august 6-14 starting at 8:00 p.m. on c-span3. former presidential speech writers talk communicating policy from the president's point of view. we hear from june chi and john mcconnell. new york university hosted this 90-minute program. i'm the external affairs associate here at nyu washington dcu. on behalf of the john brad center at new york university, thank you for coming to tonight's event. this marks the first of many events in the young leaders network series. by developing the young leaders network, the center seeks to create programs that would enrich the time students spend at summer internships and in washington, d.c. we hope events like this 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 speech writers during the george w. bush and bill clinton administrations. john p. mcconnell served more than ten years on the white house staff and two administrations. as a senior speech writer for president george w. bush and vice president dick cheney, he was part of the three-person team responsible for the president's addresses, and he held the unique position of deputy assistant to the president and assistant to the vice president, and in his career, he has also worked as a principle speech writer for vice president don quail, for bob dole, vice president nominee, paul ryan, and june chi began

her career as a cops and courts reporter for a florida newspaper but left to assist then first lady hillary clinton with her syndicated newspaper column and speeches. in 1997, june became a special assistant to the president and presidential speech writer writing speeches for president bill clinton on a a ranrange of issues from civil rights to race relations to education and health care policy. june then served as chief speech writer for mrs. clinton's first senate campaign in 2000. june will be juning the nyu family this fall as communications director at nyu shanghai. tonight's event is moderated by von miller, covering special election senate races in alabama between moore and jones and entirety of the 2016

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

june, this is john. we'll take the questions afterwards, but this is exciting for me because i have been here in d.c. for about five years, so i've been around the scene, but this is an opportunity for me and for a lot of people here, the question is where are you going to be in the next couple years, and what's the opportunities to present themselves? just a piece with june, how old were you starting with hillary clinton? >> 23. >> 23 years old when she was the first lady. >> she was the first lady, yes. >> along the lines here with those opportunities, and suddenly you find yourself in those situations. >> yeah. random, very lucky. >> how did you get connected? >> i was a cops and court reporter down in florida, and, you know, i was definitely much more of a partisan and democrat and i knew i had to get out because i wanted to take a side, and so i wrote a letter -- oh, no, i called friends interning in d.c., so i called one friend, and he said, you know what?

hillary clinton's speech writer would love you. he was interning in the white house. he just had this thought. okay. send -- fax, fax me your resume and cover letter to get to her. i said okay. i never thought it would work, so i did not sweat it. i sweat so many cover letters before, took hours agonizing over every word. i did not sweat it. thought there was no chance in hell. so i just wrote it. like a paragraph or two, and i faxed it to my friend, and he got it to her, and nothing happened. luckily, my parents lived in d.c., so when i visited them, i call liz, her speech writer, saying, i'm coming to town, can you do an informational interview? she said yes. great. it was awesome. i got to go to the white house. if nothing else comes of this, i get to see the old executive office building, and this is amazing. we had a good conversation, and

then i went back to florida, and nothing happened, and then out of the bloor, later, the assistant called, we have an opening, she's writing a column, needs an assistant to research it and write early drafts. like, all right. i tried out for that. i spent, like, you know, a blind audition thing, you write a sample column and they judge it. this is a long story, sorry. to shorten it, i got the job, and it took awhile. they were agonizing what to do. i was ready in florida. coming up anyway. i'll volunteer. i volunteered, and then a a week into the volunteering, she said, you got the job. so like, all right, like, woah, and i just never, ever thought it would happen, and, like, movants later, she told me the reason she even kept me many mind was because she loved my cover letter. you just never know.

>> i think what we get at with personal notes along the way because, ultimately, you stayed with the clintons through the administration. >> yep, i did. >> you were with hillary. >> back in the state department, yes. >> so one of the lines along the way is it's when you meet the people, it's a mat aer of where those things can take you? >> yes. >> and those words. >> it's like college, right, the friends you meet and campaigns and political families, you're always connected. >> that worked out for john. >> same thing. >> you mind telling everyone, yeah, how you got involved in the speech writing and that trajectory of where the initial meetings happened and how it took you. >> it's a similar story. i was just out of law school. i was in 1990, clerking for a a federal judge in new york city, and clerk ships are a yearlong. i wanted something political early in my career, and three

quarters of the way through the clerkship, i came down to washington, and i talked to everybody i knew in washington. that took about an hour. [ laughter ] and i was not sure how to go about this. i was -- i had a couple law miles per hour -- firms waiting for my answer about whether i would come to work for them after the clerkship, but i was just holding off, thinking, gee, it would be really great to go and do something political in washington, but the short of it is because i told the friends what i wanted to do and when my judge knew, and former professors knew what i wanted to do, as a result of letting all the people know generally that i was interested in coming down to do something political, a person i knew in law school knew someone in the president's office looking for a speech writer, and they wanted someone available soon with good

recommendations and willing to work for very little money, which is how a lot of people get their start in washington. >> very little money. >> yes. so i came down and talked to the deputy chief of staff, spencer abraham, later a senator for michigan and then secretary of energy and chief of staff, vice president's office was bill crystal, and they hired me, and it was as a speech writer, and abraham told me, vice presidents never really have a speech writer like the one we're hiring which is someone to work on political speeches and things other than major addresses. he had a guy on the staff a foreign policy expert that did major foreign policy speeches, but needed someone to do everything else, and vice president quail had never really had someone full time doing that, but had done his own thing, been a senator prior to

being elected vice president, of course, and anyway, this was the midterm elections in 1990, and they said, we'll see how it works out. hired in august. if this works out, we'll keep you after the election, but it might not. this is just kind of a let's see how -- we'll see if we need you, and i thought, well, the worst possible scenario is i work for two and a half months on white house staff, but instead, they hired me for two months ago forget about it and kept me on. finally, i mentioned to abraham, it was a probationary job. he said, no, you're fine, don't worry about it. it's a 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 they are honest, they think of a person who thought of them or connected them to someone else

