i'm a moderate -- now liberal, because of the way the world has gone. but democrat. so i didn't have any sort of -- i was politically aligned with them. and then what was great is that i, because i was one of the few minority speechwriters, i got all the race speech -- i got a lot of the race speeches and i got immigration speeches. and that was easy. because it was like, everyone was aligned on the immigration issue, on immigration good. you know? and america is not defined by a race but our common ideals. all of those things were like amazing for me to help formulate for the president and there was no controversy there like today. -- unlike today. so it was not -- i didn't have any sort of like crisis of conscience because i was aligned. you know, i don't -- yeah. vaughn: president clinton announced he was going to go and do a year of town halls when it came to race relations.

june: exactly. vaughn: from my understanding in history it didn't go necessarily as the administration had hoped. june: yes. vaughn: it was a tough issue he got a lot of criticism for that he wasn't forceful enough so how did you when you were planning those town halls, kind of the -- was this a certain extent of coaching, town hall formats are different. what was that like in communicating that? you had thoughts specifically on race. how closely did you work with him? what was it like? june: a speechwriter who worked on those two and there was a whole race commission, i can't remember what they were called, one america initiative. they were all involved.

so i wasn't on deck for every speech but there was one i got to work on which was the 40th anniversary of desegregation at little rock central high school. and that was amazing. it really did sort of -- it was more like a statement of the case. it didn't have many solutions unfortunately. because it is so hard. we haven't figured that out but sort of like remarkable that he was commenting on it. sort of like a proto barack obama speech, let's recognize we still have so many hurdles, you know, segregation ended then. but we still felt segregated. so it was this great, i don't know what it was. it was like it conjured up the right feelings and we thought we were on the right path but as the initiative continued and i wasn't involved in the initiative part it was very hard to speak 100% frankly and maybe that is where we're reaping --.

vaughn: how did you do that then? i'm sure you had thousand. how do you write a speech outlining that knowing the extent to which the administration wants to go? june: i wrote that speech with my boss who was the director of speech writing and we sort of wrote what we thought. we wrote about self-segregation in schools and, you know, and then it was more like honoring the bravery of the people of the past and the self-segregation that takes place and then america is changing. it is not just a black and white country. it is more than half the population of california is going to be all kinds -- it was dealing a little bit with multi cultural part. so we just wrote it. then we got it to clinton. all sorts of people were opnining on it and then clinton got it and he sort of called us up at like 2:00 a.m. and wei were working on it in the hotel. his person called at 2:00 a.m., can you come see him and talk to him about it?

we're like ok. he is at his mother-in-law's house. we were like, oh, my god, where is that? so we had to wake up people and find out where it was and we woke up someone and we got there at 2:00 a.m. he is in his hope watermelon festival t-shirt and we're hanging out. he had rewritten it. he really had written a good part of it, reminisced about his childhood and talked about being alive during the integration and did his masterly clinton thing about understanding all sides. it was great. i don't know. it was sort of like a frank address of what the state status was, honoring the past and then going forward more like let's recognize this, but it didn't -- and then, let's have a conversation.

i didn't -- i don't know how the conversation went as it did. >> i always say that a person who is elected president of the united states definitely president clinton, president bush who i worked for, is entirely capable of writing his own speeches but he doesn't have time. he is not going to have time. the president speaks 500 times a year so that is why you have, glad to say, the speech writing office. your job really is to remember that ideally the work you're doing is expressing the president's best thoughts on the matter at hand. not yours. you're obviously going to make the case as strongly as it can be made. you want to marshal the best arguments, bring the most compelling facts and anecdotes you're able to gather through your own background, or through the use of your own research or the research of your speech writing office staff. but a writer should never confuse a speech for a president

that they're doing with their own body of written material. you are not contributing to your corpus of work. i don't think you should think of it that way. you should think of it as the president's words. if you are emphasizing something in a way the president wouldn't -- of course the president will catch it in the editing process and be annoyed by it and really annoyed if you do it to him again. so that is why, although there are tons of able writers, the proportion of them who would be able speechwriters for another is not a hundred percent. it is significantly less than that. i think some people who might be thought of as good potential speechwriters don't really, aren't really happy in the position because they don't like to change their style to suit

the president they're working for and they think in terms of it being their own body of work. in terms of writing about things you care about, you're better if you care about it. you're better if you agree with what it is you're writing. june: you bring that passion. john: right. i'm a lawyer by training and so i can make an argument for the opposing position. one of our professors told us the way to become the best advocate for your own position is become expert in your adversary's position because that is where you spot the weaknesses and where you will know where the listener is going to see where you skipped a logical step, things of that nature. by the same token you don't want to spend every day applying that talent and writing arguments for things you don't agree with. you can do that on occasion. i think it was more common in my own case to be writing about something i didn't care about. not so much something i didn't agree with but i didn't have strong opinions on every matter of federal policy and sometimes i thought you can teach it round or flat.

