sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span q&a. next on american history tv, former presidential speechwriters talk about communicating policy from the president's point of view. we here from june chi who worked with clinton and from john mcconnell. new york university hosted this 90-minute program. >> my name is kevin mun le man. 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 shih 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 range 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 joining the nyu family this fall as communications director at nyu shanghai. tonight's event is moderated by vaughn hillyard from nbc news. covering the special election senate race 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. vaughn first started at nbc news in july of 2013 as a tim ves ert 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.

so for the next hour, 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 haven't been around the scene, 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. crickets. 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 blue, a couple of weeks later, then her 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, whoa, and i just never, ever thought it would happen, and, like, months 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 matter 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. it was in 1990, clerking for a federal judge in new york city,

and clerk ships are a year long. 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 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. 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 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. this's how i got into 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 was just be -- 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 austin, texas, 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 unaware 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 just think indispensable to me means being reliable and somebody that people like dealing with. >> 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 genius. i might have been thinking that. it is about being very diplomatic and being a good colleague and 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.

you're not a prima maddona. that reputation stays with you. people, 20 years down the line remember that and they will help you, i never know when 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 didn't hold that over anyone but i remember appreciating that level of confidence. >> i think a lot of people in this room are familiar with bob

favro and now he has a podcast. 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 on a lot of domestic issues that you were passionate about. what was that process like in infusing your own thoughts and opinions, knowledge base with that of trying to accomplish the goal of representing the principal and what you wrote. >> it was pretty easy. i'm still a clinton zk and a moderate now liberal because of

the way the world has gone. but democrat. so i didn't have any -- i was politically aligned with them. what was great is that i -- because i was one of the few minority speechwriter. >> i got the race speeches. i got immigration speeches. that was easy. every one was aligned on immigration good. america is not defind by a race by common ideals. 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 -- >> can i ask you, 1997 and 1998, clinton announced he would do a

year of town halls when it came to race relations. >> exactly. >> i'll let you speak to it but my understanding it didn't go as -- as the administration had hoped. >> yes. >> and it was a tough issue, he got a lot of criticism for -- that he wasn't forceful enough and gave overarching themes and it is important to have a conversation and so how did you when you were planning the town halls and kind of the -- what was that -- was there a certain extent of coaching. town hall format is different. what was that like in communicating the message? i'm sure you had thoughts on race. how closely did you work with him? what was that like? >> there was another speech writer who worked on those too. there is a whole race commission. i don't remember what they were called. one merkinishive. and they were all involved. i wasn't on deck for every single speech. there's one speech i got to work which was the 40th anniversary of desegregation at little rock

central high school and that was amazing. because it was really did -- it was more like a -- it was more of a statement of the case. it didn't have many solutions unfortunately. because it is so hard. we haven'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. segregation ended then but we still self segregate. it conjured up the right feelings. we thought we were on a great path. 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. the director of speech writing. we wrote what we 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. no, we can't say that. 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. can you come see him and talk to

him about it. 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. we're hanging out with him. he reminisced about his childhood and talked about being alive during -- during the immigration and sort of did his masterly clinton thing. about understanding all sides and it was -- it was great. it was a frank address of what the status was and honoring the past and going forward it was like let's recognize this. that's how the conversation went. i don't know how the conversation went as it did.

>> now we say that a person who is elected president of the united states, definitely president bush who i worked for ises capable of writing his own speeches but he doesn't have time. he doesn't 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. through your back ground or the use of your own research or research of your speech writing office staff.

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 point, 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. there are tons of able writers, the proportion of them who would be able speech writers for another is not 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. 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. >> you bring that passion. >> right. i'm a lawyer by training and so i can make an argument for the opposing position. as a matter of fact, one of the professors told us the way to become the best advocate for your own position is to become an expert in your adversaries 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. you worked with cheney and george bush. can you walk us through sort of how you get to the point of putting the words on paper and that conversation? talking directly with the president. for instance, you could go through any number of whether it been speech on tarp, speech hurricane katrina or the war in iraq. september 20th, 2001 and the address to congress and the words that came out of the president's mouth, these demands are not open to negotiation and discussion and the taliban will hand over the terrorists or 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 of the it may include dramatic strikes visible on television and covert operations and secret even in success. how did those words get spoken there in side of the capitol building. >> 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 9/11. there were a number of speeches. before the one on september 20th, which is the thursday of the week following and that was the -- that was the speech to the joint session. he spoke at the national cathedral on friday at the service of -- remembrance. but any way, so that would have been direction we got from the president. we, meaning myself, mike gurson, the speech whiter and matthew