or just decided to give them a break and dick cheney, he'll talk about his career coming to washington 24 years old, 25 years old, a ph.d. student and ended up white house chief of staff at 33 years old, and it was just people along the way seeing what he was interested in, and, a, talking to b, and b talking to c, and things following from that. another good way of becoming a presidential speech writer is go to work for a governor who gets elected president. just got to find that governor. >> what do you guys, i think, oftentimes, younger people hear the words "it's about who you know", and i think that oftentimes there's a pejorative meaning to that, and, yet, it seems like from what you both articulate, it's a matter of relationships and what type of people have you seen, from not only you guys, but your experiences working in the offices that you meet, you

lasted, you saw dan quail last week. that's a relationship that is, you know, 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 did that relationship last in the long run? by speaking and questioning? by establishing a friendship? how -- what does that look like? >> i remember i called one of my best friends as soon as i got the job offer to go to write a speech for the vice president. it hit me. this is not a job you ease into. day one, you have writing a speech due in 48 hours. it's a heaviness that settled on me that as soon as i started, i really better be at the top of my game, and i remember saying to one of my best friends from law school, calling him, telling him what was about to happen, and he said, oh, don't worry at all, johnny, 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 just work very hard, be reliable and be a good colleague. one of the greatest experiences i've had is working for the george w. bush for president campaign in 2000. that was a magical gathering of people, just wonderful people. if there were rivalries or pettiness or anything like that, i was immune from it. i was definitely unware of it. it's a very friendly, smooth operating team. everybody pointed in the same direction and moving forward.

it's really important to like the people you work with, to be liked by them, and to like the person you work for. that takes away some things that would be burdens on you. >> i totally agree with that. it's like you get the speech and so often it's like a last minute deal and you're like panicking. you're like i cannot mess this up. it's a lot of stress. if you can deal with it and produce a good product, most of the time, you get a great reputation. it's also key, being a good colleague. low drama. i definitely took assignments and went away and produced

decent speeches and when people had edits, i was diplomatic about them. i wasn't prima donna and not like you don't understand gen s genius. being someone who is easy to work with and not complaining. also i had this like, because i was young. i was 23, 24, 25. i was grateful for the opportunity. 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, i can't believe i have this. i wish had been a little more assertive. overall, your reputation will carry you very far. if people know you're reliable. you don't panic. you don't fail and easy to work with.

that reputation stays with you. people, 20 years down the line remember that and they will help you -- you never know win, but they will help you another some point. they have warm feelings for you. you have warm feelings for them and you can tap that network. >> also the principal knows you're reliable. >> yes. >> he said don't let anyone make your life difficult. he said you're doing things the way i need them done. >> i think a lot of people in this room -- he was the speech writing director.

they getting involved in politics because they want to be politically engaged. how can they make a difference. when you're a speech writer you're representing the principal, writing for the principal. to what extent was that balance like when working for your principals when you were politically, you worked oen eedt of domestic issues that you were passionate about. >> it was pretty easy.

what was great is that -- because i was one of the few minority speech writers, i got a lot of race speeches. i got immigration speeches. every one was aligned on immigration good. there was no controversy there, unlike today. it was not -- i didn't have any sort of like crisis of conscious because i was aligned. i don't -- >> he have going to do a year of

town halls. it didn't necessarily, i let you speak to it because for my understanding, it doesn't go as the administration has hoped. it w it was a tough issue. he got a lot of criticism that he wasn't overarching enough. how were you when planning those town halls -- was there a certain extent of coaching. what was that like in communicating the message? i'm sure you had thoughts on race. how closely lly did you work w h him? >> there was another speech writer who worked on those too. i wasn't on deck for every single speech. there's one speech i got to worken which was the 40th anniversary of desegregation at little rock high school nap was

amazing. it's so hard. we weren't figured that out. it's like commenting on it. it was like a proto barack obama speech. let's recognize we have so many hurdles. it conjured up the right feelings. as the initiative continued and i wasn't involved in the initiative part, it was hard to speak 100% frankly. that's where briefing or where ever. >> how did you do that? you had thoughts. >> yeah. >> how do you write a speech out lining not knowing the extent to which the administration wants to go?

>> i wrote that speech with my boss. resort of just wrote what he thought. we wrote about self-segregation in schools and so it was more like honoring the bravery of people of the past and america's changing, it's not just a black and white country. it's more than half the population of california is going to be all kinds. it was dealing with the multicultural part. we just wrote it. then we got it to clinton. there's all these people convincing on it. then clinton got it and he just sort of called us up at like 2:00 a.m. we were working on it in the hotel. his person called us at 2:00 a.m. we're like, okay. where is he? he's at his mother-in-law's

house. it's like where is that? we had to wake up people to find out where that was. we got there at 2:00 a.m. he's in his hope watermelon festival t-shirt. sort of like did his masterly clinton thing. i don't know how the conversation went.

host not going to have time. the president speaks 500 times a year. that's why you have, glad to say, the speech writing office. your job really is to remember that ideally the work that 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. you want to bring the most compelling facts and anecdotes you're able to gather. a writer should never confuse a

speech for president that they're doing with their own body of written material. you're not contributing to your corpus of work. i don't believe you should think of it that way. you should think of it has the president's words. if you're emphasizing something in a way that the president really pount, the president is going to catch it in the editing process and will be annoyed by it and he will be really annoyed if you do it to him again. the proportion of them who would be able speech writers for another is 100%. it's significantly less than that. some people who might be thought of as good potential speech writers aren't really happy in the position because they don't like to change their style to suit the president they are

working for. they think of it in terms of being their own body of work. i can make an argument for the opposing position. the way to become the best advocate for your own position is to become an expert in your adversary's position. that's where you spot the weakness. you'll know where the listener will 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 i didn't agree with.