vaughn: john, you are one of the few who served all eight years in an administration, you worked with vice president cheney, also worked with george w. bush. can you walk us through sort of how you get to the point of putting the words on paper and sort of that conversation? you are talking directly with the president for instance it could be any number, the speech on katrina or the war in iraq or september 20, 2001 in that address to congress and the words that came out of the president's worth were "these demands are not open discussion. the taliban must act immediately. they will hand over the terrorists or they will share in

their fate. from this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the united states as a hostile regime. americans should not expect one battle but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have seen t may include dramatic strikes visible on television and combt operations secret even in success." how did those words ultimately get spoken inside of the capitol building? john: specific reference to that speech would have been direction we got from the president, from dr. rice who at the time was the national security adviser. i don't remember, i saw the president a lot in the days after 9/11 because of the number of speeches before september 20, the thursday of the week following, and that was the speech to the joint session. but he spoke at the national cathedral on friday. at the service of remembrance. but anyway, that would have been direction we got from the president. we, meaning myself, the chief speechwriter, and matthew scully, the three of us

were colleagues starting in austin. and starting in austin by dividing up the speeches and editing them together, we ended up writing them together and throughout the president's, governor bush's campaign and then president bush's first term we literally wrote on that basis three guys in the same office at the same computer writing the speeches line by line. gerson, who is now a columnist with "the washington post", very often would come in even before a single word was written with a very clear sense and clear direction on what, how the speech was going to be put together. kind of a theoretical construct. so we often started from that. a major speech like that addressed to the joint session, state of the union, there will be input from the president on the front end and then a lot of

input from the president once the thing has been drafted and put through the staffing process and reviewed. he would give a lot of input on all speeches. but the state of the union is a different thing all together because you have dress rehearsals in the family theater of the white house where the president reads it through aloud and the speechwriters are there. a lot of changes are made. that is in distinction to -- the dedication of a museum or something. the president is going to make his edits, but you are not going to get a lot of direction on where to go with this speech. it is going to be assumed the speechwriters are able to put together appropriate remarks. ronald reagan dies. gerald ford dies. pope john paul ii dies. vaughn: take us into the room and what the process looks like.

on a big policy speech. john: you will get direction. there will be big picture direction from the white house communications director. this will be social security week. what is our policy? it is understood the president wants these five people to be followed and whatever reform is enacted. this is the big speech at the beginning. he needs a page of talking points. he does not need a speech. and that you will be able to put those things together. speechwriting, we do not have to come up with a policy, think fully. -- thankfully. the joys of working for

the president of the united states is the talent around you. you want someone to tell you a route -- about trade? the will be an expert to tell you everything you want to know. they will give you very precise, ironclad, clear, understandable terms. it helps you a lot to be able to write it yourself. i can think of a couple examples where a speech that was on the calendar drove the policy process. i was in the deputy chief of staff's office one day, it was called the deputies meeting. i was there and the deputy chief of staff said to me, do you guys have what you need thursday? i said no, we don't have anything. we know where the event is, that is it. he turns to the person in charge

of the policy or the deputy of that office and said you tell your boss if we don't have the policy by the day after tomorrow the speech is canceled. the policy appeared in the speechwriting office. [laughter] speechwriting sometimes drives the policy process. typically not, and it should not. vaughn: i had that question because i was unable to cover the administration's you guys worked for. i have been able to travel with vice president pence. he had one speechwriter who was essentially going from campaign type rallies to overseas trips. it was impressive to watch him put it into words and articulate a different tone day today. -- day to day. how do you do that, campaign versus more of the actual policy, white house official side of it? you have both done campaigns and

official, you did it within the same period of time. how is that process like? is it different working with a campaign and official side? june: the campaign has a message, you just repurpose the message for every audience. you do with the same but different every time. it is all about getting the crowd into it. when you are the president, you try to bring in more of a sweep of history, and why it is important. taking america along this road. there is usually more time, they -- policy guys will give you a fact sheet and your job is to