gully were colleagued starting in austin by dividing up the speeches and then editing them together. we ended up writing them together and throughout the president's -- governor bush's campaign, we literally wrote on that three basis. three guys in the same office, at the same computer writing the speeches line by line. g gershon with the post would come in with a very clear sense and clear direction on what -- how the speech would be put together. kind of a theoretical construct and 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 an put think the staffing process and reviewed. the state of the union is a different thing altogether because you have dress rehearsal and 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 a distinction to -- the dedication of a museum or something. the president will make his edits on it but you won't get a lot of direction on where to go with the speech. it is going to be assumed that the speechwriters are able to put together appropriate -- ronald reagan dies, gerald ford dies, pope john paul ii dies. >> take us into the realm of what that process looks like. where are you getting that direction from and what does that direction look like? >> on the big policy speech.

>> are you working with the chief of staff? >> well there are policy people in the white house. you'll get direction. there will be big picture direction from the white house communications director. this is social security week and then what is 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 together. now, in speech writing, 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.

you want talent around and to tell you about trade or whatever else, pick up the phone and there is a great expert to tell you everything you want to know and to tell it to you in very precise ironclad, clear understandable terms. which helps you a lot to understand it to be able to write it yourself. i will say there are -- i can think of a couple examples where the fact that a speech was on the calendar drove the policy process. >> it created a deadline. >> was in a deputy chief of staff office one day and 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 such and so next thursday. i said no. we don't have anything. we know where the event is but that's it.

he turns to the person in charge of the policy or the deputy of that office, he said, 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. as you say, the speech writing sometimes drives the policy process but typically not and it shouldn't. >> i had that question because i've -- i was unable to cover the administrations you worked for. but been able to travel with vice president pence and he has one -- for the first year of his administration, he one speechwriter going from the campaign-type rallies to overseas trips and it was impressive to watch somebody put into words and articulate a very different tone and different message day-to-day. question out of that is, how do you do that? campaign versus the actual policy, the white house official

side of it. because you have both done campaigns and official and you did it within the same period of time. how does that process like and what is that working -- is it different working with the campaign versus the official side? >> i think the campaign is more -- there is a stump speech. there's a message. you repurpose that message. you sort of redo it. do the same but different. it's all about getting the crowd into it. when you're the president, you definitely try to bring in the sweep of history, why this is important and sort of like taking america along this road and so -- not always but usually there's a little more time to think it through. you get policy guys with a fact sheet and your job is to write a

speech based on a fact sheet that doesn't read like a fact sheet. sow bring in that poetry and you have that time. the campaign is responsive. what is the sound bite? in the internet age, we worry about sound bites. i don't think they are an issue any more, right? everything is online because before in the '90s, '80s, it is what is that 20 seconds that will get on the evening news. what is the line? and everyone is -- all of the senior people are sweating the sound bite. i don't think in i don't think -- i don't think that happens any more. >> 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. to pa point was the closest presidential election in 60 years. ford told chaney, okay, i want this to be a smooth transition. he got in touch with the carter people.

the way he puts it in his book, he said overnight you go from how to we beat them to how do we help them? and this is when the election is over, it is over. and so at the speech -- if the speechwriters 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. exactly right. by the time the votes are cast, the idea of campaigning speech is to have it clearly set. for the mind of the voter listening as you could possibly do so. 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, as june said, speaking in broader tones. jeff shlessel your colleague described the narrative arc of a presidency that the speeches can differ but they should all have a thread that goes through them through the presidency and you should attempt in every way you can to bring people together. 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. >> could you share what your principals were like. you guys both stuck -- when president quail left office, you continued to work with him. you continued to work on -- >> hillary's. >> who she was running against before getting out of the 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 sees it right 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 ghost 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 cross-outs 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. >> where do you guys see -- 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 running for office in the mid-term elections or 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.do this and i promise to do this -- i intend to do this and i promise to do this as president but as president, i am happy to tell you that i have just done this. the secretary of state is going to the middle east tomorrow because i have sent him. it's no longer the aspirations of a presidential candidate. it's now the actions of a president. >> first of all, these are very busy times thank you for taking the time to talk to us. since you both have written for various people, we talk about tone, did you find it difficult

-- hillary and bill, they have a similar tone to how they speak but dan quayle and dick cheney appear very different, the words they use and how they present their arguments. was it difficult for you to find that tone and how did you find that tone in 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 are comfortable speaking in public, you can read a speech that is

decently written that follows the basic elements, one of the main ones of which is the sentences must be sure. it's not like writing an essay. it's the spoken word and so it's a little bit different. in some ways, it's significantly different from other types of writing. you have to read it aloud and you have to be careful that things don't rhyme or unintended alliteration or any other structural distractions 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 bond with the audience and how they get comfortable. president bush liked to do extensive acknowledgments, so

extensive that we wouldn't even write these things. they would be gathered up entirely accurately, the mayor, the congressman, the eighth-grade band, he wanted to thank everybody. >> clinton too. we had acknowledgment pages. >> did you write them? >> no, we had to list them. >> and he would risk off them -- riff off them. and dan quayle liked to get right to it. bob dole could tell jokes for 10 minutes. you wouldn't be surprised to learn that bob dole liked people.