i didn't have opinions on every matter of federal policy. i thought you can teach it round or flat. >> sean, you're one of the few that has served all eight years in administration. can you walk us through sort of how you get to the point of putting the word os on paper an that conversation? you can go through any number of whether it been speech on tarp, speech hurricane katrina or the war in iraq. from this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be guided by the united states as a hostile regime. americans should expect a

lengthy campaign unlike any other we have seen. how did those words get spoken there? >> that would have been direction we got from the president, from dr. rice who was the national security advisor. i saw the president a lot in days after anything el9/11. there were a number of speeches. that would have been direction we got from the president.

starting in austin by dividing up the speeches and editing them together. we ended up writing them together. throughout the president's -- governor bush's campaign, we literally wrote on that three bas basis. three guys in the same office, at the same computer writing the speeches line by line. 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 an put think the staffing process and reviewed. that's in distinction to the dedication of a museum or something. it's going to be assumed they are able to put together appropriate marks.

>> there are policy people in the white house. what's our policy? talk to the policy people on that. it's understood the president wants these five principles to be followed and whatever reform is enacted. this is a speech on the five principles. then he's going to do a town hall speech in kansas the next day. he needs a page of talking points. he doesn't need a speech. you will just put those things tot. we don't have to come up with the policy, thankfully.

there's going to be a great expert to tell it to you in what you want to know. >> it created a deadline. >> yeah. it was called the deputy's meeting. i was there. the deputy chief of staff said do you have what you need for that speech on sump and -- such so next thursday. i said no. such and

so next thursday. i said no. such and so next thursday. i said no.such and so next thursday. i said no. such and so next thursday. i said no. such and so next thursday. i said no. such and so next thursday. i said no. such and so next thursday. i said no.such and so next thursday. i said no. he turns to the deputy and says you tell your boss if we don't have the policy the day after tomorrow, the speech is cancelled. the policy appeared in the speech writing office in due course. >> he was going for those cam -- campaign type rallies. how do you do that? campaign for v

campaign versus the actual policies. >> there's a stump speech. there's a message. you sort of redo it. do the same but different. it's all about getting the crowd into it. not always but usually there's a little more time to think it through.

you bring in that poetry and have that time. the campaign is resposnsivrespo. i don't think that happens anymore. >> dick cheney writes in his book about when he was chief of staff to president ford and they lost to carter and mondale in '76. ford told chaney, okay, i want this to be a smooth transition. he got in touch with the carter

people. if the speech writers keep writing like the election is on, it's not going to sound right. it's very different campaigning. campaigning is about to use an unfavored word, dividing, defining choices. >> contrast. >> contrast. the idea of campaigning speech is to have it clearly set. what is the choice in this election and what are the stakes of making choice a versus choice b. that's one and when you're

president it's all about, speaking in broader tones. there's another difference that you discover after working on a campaign in the boss is elected president in the campaign speeches you're always saying things like i will propose to the congress as such and such or if elected president, i will direct the secretary of state to reform such and such an act. when you're president you're saying i am proposing to the congress. i have directed the secretary of

state. you go from the language of persuasion to the language of power. >> you guy both stuck when president quail left office, you continued to work with him. you continued to work on -- >> hillary's. >> campaign before he bowed out of race. >> who, rudy giuliani? >> yeah. things could have been a little different. what was your relationship in working and personal relationship? >> with hillary, it was definitely like the smartest person i've ever worked with. she's just very, very smart person. you cannot get away with bad stuff. she just sees it write away. she's very kind about it.

this didn't come through in her campaigns but she's a lovely, warm woman. very gracious and funny. really funny. i started out goat writing or helping her with her column. it's like me and her talking about it. it was warm relationship. the president, president clinton, he was always very nice to me, too, and like once again really smart. he held back a bit, because i think he knew i came from hillary's staff, so if he didn't like something, he didn't always tell me right away. i could tell he didn't like it because he knew -- but also very

smart, and like, amazing. like, there are a few times, you know, you get to talk to him about a speech. for me i only had a few times after the speech i got to talk to him, and we would go over the speech after he delivered it, and he would tell me why he tweaked a line and it literally was because he was reading the audience and he could tell that he should do it this way instead. it was just like being in the audience of a master communicator. and it was like -- is it a clinic or seminar? he was really just telling me, i did it this way because of that. so they were both very kind and generous. and when clinton was going to china in 1998, they, like, i was chinese-american, so even though the clinton white house divided foreign and domestic speechwriters, there was a foreign team and a domestic team, both clintons wanted to be

sure i got to go. so there are those personal touches, too, that are quite heartwarming, i guess. >> president bush, i loved the guy. he was a wonderful person to work for. demanding but very appreciative person. i never saw him slight anyone. i never saw him condescend. a very decent fellow. if i had never met the guy i had a sense of who he was because he is an easy person to read. his feelings go directly to the expression on his face. happy, sad, annoyed, bored, irritated immediately. i always describe him as -- there are people who thought he was impatient, but he is not an impatient man, he is, in fact,

patient, and i have, on many occasions, watched him hear someone out, whatever it was, whatever the point they wanted to make. he would listen to it, but he would not be patient anymore when they would start to repeat themselves. and he would say, you're losing altitude or something like that. but patient, considerate. a great memory. he knew everyone'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, and 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 also a very serious editor of his speeches line by line. he could read a speech once, an eight-page, ten-page speech, read it once, throw it down on