write a speech based on a fact sheet that doesn't read like a fact sheet. sebring in that poetry and you have that time. the campaign is very responsive. even now, we worry about soundbites, i don't even think soundbites are an issue anymore. everything is online everywhere. in the 1980's and 1990's, it was like, what is that 20 seconds that is going to get on the news? all of the senior people are sweating about a sound bite. i don't think that happens anymore. john: dick cheney writes in his book about when he was chief of staff to president ford and they lost to carter in 76. to that point it was the closest election in 60 years. cheney immediately got in touch

with carter's people. the way he puts it is, overnight you go from how do you beat them to how do we help them? when the election is over, it is over. if the speech writers keep writing like the election is on, it is not going to sound right. because it is very different, campaigning is about -- to use an unfavored word, defining choices. june: contrast. john: yes, contrast, exactly right. by the time the votes are cast, the idea of campaign speech in is to have it clearly set in the mind of the voter as you can possibly do so. what is the choice in this election and what are the stakes of making choice a or choice b?

when you are president it is all about speaking in broader tones. your colleague described the narrative arc of the presidency, the speeches can differ but they should have some sort of a thread that goes through the presidency. you should attempt to bring people together. there is another difference that you discover after working in a campaign and yours is elected president. in the campaign speeches you are saying things like, i will propose to the congress such and such. or, if elected president i will direct the secretary of state to perform such and such an act. when you're president you are saying i am proposing, i have directed the secretary of state.

you go from the language of persuasion and vote gathering to the language of power. vaughn: could you share what your principles were like? when vice president quayle left office, you continue to work with him. you went and worked on the 2000 senate campaign. fun fact, i did not realize this. who were you running with originally before he bowed out of the race? june: rudy giuliani? vaughn: what were your personal -- what were your principles like and you're working and personal and relationships like? june: with hillary, it was the smartest person i ever worked with. she is a very smart person and you cannot get away with bad stuff.

she sees it right away. she is very kind about it, i did my best to avoid it. this didn't come through in her campaigns, but she is a lovely, warm woman. very gracious and funny, really funny. i started out ghost writing and helping her with her column. it is just a warm relationship. president clinton was always very nice to me, too. once again, really smart, he held back a bit because he knew i came from hillary's staff. also, very smart and amazing.

there are few times you get to talk to him about a speech, for me i only had a few times where i talked to him before. we would go after the -- we would go over the speech after he delivered it and he would tell me after and tell us why he tweaked the line, it was because he was reading the audience. being in the audience of a master communicator. is it a clinic or a seminar? he was telling me i did it this way because of that. they were very kind and generous. when clinton was going to china in 1998, they knew i was chinese-american so even though the white house had foreign and domestic speechwriters, both clintons made sure i would go. those personal touches were quite heartwarming i guess.

john: president bush, i love the guy, a wonderful guy to work for. demanding, but a very appreciative person, i never saw him slight anyone. i never saw him condescend. just a very decent fellow. if i had never met the man, i would still feel that i had a sense of the kind of person he was. he is an easy person to read. his feelings go directly to his expression on his face. happy, sad, annoyed, bored, irritated. i always described him as -- there are people who thought he was impatient. he is not an impatient man. he is in fact, patient. i have on many occasions watched him hear someone out. whatever the point they wanted

to make, he would listen. he would not be patient when they started to repeat themselves. he would say you are losing altitude or something like that. patient, considerate, a great memory, he knew everybody's name. he would call you by name. if he saw you on a saturday, we had many unexpected events that required fast, quickly produced speeches on a weekend. he would thank you for coming in on a saturday or sunday. of course it was your job but he was very considerate in that way. he was a very serious editor of his speeches. line by line, he could read a speech once, an eight or 10 page speech and recite it.

on one reading, he would internalize it. he had a real sense of how things were structured, he could find the one or two paragraphs that were out of place. he called me one morning really early. i was a sitting at my desk, it was about 7:00, i was staring down into a cup of coffee. my phone rang and it said potus, and he said there was a speech coming up that morning, he was going to be leaving in an hour. he said, i have a couple little changes on the speech. it was one of the tough ones that had one part and it other part that had to be said that day but didn't really fit. in the middle of it, the president said what is this paragraph in the middle of page four? june: you have to blame the policy staff.