his desk, look up at the ceiling and recite to you that speech in outline form. once on one reading he would internalize it. he had a real sense of how things were structured and he could find the one or two paragraphs in a speech that were out of place. he called me one morning. it was really early. and as i recall it to this day, i was just sitting at my desk. it was about 7:00 and i was staring down into a cup of coffee. and my phone rang and that little window on your phone says potus. and i said, yes, sir. there was a speech coming up that morning, and he was going to be leaving in about an hour. it was a hotel across town. and he said, i have a couple changes on this speech. the speech was one of those tough ones that had one part and it had another part that had to be said that day but it didn't really fit with the first part. anyway, so in the middle of it, the president says, what's this paragraph in the middle of page 4? >> you have to blame the policy staff, right? >> i mumbled something about, well, it's just in the nature of

a transition. and he goes, it's just words, isn't it? i said, yes, sir. he said, take it out. he would spot those things. vice president cheney was not a big editor. he would like the speech or not. he would modestly say, i'm not a speechwriter. but he would write inserts and he had a beautiful, beautiful hand, and he would write in this flawless handwriting these inserts without any crossouts or anything else, just had perfectly formed in his mind what he wanted to say and where to put it in the speech. but less of a line editor unless -- but don't be wrong on a fact on a piece of history or something. cheney is going to be on top of it. he wasn't pedantic or anything like that, but he would make little notations and he cared about his speeches. he called me one day, john, i got us into some trouble.

and i said, oh? and he said, yeah, the president is going to europe. he was going to speak at -- i forget what one of these big dinners where the president has to be funny. and cheney said, i have to stand up in his place tomorrow night and i have to speak for ten minutes and be funny. then he says, i don't do funny. and i said, oh, don't worry about it, mr. vice president. matthew scully and i will write you a little speech that will have some nice stuff in it. so i talked to him a little bit about it. i think mrs. cheney, i think, talked to her a little bit. anyway, 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 and considerate and appreciative and always treated everyone, met everyone as an

equal. i will add one thing about vice president quayle. he's the only boss i ever worked for that wrote an entire speech and gave it to me. he did this on a fairly regular basis when he was vice president of the united states. that was back when you shared disks. the first time it happened i was called into his office in the west wing, and it was early in the morning, and i didn't know why i was being called in. i walked in and he goes, john, i wrote a speech this weekend. and he holds up a blue disk. and he hands it to me and there was a fully written speech. dan quayle was a newspaperman for some years before he entered politics. so he could write and he could write fast. when i worked for him as a former vice president and he had a newspaper column, he could write a six, seven-hundred-word column in a half hour. >> this president is known to go

off script. he is known to go without a teleprompter. he speaks in the white house when reporters are in there. he speaks off the cuff. there is also a demand -- there is a desire for what they say authenticity. you see it in senate campaigns. you see bader drop in the f-bomb here, drop in the f-bomb there. it seems there is a demand in the electorate of this administration and the president has continued it. where do you guys see the art of the word, the art of the speech, and how do you convince the public that through the words that you are writing that there is authenticity, that you're not just another politician because of twitter, the demand to have quick, rapid responses that are not packaged up perhaps in the way that you guys did? where do you see it going? are you concerned about it, and what do you say to individuals

entering office and these campaigns are in 2020. what do you say to someone you would be working for now? >> i don't think -- so much of these times are not normal, but like if you just go back to barack obama. the speeches made him, right? so i still believe that there's room for excellent speeches, and i think what made him so successful was they were beautiful speeches. they were speechwriterly speeches, but they were still authentic. so he was able to bring himself, convey himself through quite, you know, amazing and beautiful work. so there's still -- and i think that's where america -- so he came across as authentic but he was also very articulately so authentic. i would still counsel a candidate to go that way. and you need to say real things. i think that's where you got in

trouble, where you're saying beautiful things but you're saying nothing. so, of course, like -- yeah, so i think that's when it really works is -- trump would say very real things and there's not substance, but there was just something bracingly not true. i don't know what the word is, but i think you could still find that, and for the sake of comedy and the civilization and the country, let's think these things through and find a way to talk about them. bring your authenticity in but in a way that -- i don't know, i'm foiling. >> for example, the president's state of the union speech was a pretty good speech. >> that's because dave wrote it and he read it, right?

>> a year ago when he was first president and he came up with his first state of the union, i was so curious. what's he going to do? because throughout that campaign in 2016, you would see him. he would come out and stand in front of a crowd. he would reach in his jacket pocket, throw down a couple sheets of white paper with his own notes. and he would give a speech. no one has ever run for president successfully doing this, no one. and yet he did it. so when he came out for that first speech to congress, i thought, is he going to do that? is he just going to reach in his pocket and throw something down? of course, he didn't. and then, as i say, the most recent one, i thought, this was his best thoughts put down in a polished way. and nothing inauthentic about it at all. and so as you were saying at the outset, authenticity does not mean declining to share with people your best thoughts or

spending time polishing your words or working with writers. i think -- i work a lot with ceos now, and i remember one ceo a few years ago said to me, i'm not good at giving speeches. and i said, you can be. you're good at everything else you've ever tried. it's not a mystery. i think some people just don't want to do it, some people do want to do it, but it is something that a person who is intelligent and has a point to make can do and can get better at. one of the elements seems to me will always be getting your best thoughts down in writing just to prepare, like you prepare for anything else in life. >> right, and the best speechwriters can really help you find your authentic voice, right? a speechwriter will listen to

you and what you want to say and listen carefully and may be doing some research on you. as you said earlier, we serve our principals in really capturing their voice. you don't have to -- i don't need to write it yourself as a principal as long as you find people who will help you say what you mean but better. >> can i tell you a quick story? i worked for senator dole in the '96 campaign. traveled across the country with him for the last six months of the campaign. and at one point, and i was writing speeches on the plane, and at one point during the campaign, headquarters -- the senator traveled all the time. headquarters would get in touch with me. well, we have a policy address, and it wasn't written by anyone on staff, i don't think.

i think it was done by a consultant. but at any rate, we have this policy address that we want the senator to deliver sometime this week. it's really important. they told me this because it was my job as a speechwriter on the plane to present this to the senator and tell him it was really important that he deliver this speech. so i did, and i gave it to him. i said, well, they want you to do this speech this week and it's important. and dole looks at it and he makes no commitment to me about what his intentions are. and he looks at it and then i thought, well, he'll let me know what he thinks. well, he didn't. i get another call from headquarters a day later, when is he going to give the speech? i said, well, i don't think there's going to be any speech, not this thing you had me give to him. no, no, no, it's really

important. you go talk to him and you tell him it's really important. so i found my opportune moment to go up to the senator on the plane, and i said, sir, you know, that speech draft, i guess it's 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. and dole just looked at me, saying nothing. and i said, you never want to see this again, do you? and he just shakes his head, so i took it and gave the bad news to headquarters. >> we've got some time to open up questions. >> this is a question for mr. mcconnell. you mentioned that the difference between an election and campaigning and working for the president is language gathering versus hope versus the language of power. how do you distinguish between those besides just the tenets of

grammar? >> really the points are summed up in the example i gave. a candidate for president says, i can do this as president, i intend to do this as president, i promise you i will do this as president. but as the speechwriter learns when you're writing for the president, you're saying, i am doing this. i am happy to tell you that i have just done this. or i am happy to tell you the secretary of state is going to the middle east tomorrow because i have sent him.

you're just -- it's no longer the aspirations of a presidential candidate, it is now the actions of a president. >> first of all, these are very busy times. thank you both for taking the time to talk to us. since you both have written for various people, and we talked about tone. did you find it difficult that, like, i mean, on the -- i mean, i guess hillary and bill, they have a similar tone to how they speak, but dan quayle and dick cheney appear almost different of the words that they use and how they present their arguments. so was it difficult for both of you to kind of find that tone and basically how did you also find that tone for having to deal with various people and politicians? >> you really have to pay attention and learn and ask questions. as you say, george w. bush, dick cheney, bob dole, dan quayle. very different in their styles. they all, of course, are comfortable speaking in public. if you're comfortable speaking in public, you can read a speech that's decently written that

follows the basic elements, one of the main ones which is the sentences need to be short. it's like writing an essay. it's the spoken word, and so it's a little bit different, and in some ways significantly different from other types of writing. you've got to read it aloud, for example, if you've written it because you have to be careful when things don't rhyme or you have a literation that's not intended or any other structural distractions that would hit the ear differently from how you would expect it. but the main point of variation among the people that i've written speeches for is how they get into a speech, how they start it, what that first page

is like, how they bond with the audience and how they get comfortable. president bush liked to do extensive acknowledgements, so extensive that we wouldn't even write these things. they would be gathered up and entirely accurate and it would be the mayor, the governor, the councilman, the local city councilman, the eighth grade band. he wanted to thank everybody. >> clinton, too. we had acknowledgment pages. >> did you write them or just list them? >> we had to list them. if we wrote them it would take forever. >> and he would read off of them. vice president quayle, i remember he always liked to get right into his message. vice president cheney was a little bit more that way, too. bob dole, if you wrote in quality jokes, he would tell jokes for five or ten minutes. he was -- bob dole, you won't be surprised to learn, liked people.

he had been in politics since just a few years after he got out of the army in world war ii, and he had a very good sense of humor. he made up a lot of jokes on his own, and he liked to do that kind of thing, and he was good at it. but, really, the main point of variation is if the text is decently written, it's written as the spoken word and doesn't have any kind of quirks that would be obviously unique to one person or another, really, the important thing is how is he going to get into this speech and what's going to be comfortable? >> yeah, and related to that is like -- i worked for people -- bill and hillary clinton are both excellent extemporaneous speakers.

they don't really need speechwriters. so what's your value added? your value added is finding that nugget or finding, like, the story that can sort of help them get into the speech, finding, you know, the historical anecdote that will, like, sort of frame whatever policy you're proposing, or if you're visiting a country, like where the history of u.s. relations here. so finding the historical nugget or the real person connection or the biographical story. you know, americans love biography and it's a great way to connect with an audience. so it's really finding those sort of factoids and anecdotes that will help them launch the speech and personalize the speech, you know, and so you do that thinking for them. you do that prep for them. but then you know they can go -- they can speak anywhere, but you just sort of do the tailoring for the audience. >> that's where the researchers can help a lot, too. >> the researchers help a lot. but it's a bit of a struggle.

sometimes you're like, oh, there's nothing here. but that's the value added and they very much appreciate that because that's something they can't do on their own. they don't have time. >> right, and for example, if -- i mean, the writers, you're so busy and you've got so many plates in the air, but if a researcher comes in and tells you, look, the president is going to be speaking before a huge statue of general grant, you're very happy to learn that in advance. you don't want to read it afterwards, the president, comma, speaking in front of a giant statue. >> so you mentioned having different policy teams and research teams aiding you with drafting the speeches. to what extent are you performing personal research and how did you kind of come across, like, fine-tuning those research

skills? >> i think it depends how much time you have and how big of a staff you have. in a campaign, you're on your own for a little bit, and sometimes you have lots of them. you have to figure out how to assign them and get the most out of them. i'm sorry, what was your other question? [ inaudible ] >> on that, to serve your principal really well, you should know their biography, like, backwards and forwards. i read all the quirky bios, the autobios so you had this sort of catalog of personal stories from the principal. you read all their old speeches as far back as possible. you really internalized this