john: whatever i mumbled, the nature of a transition. he said, take it out. he would spot those things. vice president cheney was not a big editor. he would like the speech are not. he would modestly say, i am not a speech writer. he would write inserts, he had a beautiful hand, he would write in flawless handwriting these inserts without cross outs that had perfectly formed in his mind and where to put it in the speech. he was less of a line editor. don't be wrong on a fact or a piece of history, cheney would be on top of that. he was not pedantic. he would make little notations and he cared about his speeches.

he called me one day, john, i got us into some trouble. i said, oh? the president is going to europe and he was going to speak, i forget, one of those big dinners where the president has to be funny. cheney says, "i have to stand up there in his place and speak for 10 minutes and be funny." then he says "i don't do funny." i said don't worry about it, we will write you a speech and just have some nice stuff in it. i talked to him a little bit about it. dick cheney was a wonderful guy to work for. i enjoyed him every bit as much as i enjoyed president bush as a person. just nice, appreciative, and considerate.

always treated and that everyone as an equal. i will add one thing about vice president quayle. he is the only boss that i would work for that would write an entire speech and give it to me. he did this on a regular basis when he was vice president. this is back when you would share disks. the first time it happened, i was called in his office in the west wing. it was early in the morning and i didn't know why i was being called in. he says, john i wrote a speech this weekend. he hands it to me and there was a fully written speech. dan quayle was a newspaperman for some years before he entered politics. he could write, and he could write fast. when he had a newspaper column he could write a 600 or 700 word column in an hour. vaughn: this president is known to go off script. [laughter]

he is known to go without a teleprompter, he speaks in the white house when reporters are in there. there is also a desire for authenticity. you see it in senate campaigns. it seems there is a demand among the electorate, and we saw this, and the president has continued that. where do you see the art of the speech, and how do you convince the public that there is authenticity, that you are not just another politician? because of twitter, the demand to have responses that are not package up in the way that perhaps you guys did. where would you say to individuals running in these midterm elections or in 2020, what would your recommendations

be? june: so much of these times are not normal. if you go back to barack obama, the speeches made him. i still believe there is room for excellent speeches. what made him so successful is they were beautiful speeches. they were still authentic. he was able to convey himself through amazing, and beautiful words. he came across as authentic, even though he was very articulate. i would counsel a candidate to go that way. you need to say real things. i think that is where you get in trouble, when you are saying beautiful things, but saying

nothing. i think that is when it really works, trump would say very real things and there was not substance. there was something bracingly not true, i don't know what the word is. i think you can still find that. for the sake of comity and civilization in the country, let's think these things through and bring your authenticity in. i don't know, i am flailing here. john: president trump's state of the union speech was a pretty good speech. june: that is because they wrote it. john: a year ago when he was first president and he first came out to give his state of

the union, i was so curious, what is he going to do, throughout that campaign in 2016, he would come out, stand in front of a crowd, reach in his pocket, throw down a couple of sheets of paper with his own notes. he would give a speech. no one has ever run for president successfully doing this. no one. yet, he did it. when he came out for that first speech for congress, i wondered, is he going to do that? of course, he did not. the most recent one, i thought this was his best thoughts down in a polished way. there was nothing inauthentic about it at all. authenticity does not mean declining to share with people

your best thoughts, or spending time polishing your words, or working with writers. i work a lot with ceos now, i remember one saying i am not good at giving speeches. i said well you can be, you are good at everything else you have ever tried. it is not some mystery, i just think some people don't want to do it, some people do want to do it. it is something that a person who is an intelligent and has a point to make can do and can get better at. one of the elements, it seems to me, will always be getting your best thoughts down in writing just to prepare. like you would prepare for anything else in life. june: the best speech writers can help you find your authentic voice. we are listening to you and what you want to say, listening carefully and maybe doing some

research on you. as you said earlier, we serve our principles and really capturing their voice. you don't need to write it yourself as long as you have people who help you say what you mean, but better. john: i worked for senator dolan in 1996. i traveled across the country for the last six months of the campaign. at one point, i was writing speeches on the plane. at one point during the campaign, headquarters would get in touch with me, we have a policy address, it was not written by anyone on the staff i don't think. at any rate, we had this policy address that we want the senator to deliver sometime this week.