person so you could channel hillary clinton or bill clinton. so that's how you -- you get their voice that way. and then, yeah, you know, i was working before google, so it was lexus nexus and all the old auto dial things. i think there was netscape, the interns were on netscape, and then you had the library. i did a lot of personal research, too, because i'm very hands-on and want to know everything. you know it when you see it instead of people bringing you random things. it's hard. >> well, yeah, and sometimes only you know what you're looking for to be able to articulate it. and that's true. i remember we had the assignment during the president's dedication speech for the world war ii memorial. and one of my favorite writers of all time is ernie pyle who

wrote a daily column through most of the 1930s and throughout world war ii until the day he was shot dead by a sniper. but talk about beautiful, beautiful writing. and so when that assignment came up, the first thing i thought was, we got to get ernie pyle in president bush's speech on world war ii. every living person in the english-speaking world who remembers that war remembers ernie pyle and will be touched when they hear his words. and you go looking for something nice in ernie pyle, i've got news for you, it's on every

page. that was just a joy and a delight. and then, you know, when an imminent person dies or you are preparing for that event, you really can't say to the research, give me ten things on ronald reagan. reagan was my hero, so it's not a good example. i had a lot of stuff in the bank. but by the same token, if it's something you'll be giving someone their due, you really can't leave that reading to the research. you've got to do it on your own. and there is a line you 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, if you can believe it. he was the national student adviser.

he said the white house is a place where you spend intellectual capital, you do not accumulate intellectual capital. there is a lot of background knowledge which every speechwriter brings to it. >> and another thing is former reporter interviews, right? you could interview almost anyone to get the background, right? so that was pretty cool just to get the live anecdotes from friends or, you know, if you're doing a eulogy for -- you know, like a friend that there's not a lot of written material about, you're interviewing all these cool people and getting these great stories, and that was actually a delight, too. >> what's your favorite writer and why? who is your favorite writer? >> i always feel inadequate when i answer questions like this.

i think in categories of charles dickens but he didn't write much american history or biography so i have to add david mccullough who has written eight or ten great books, all of which are still in print, the first one being on the johnstown flood which was published in 1966 about an event that happened in the 1880s and there were still survivors who he interviewed. and david mccullough, i always mention also as someone who gave me -- not personally but

imparted some of the best advice i've ever gotten for speechwriting, and that is when he was asked about the variety of books he had written, and there's no clear theme to all of the books, and so the question was how did he decide what his next book was going to be? and he said, i write the book i want to read. and i remember that stuck in my mind. i thought, that's a good attitude for a speechwriter. write the speech you wouldn't mind listening to. >> exactly. >> i could go on but there's two in different categories. >> i recall, too, john adams' biography. it was amazing and brought history to life, like you were riding his horse with him. but to this day, one of my favorite books of all time is "to kill a mockingbird," just wait it evoked summer in the south. and jennifer o'leary because she really talks about how it is to be a child of immigrants. the woman who wrote "americana" is really amazing. and miranda, really cool. love him. >> you both mentioned instances

of conflict with your principal or when your genius is unappreciated. can both of you recall specific moments when you felt really strongly that you had written something really important and you got disagreement from a chief or principal or somebody? what did you do in that situation? did you push back? you say you were diplomatic. what was that like? how do you tell what's so important that you have to advocate for it and how do you tell when you should just let it go? >> for me i was thinking the speech he gave at little rock central high school, i really wanted to start with this anecdote about elizabeth eckfort who was one of the little rock nine who didn't get the phone call they were going to the back door. she showed up at the front door and all these protesters surrounded her and there was the

photo of the mean girls who were like -- there is that famous photo. i don't know if you know of that. so i really wanted to start with that. and there were people who thought that was not the right way to go, and some just thought it was a slow beginning or whatever, and so i was a little, like, oh, my god, this is wrong, you can't do this. and my boss is like, don't worry. look at my pen. my pen is not moving. but there was -- it was almost on its way out and then -- clinton was concerned about it, but in the end he read it and decided to keep it. but, you know, at the end of the day, it's not your speech, and

while you're powerful as a speechwriter, there are people who outrank you. so i -- you know, i think i reacted a little too strongly, but i just hoped that the principal would see the value of it, and he did. but it doesn't always go that way and you just have to remember that it's not your speech. it's never your speech. it's always going to be -- they take credit for it and they stand to lose if they -- so you just have to let it go, and most of the time i could just let it go. >> in the drafting process of the speech to congress after 9/11, the september 20th speech, karen hughes, the president's counselor who came -- who worked with him in texas in his first campaign in the governor's office all through the campaign and then at the white house, she advocated for the line "live your lives and hug your children" about what is asked of us now after these attacks and

looking ahead to life in america, and i believe that was the line. live your lives and hug your children. and i remember a couple colleagues and i, we didn't like that and we tried several times to remove it from the speech. and i think we may have even removed it from the speech at some point. but it stayed in, and it was a line that touched a lot of people and is still remembered. we were wrong about that. that's one memory that comes to mind. i can't think of something that i really tried to insist be kept and wasn't, although there was probably a joke along the way that we thought was funny -- definitely that happened.

some jokes we amused ourselves with in the speechwriting office but didn't really resonate anywhere beyond the door. >> so i'm in the middle of ben rhodes' new book, and he talked about bill's memoir. have you ever worried that you would lose your writing voice? >> i guess those five years i probably didn't have much of my own voice. but it comes back. you know, there was no time to write for yourself when you write in the white house. and i don't -- maybe i did. clinton liked to write lists and maybe i write more lists first and second. >> yeah, i guess i feel the same. i will say that 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 and how logical

he was as a thinker. so i was never afraid of losing my own voice because i always -- every day i was there, i felt like my tools as a writer were were being sharpened just because of the demands of it. >> yeah. i always wanted to like -- i wanted to give my best to them. and i always wanted to like you know find the best, the most evocative image and the best words. clinton would say too many words. too many words. i want it to be economical. i think that makes you a better writer. none of the floor i had stuff, the best verbs, the better adjectives the best announce and the ways to be economical and very evocative. yeah, it makes -- i think that definitely made me a better writer and very much more careful about word choice. so.