it is really important. because it wasis my job as the speechwriter on the campaign plane to present this to the senator and tell him it was really important that he deliver the speech. so i did, i gave it to him and said they want you to do this speech this week. it is important. dole looks at it, he makes no commitment to me about what his intentions are. he looks at it and i thought well, he will let me know what he thinks. he didn't. i get another call from headquarters a day later asking when he would give the speech. i said i don't think there is going to be any speech, not this thing you had me give to him. they said it is important, you go talk to him and tell him it is important. i found my opportunity to go up to the senator on the plane and

i said sir, that speech draft i guess it is pretty important and they want to get it on the calendar. so if we need to make edits or whatever, i can get to work on those. dole just looked at me and said nothing. i said, you never want to see this again do you? he just shook his head, i took it and gave the bad news to headquarters. vaughn: we have some time to open up questions to everybody. >> this is a question for mr. mcconnell. you mentioned the difference between an election -- campaigning and working for somebody that is president is the language of gathering hope versus the language of power. how would you distinguish those

besides just grammar? john: the is summed up in the example is the candidate saying i intend to do this as president, i promise i will do this as president. as the speech writer learns when you are writing for the president, you say i am doing this, i am happy to tell you i have just done this, or i am happy to tell you that the secretary of state is going to the middle east because i have sent him. it is no longer the aspirations of a presidential candidate, it is now the actions of a president. >> these are very busy times, thank you both for taking the time to talk to us. since you both have written for various people, since we talk about tone, did you find it

difficult, i guess hillary and bill had a similar tone to how they speak. dan quayle and dick cheney seem different in the words that they use and how they present their arguments. was it difficult to find that tone? how did you find that tone for having to deal with various people and politicians? john: you really have to pay attention and learn and ask questions. george w. bush, dick cheney, dan dolee, abdul, -- all the -- bob dole, very different in their styles.

they are all comfortable speaking in public. if you are comfortable speaking in public, you can read a speech that is decently written, that follows the basic elements. one of the main ones is of the sentences need to be short. it is a little bit different, in some ways it's significantly different from other types of writing. you have to read it aloud if you have written it. you have to be careful that things don't rhyme, or if you have a liberation that is not intended. any structural infractions that would hit the ear differently from how you would expect it. the main point of variation among the people that i have written speeches for is how they get into a speech. how they start it, what that first page is like. how they want with the audience, and how they get comfortable. president bush like to do extensive acknowledgments. so extensive that we would not

write these things down, they would be gathered and it would be the mayor, governor, senator, the local city council, the eighth grade band. he wanted to thank everybody. june: clinton, too. we had to list them, if you wrote them it would take forever. john: vice president quayle, i remember he likes to get right into his message. vice president cheney was a little more that way. if you wrote bob dole a quality joke, he would tell them for five or 10 minutes. you won't be surprised to learn, he liked people. he had been in politics just a

few years after he got out of the army in world war ii. he had a very good sense of humor. he made up a lot of jokes on his own. he likes to do that kind of thing. he was good at it. really, the main point of variation is if it is decently written and it is written for the spoken word, and doesn't have any type of quirks that would be unique to one person or another. the important thing is, how will he get into this speech and what is going to be comfortable? june: i worked for people, bill and hillary clinton are both excellent speakers. they don't really need speech writers, your value added is a finding that nugget or finding the story that can help them get into the speech. finding the historical anecdote

that will frame whatever policy you are proposing. or if you are visiting a country with the history of u.s. relations here. finding the historical nugget or the real person connection, or the biographical story. americans love biography, it is a great way to connect with an audience. it is finding those factoids and anecdotes that will help them launch the speech and personalized the speech. you do that thinking for them, you do that prep for them. they can speak anywhere, you just do the tailoring for the audience. john: that is where your researchers can help a lot. june: it is a bit of a struggle, sometimes you are like there is nothing here. they very much appreciate that,

that is something they cannot do on their own, they do not have time. >> for example, you are so busy and you have so many plates in the air. if your researcher you are very -- if your researcher tells you he will be speaking in front of the giant statue of grant. you don't want to read it afterwards. the president, speaking in front of a giant statue. you mentioned having different policy and research teams aiding you. to what extent are you performing personal research, and how did you come across fine-tuning those research skills? >> i think it depends on how much time you have, how big of staff you have.

on a campaign you were on your own a little bit. in the white house you have interns. you have to send them down, figure out how to refine them. i am sorry. what was your other question? >> [indiscernible] june: on that, to serve your client well, your principal really well is you should know their biography. backward and forward. i read all the bios. autobio everything about them. you had to catalog personal stories. you read the old speeches as far back as possible so you internalized this person. so that is how you get their voice that way.

this was -- i was working before google. lexis-nexis, gail, old autodial things. i think there was netscape. the interns were on netscape. then you got your library. so yeah, i know a lot of personal research. i am hands-on and want to know everything. you know it when you see it. instead of people bringing you random things, it is hard. >> you know, only you know what you are looking for. june: it is hard to articulate. >> that is true. we had the assignment of doing the president's dedication speech for the world war ii memorial. one of my favorite writers of all-time, ernie pile, who wrote

throughout world war ii until the day he was shot dead by a sniper. talk about beautiful writing. when that assignment came up, the first thing i thought was, we have to get arnie pile. every living person who remembers that war will be touched when they hear his words. you go looking for something nice, i've got news for you. it is on every page. that was a joy in delight. then, an eminent person dies, or you are preparing for that event , you can't say the research is wrong. 10 things on ronald reagan. reagan was my hero. not a good example. by the same token, you are going to be giving someone they are

due. him you can't believe that there you can't farm that out. you have to do it on your own. there is a line you have probably both heard, henry kissinger who worked in the white house for a long time, even when he was secretary of state he was also a member of the white house staff, the national security advisor. he said a white house is a place where you spend intellectual capital, you do not accumulate intellectual capital. your favorite stories, you give them out. you give them away. but, that that is something it can to research but more properly termed as background knowledge, whichever you bring

to it. june: one of the best parts, interviews. because you are calling from the white house you could interview almost anyone to get the background. that was pretty cool. to get the live antidote from the friend, or if you were doing a eulogy, there is not a lot of written material about, you get these great stories. that was a delight. >> what is your favorite writer? who is your favorite writer? june: oh my god. john: i always feel an adequate when i answer questions like this. in categories, charles dickens.

but he didn't write much american history or biography. david mccullough who has written eight or 10 great books, all of which are still in print, the johnstown flood published in 1966 about an event that happened in the 1880's and there were still survivors. david mccullough, i always mention as someone who gave me, imparted the best advice i've ever gotten for speechwriting. when he was asked about the variety of books he had written and there is no clear theme to the books, the question was how did he decide what his next book was going to be, he said i write the book i want to read. i remember that stuck in my

mind. that is a good attitude for speechwriters. write the speech you wouldn't mind listening to. june: exactly. >> i can go on. the adams biography. june: he literally brought history to life like you were writing his horse with him. to this day one of my babe -- favorite is to kill a mockingbird. just the way it evoked a summer in the south. jumpa lahiri, because she really conveys what it is like to be a child of immigrants and a woman, along those lines, i don't how to say her name, the woman who wrote americanah. and lin-manuel miranda. super cool. love him.

of -- mentioned in senses instances of conflict. when your genius was unappreciated. can you recall when you felt strongly that you had written something you thought was important and you got disagreement from a chief or principal or somebody question mark what did you do? did you push back? what is that like? how do you tell when it is time to let it go? june: for me the speech at a central high school, i wanted to start with this anecdote about elizabeth, the woman, one of the rock nine who didn't get the phone call they were going to go in the back door. all these protesters surrounded her. there is the photo of the girl, there is that famous photo.

i don't know people know that. i really wanted to start with that. there were people who thought that was not the right way to go. some just thought it was a slow beginning. i was like oh my god, this is brilliant. my boss was like don't worry. look at my pen. the pen is not moving. it is almost on its way out. clinton was concerned. in the end he read it and keep it. at the end of the day, it is not your speech. while you are powerful as a speechwriter there are people who outrank you. i think i reacted a little too strongly but i hoped the principal would see the value of it. he did. it doesn't always go that way.

it is not your speech. it is never your speech. it is always going to be they take credit for it, they stand to lose it. you have to let it go. most of the time i could not let it go. >> i write in the drafting process of the speech to congress after 9/11, the september 20 speech, the counselor who came and worked with him in texas in his first campaign in the governor's office, in the white house, she advocated for live your lives and hug your children. about what is asked of us now after these attacks. looking ahead to life in america