>> so, i was curious, what advice would you have for a policy person to be a better communicator of policy? >> that's pretty good. yeah, go. >> well, think first -- the first question i always ask about a speech assignment, aside from the obvious one, what's the speech about, is who is the audience? because that has a huge influence on how you are going to be writing it. is your audience a room full of nasa engineers? or is it a graduating class of a college? or is it a group of political

donors? i mean, you just go through the endless variety. and in terms of policy, i would say, to become a clearer, more direct, more persuasive and more economical policy writer, think really hard about an audience, perhaps an audience that's really not technically familiar with the material. but not unintelligent, and not uninterested. but rather, simply not conversant in the matter. i remember chief justice rehnquist wrote a series of very interesting books about the supreme court and history. in the introduction to one of them, he said that when he was writing, he thought constantly of his wife, who was educated at stanford like he was, but was not a lawyer. but these books were about law and about the court. and he said that having his wife, an interested, intelligent reader, in mind, but not a technically trained reader, was a great advantage to the final product. so whether it's thinking of one

person or of a larger audience of a type of person. i promise you what you write tomorrow will be better than what you write today if you sort of put it in those terms. i know this from experience. >> yeah. and also keeping in mind what the policy means for real people. so painting the picture of what -- what's the human result of this policy. i think, you know, sometimes because we had to turn thing over really quickly, you get the fact sheet and you end up like, if you get really tired or lazy you are just rewriting the fact sheet, trying to update a little. really, you should stop, write the fact sheet and figure out what this means -- just to build on what john -- like what is the human impact? what does this mean for an

average family of four, like this person in ohio, how is his life transformed by this policy, and keep that in mind, and then paint that picture. and that will really sort of communicate to a broader audience what a policy means. >> thank you for have interesting discussion. my question relates to the relative lack of media exposure of presidential speech writers in the last decade or more in contrast to the '80s and '90s when you had people like william sapphire, reputed for the famous word negative -- negative -- of negativism put into the speech of spiro agnew. my question is is it okay to assume in the case of articulate and erue indict presidents like bill clinton who speak beautifully to think every speech is their own speech and that's less obvious in presidents like nixon and agnew, people say oh, those can't be his words. my other question is, is it okay

to work with a president who nitpicks him and puts them through hell making you write draft after draft or someone who takes the first draft auto. >> the obama team are all excellent speech writers. they have gotten plenty of coverage are the media. so i don't think -- and it's -- you know, and they have gotten their fair share of credit, too, i would say. i don't know about that.

i mean, maybe they are -- maybe there are more outlets now because they are all over in podcasts. sapphire had that column, but now there are many more ways to get your voice out and claim credit and to be famous, i guess. >> does everyone here know that chris matthews was a presidential speech writer? he wrote for president carter. and i'm thinking of -- you mentioned bill sapphire, who i knew. he was a fine guy and was a presidential speech writer for nixon and also did some very effective speeches for vice president agnew. another person on that staff was pat buchanan. and he had been with nixon before he was president. and he had -- nixon himself fired buchanan, based on reputation sometime in the mid '60s when he was still getting ready to run again for president in '68. i have heard buchanan tell the story that nixon, who worked very, very hard on his speeches,

probably harder -- as hard or harder than most of his successors since then -- that nixon -- he remembers nixon saying why can't i get speech writers like woodrow wilson? they said, well, mr. president, woodrow wilson wrote his own speeches. >> i think we have one more. >> could each of you share a few anecdotes about mistakes or screwups that you either made or witnessed in the white house? >> i'll jump -- i'll jump to that one. the -- we were very proud of our fact checking operation in the speech writing office. the fact checking operation was 100% successful. but shortly before we had an up and running fact check operation, i remember there was a reference to pope john paul leading a flock of a trillion. well, there aren't a trillion

people on earth, anywhere close to it. it was a billion. but it was during the budget season. i remember everyone was throwing around trillions. everything was in trillions. so we wrote this speech about pope john paul. it was about his whole life. it was at the dedication of the john paul ii cultural center here in washington. the speech went through. speech writer, multiple drafts, the staffing process. and it wasn't caught until, surprisingly late in the game when somebody said, do you mean billion? but that never -- that was --

that was where the quality control process came in to correct things before the president was involved. >> yeah. i was super paranoid about making a mistake. it was almost ocd, just triple checking everything, and having other people check it and harassing the policy people to check things. you know, just never wanting to send out something incorrect or off buy a zero or anything like that. so it was a very, very nerve-racking part of job. right? you thought i'm going to get fired if i get something wrong. you know? this is self serving, but i can't think of like a major mistake. maybe there were and just never filtered back. but i do have a good story. no, i have a good story. and this is my naivety because i was young and really new to washington ways and ranks and titles. there are all these titles.

a deputy outranks an assistant, and all this stuff. i was on the plane coming back from england with hillary. and she was giving a lift to this guy, larry summers. you know, i had gone to college, and larry -- i was harvard, and larry summers was a professor at harvard. i'm like hey professor summers, good to see you. how are you doing? i read your articles in ec 10, and they were great. what are you doing now? oh, no, i said, you are at treasury, right? and he said, i'm the deputy secretary. and i'm like, good for you. and i got home and i talked to my boss. i'm like, i met larry summers. you know. he is something like the deputy secretary. he is like oh, my god, do you know what the deputy secretary is? i'm like, no. he is like, that's the number two in the department. i was like i'm so sorry. i didn't get that i was

insulting him. i had no idea that a deputy secretary was like number two. that was embarrassing. >> at one point i was reading a best selling book and it had a very interesting little story in it it was irresistible. it was about john phillips souza, the composer. his family name wasn't souza. it was so. and out of love for the u.s., he added u-s-a to his name. it wasn't true. it was in a best selling book. we put it in a speech draft. the first person who sees a speech draft is the fact checker. there was no truth to the story. >> i think, now that's bringing up something. yeah, you have to 5 million check something. >> right.

right. >> and sometimes it still -- i can't remember but i'm sure we did that, too. >> one historian i talked to i told him every now and then i read something in a book or a biography and i just wonder if it really was that way. he said, well, you know, as we say this the history profession, some stories are too good to check. >> yeah, yeah. or it's like if you can't get that triple check you are like i am going to have to kill this and you don't want to kill it. >> last quick question from me, a lot of people around here are looking to jump into speech writing. and i think the opportunity is now quite interesting if you look on the democratic side, 2020 you have got young congressmen and women looking to jump in. it is kind of an open game.

should somebody move out to iowa, work for this congressman, work for the labor department, should somebody work for the governor's office, make that move to colorado. what type of individual would you suggest really going and try to break in with? and gain the confidence with? >> what kind of person should do it? what kind of principal would you be looking for? would you recommend starting as a fact checker in an office? would you recommend starting in working with a younger principal? what would be kind of a route in this day and age that we are looking at now. >> find someone you really like. and if you can't get a job as a 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 -- i can almost guarantee that if you get yo to that staff and they find out that you are a writer and that you are able to do this and that you can do it under the conditions of a campaign or whatever other

intense or demanding conditions they have, they will use you. maybe you are on the finance staff. maybe you are on the clerical staff, administrative team, fact check, research, whatever, press. and if you just say well, how about -- i would like to, when you have a spare project, a press release, policy paper or something, i would like to -- i would like to take a crack at that if you wouldn't mind. i don't think they are going the say no to you. and if you are really good, they will come back and back and back, and there will be no limit to how far you can rise in that operation. if you can meet that standard. >> that's exactly -- exactly what i was going to say. like in a campaign there are

battlefield promotions and really the talent rises. other situations, it's kind of murky, but in the campaign it's like all hand on deck, and the best people need to -- will rise and will get opportunities. also, there are not a lot of good writers out there. so if you can write, it's like a needle in a hay stack, especially on a campaign. there are so many operatives and you know vision -- people with whatever ideas. but very few people can write. so if you can do that and if you go in at any level, any job and volunteer yourself -- and once they figure out you can write -- there are so many things that need to be written in a campaign. not just the speeches but all kinds of text and answers and questionnaires. all of those types of thing. and they need good writers. once you are identified they will keep coming and you will get good jobs. and back to that thing -- so you are going to take a small, low level job for no or little money. the only way to stay happy is to believe in the candidate and really think like they are the best thing for america. so you should fine someone you like and think should be in the job. then it becomes much more easy. it's like a mission. you are on a mission. >> and we both know people who have made that very decision,

and in many cases, maybe a majority, it's a snap decision, that's my person. >> yeah, yeah, you fall in love, right. >> trust your instincts as well. >> and getting coffee is not beneath you. you know? like do everything. be a yes person. you know, just make copies, you know, get the coffee. and then say, oh, if you are overloaded with talking points, i would like to try a few. >> ari fleischer i think it was said the good interns always go and make the copies. the great interns read the things they are copy. >> but there are so many young people i have run across who are like i want to do substantive things. no, no, no. you have got do the copies, too. and then you will get into the substantive things. but do the copies. >> john, june, thank you very much. thank you everybody for joining.

there is a little reception. you can join us. thank you, guys. our look a writing that deals with presidents continues in a moment. we are using this week's congressional break to show you american history tv programs normally seen only on the weekends. coming up, historians who write presidential biographies talk about challenges in striking a fair balance on various views of former presidents. then presidential speech writers for former speech writers for bill clinton and george w. bush about how they communicated policy ideas from the president's point of view. if you missed any of today's

discussions you can see them tonight during american history tv primetime. it begin at 8:00 p.m. eastern. thursday evening we look at a conference hosted by the national world war ii museum in new orleans focusing on the 1998 academy award winning film saving private ryan that includes a discussion among historians comparing saving private ryan to other films about the 1944 d day invasion. american history tv primetime begins at 8:00 p.m. eastern. sunday night on q and a, congressional historians richard bake e donald ritchie and ray smaugh. >> one of the questions i hear people asking all the time, is this the most uncivil time in history? >> it's going to be close if you were to pick another period, certainly the years leading to the civil war, when, you know, a host member came over and became

the senator in 1856 because he disagreed with what he said. and there were a lot of senators who kind of cheered on that host member. >> there is a broadway musical now about the shooting of alexander hamilton. and he was shot by the sitting vice president of the united states. that's pretty dramatic. we have had terrible times, political times. >> there was one brawl in 1858, before the civil war, that had 80 members rolling around on the floor fighting one another. >> one of the members who had a wig, his name was kite -- one of the members pulled his wig off during the fight. and someone else yelled, he scalped him! and that was another levity to stop the fight. >> congressional historians richard bake, he donald ritchie and ray smaugh, sunday night at 8:00 eastern, on c-span's q and a. there are lots of people

that say i don't want any kids to read stories that are sad, disturbing, down beat, whatever. right? that's like not a totally legitimate thing to say i want to choose as a parent when my kid understands stuff that might bring them grief. but there is also certain point beyond which, well, they're 14 now. like when are you going to introduce them to the idea that not everything is perfect outside of your all white suburb, right? and so all of those factors i think swirl together to create the perfect dumpster fire of mass censorship of books by marginalized people. live sunday at noon eastern discussing his latest book "walk away." the other books are down-and-out in the magic kingdom, little brother and 14 other novels. interact with corey by phone, twitter or facebook. our special series indepth