. i believe that was the line. i remember colleagues, we didn't like that. we tried several times to remove it. we may have even removed it from the speech at some point. it stayed in, and it was a line that touched a lot of people and is still remembered. we were wrong about that. that is one memory that comes to mind. i can't see -- think of something i insist we kept and was not. there was probably a joke along the way we thought was funny. definitely that happened. some jokes we amused ourselves with that didn't really resonate beyond the door. i am in the middle of been roads new book. >> he talks about having to mind

meld with president obama. i am wondering if you worried trying to mind meld with your principal you worry you would lose your own writing voice. june: those five years i probably didn't have much of my own voice. it comes back. there was no time to write for yourself when you write in the white house. maybe i did. clinton like to write in lists. maybe i write more in lists now. yeah. first, second, finally. >> i feel the same. i will say i felt as long as i was involved with george w. bush that made me a better writer because of how careful he was as an editor, how logically

was as a thinker. so i was never afraid of losing my own voice. every day i was there i felt like my tools as a writer were being sharpened because of the demands of it. june: i always want to give my best to them and find the most evocative image, the best words. clinton would say too many words. i wanted to be economical. i think that makes you better. just the best verbs, fewer adjectives. the ways to be economical, that made me a better writer, very careful about word choice. i was curious, what advice would you have for a policy person to be a better communicator of

policy? june: that is pretty good. well, think first. the first question i ask about a speech assignment aside from the obvious, who is the audience? that has a huge influence on how you are going to be writing it, your audience. nasa engineers, or the graduating class of a college, or political donors? you go through the endless variety. in terms of policy i would say become a more direct or

persuasive and more economically policy rider think about an audience, and audience that is not technically familiar with the material but not unintelligent, not uninterested. rather simply not conversant in the matter. i remember chief justice rehnquist wrote interesting books about the supreme court and history. in the introduction he said when was writing, a he thought of his wife, educated at stanford, but not a lawyer. these books were about law and the court. he said having his wife, and interested in intellegent reader in mind but not a technically trained reader was a great advantage to the final product.

whether it is thinking of one person, or of a larger audience of a type of person, i promise you what you write tomorrow will better than what you write today if you put in those terms. june: keeping in mind what the policy means for real people. painting the picture of what is the human result of this policy. i think sometimes because we had to turn things over quickly you get the fact sheet and you end up tired or lazy, you are just rewriting the fact sheet, trying to elevate it a little. really you should stop, write the fact sheet and then figure out what this means to do build on. what is the human impact? what does this mean for an average family of four, this

person in ohio, how is this transformed by this policy? keep that in mind. paint that picture and that will communicate to a broader audience what a policy means. >> thank you for an interesting discussion. my question relates to the lack of media exposure of presidential speechwriters in the last decade or more, in contrast to the 1980's, and 90's when you had people who [inaudible] for the my question is can is it because people assume in the case of articulate and erudite presidents like bill clinton and barack obama as you correctly

mentioned, who speak beautifully and they assume, every speech is their own speech? of lesshe case articulate people like nixon, people say that can be his words. my other question is, for a presidential speechwriter is it more difficult to work with an articulate president who might nitpick and torture them to hell , producing draft after draft, where a less articulate president will take the speech hook line and sinker? i disagree. i think there are a lot of famous speechwriters. the whole obama team is famous. everyone knows john favreau, they have gotten plenty of coverage from the media. i don't think -- they have gotten their fair share of credit, i would say.

i don't know about that. maybe they are more outlets now because they are all over the podcasts. sapphire had a column. there are more ways to get your voice out to claim credit and be famous, i guess. >> does everyone here know that chris matthews was a presidential speechwriter. he wrote for president carter. i am thinking -- bill safire was a fine guy, a presidential speechwriter for nixon and did effective speeches. another person was pat buchanan. he had been with next and before he was president. himself hired buchanan based on reputation when he was still getting ready to run again for

president and 68. buchanan tells the story, next -- nixon who worked hard on his , speeches, as hard or harder than most of his successors since them, he renders nixon saying why can't i get speechwriters like woodrow wilson? well, woodrow wilson wrote his own speeches. [laughter] >> i think we've got one more. >> could you share a few anecdotes about mistakes or screw ups you either made or witnessed in the white house? >> i will jump to that one. we were very proud of our fact checking operation in the speech

office. it was 100% successful. shortly before we had an up and running fact checking operation i remember there was a reference to pope john paul leading a flock of a trillion. there aren't a trillion people on earth. it was a billion. but it was during budget season. everyone was throwing around trillions. we wrote this speech. it was about his whole life. it was at the dedication of the cultural center here in washington. the speech went through. multiple drafts. the staffing process. it wasn't caught until late in the game when somebody said do you mean billion? [laughter]

but that never -- that was where the quality control process came into correct things before the president was involved. june: i was super paranoid about making a mistake. almost ocd. triple checking everything, having other people check it. harassing policy people to check things. never wanting to send out something incorrect or off by a zero. a very nerve-racking part of the job. you thought i'm going to get fired if i get something wrong. i can't think of a major mistake. but i do have a good story. this is my naivete. i was young and new to washington ranks and titles.

there are all these titles. deputy outranked an assistant and such. i was on the plane coming back from england with hillary and she was giving a list to this guy, larry summers. i had gone to college. larry summers was a professor at harvard. i said hello professor summers, good to see you. how are you doing? i read your articles. they were great. what are you doing now? i said you are at treasury right? he's on the deputy secretary. good for you. i got home and talk to my boss. he said, the deputy secretary. do you know what the deputy secretary is? the number two in the department. i'm so sorry. i didn't get that i was insulting him.

i had no idea a deputy secretary was number two. anyway that's embarrassing. >> at one point, i was reading a best-selling book that had interesting little story and it that was irresistible. john philip sousa, the composer . his family name was as so. out of love for the united states, he literally added the usa to his last name. well, it never happened. it wasn't true. it wasn't true. [laughter] >> but it was in a best-selling book. we dropped it in a speech draft and the first person who sees the speech draft is the fact checker. this best-selling book notwithstanding, there was no truth to this story. june: now that is bringing up , something. you have to check something 5 million times.

sometimes -- one historian i talked to, i told him every now and then i read something in a book or biography and i just wonder if it really was that way. he said as we say in the history profession, some stories are too good to check. june: if you can't get the triple check, i'm going to have to kill this. you don't want to kill it. >> last question from me. a lot of people are looking to jump into speechwriting. think the opportunity is interesting on the democratic side. 2020. young congressmen and women looking to jump in. should somebody moved to iowa? should somebody work for the labor department? for the governor's office? take that jump in moved to colorado? in order to break and have an effective impact on what you believe you are able to offer what type of individual would

you suggest going to break-in with? june: what kind of person should do it? >> what kind of principle would you be looking for? would you recommend to starting as a fact checker, working with a younger principle, what would you be a route? >> find someone you really like. if you can't get a job as a you writer for that person, go to work for that person anyway. if you really like this person and you really want to write for this person, and you can write, i can almost guarantee if you get on that staff and they find out you are a writer, you are able to do this, under the conditions of a campaign or whatever other intents demanding conditions they have, they will

use you. maybe you are on the finance staff, clerical staff, fact check, research, whatever. him if you just say how about -- when you have a spare project, a press release, something like that i would like to take a crack at that if you wouldn't mind. i don't think they are going to say no to you. if you are ready -- really good they will come back and back and there will be no limit to how far you can rise and that operation if you can meet that standard. june: that is exactly what i was going to say. in a campaign that our battlefield promotions. talent rises. no other situation. in a campaign it is like all hands on deck. the best people will rise and will get opportunities.

also, there are not a lot of good writers out there. if you can write it is like a needle in a haystack. especially on a campaign. there are so many operatives. very few people can write. very few people can write. if you can do that and you go in at any level, any job and volunteer, was the figure it you can write, there are so many things that need to be written. not just speeches. all kinds of texts and answers. they need good writers. once you are identified they will keep coming and you will get great jobs. back to that saying, you're going to take a small level job. little or no money. only way to stay happy is to believe in the candidate, really think they are the best thing for america. you should find somebody you like and should be in the job. then it becomes easy. it is like a mission. >> we both know people who have

made that decision and in many cases, maybe in majority it is a snap decision. that is my person. june: you fall in love. getting coffee is not beneath you. do everything. be a yes person. make copies. get the coffee. then if you have any overloaded talking points i would like to try a few. let me try a few. >> ari fleischer said good interns make copies. great interns read the things that they are copying. [laughter] are so many young people i've run across and they say i want to do substantive things. you have to do copies. then you will get into the substantive things. look for the opportunities. >> thank you very much.

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