he was in politics 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. really, the main point of variation is text is decently written and written as the spoken word and doesn't have any kind of quirks that would be unique to one person or another. the important thing is, how is he going to get into the speech and what is going to be comfortable. >> related to that; i worked for people, bill clinton and hillary clinton are both very good extemporaneous speakers. they don't really need writers. the value that you add is finding the story that can help them get into the speech,

finding the historical anecdote that will frame whatever policy they are proposing or the country they are visiting, history of u.s. relations, finding a historical nuget or a real person connection or a biographical story. americans love biography and it's a great way to connect with an audience. it's really finding those factoids and anecdotes that will help them launch the speech and personalize the speech. you do that thinking for them. you do that prep for them. you know they can speak anywhere. you just do the tailoring for the audience. >> that's where your researchers can help. >> the researchers are very important on that. it's a bit of a struggle. sometimes you are like, there

is nothing here. but that's the value that we add and they very much appreciate that because that is something they don't have the time to do on their own. >> for example, the writers are so busy and you have so many plates in the air, but if your researcher comes in and tells you the president is going to be speaking in front of a huge statue of general grant, you are very happy to learn that in advance. you don't want to read it afterward. the president is speaking in front of a giant statue of general grant. >> you mentioned having different policy teams and research teams drafting speeches. to what extent are you performing personal research and how did you come across that it was fine-tuning those research skills? >> i think it depends on how

much time you have and how big of a staff you have. on a campaign, you are on your own a little bit. at the white house, you have interns, lots of them. you have to figure out how to assign them and get the most out of them. i had another point. what was your other question? on matt, to serve your client well or your principal really well, you should know their biography backwards and forwards. i read all of the bios, the quickie bios in the autobiographies and everything about them. you have to catalog a personal -- you have to catalog the personal stories. you really internalize this person to you can channel hillary clinton or bill clinton. this is how you work. i was

working before google so it was lexis-nexis and autodial things . i think the interns were on netscape. it was harder. you had to go to the library. you had to look things up in the library. and very hands-on and i want to know everything. you know it when you see it, instead of interns bringing you random things. it's hard. >> sometimes only you know what you are looking for and it's hard to articulate. that's true. i remember, we had an assignment during the president's dedication speech for the world war ii memorial.

one of my favorite writers of all time, 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. talk about beautiful, beautiful writing. that excitement came up -- assignment k not -- came up, the first thing i thought was we have to get ernie pyle. every english speaking person who remembers that were remembers ernie pyle and will be touched in a hear his words. you go looking for something nice and i got news for you, it's on every page with ernie pyle. that was a joy and a delight. then when an eminent person dies or you are preparing for that event, you really can't say to the researchers, give me 10 things on ronald reagan. ronald

reagan was my hero so it's not a good example. i have a lot of stuff in the bank. by the same token, if you are going to be giving someone there do -- their due, you have to do that on their own. you probably heard about 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. he was the national security advisor. he said that the white house is a place where you spend intellectual capital. you do not accumulate intellectual capital. in speechwriting especially, your favorite stories from history, your favorite quotations, you give them away. that is something akin to research but it's really more

properly termed background knowledge, which every speechwriter brings to. >> one of the best things, being a former reporter, is interviews. you are calling from the white house so you can interview almost anyone to get background. that was pretty cool. just to get the life antidote -- [ laughter ] anecdotes, if it's a friend where there's not a lot of written material about, you get all of the stories. that was a delight too. >> what is your favorite writer? who is your favorite writer? >> i always feel inadequate when i answer questions like this.

i think in categories -- charles dickens, but he didn't write much american history or biographies. i have to have david mccullough who has written 8 or 10 great books, all of which are still in print, the first being on the johnstown flood which was published in 1966 about an event that happened in the 1880s and there were still survivors. david mccullough, i always mention as someone who gave me, not personally, but imparted some of the best advice ever for speechwriting. that is, when he was asked about the variety of books he had written, and there is no clear theme to all of 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. i thought, that's a good attitude for the speechwriter. write the speech you wouldn't mind listening to. i could go on but there's too many categories. >> i really thought that john adams, that really brought history to life like you were riding the horse with him. one of my most favorite books of all time to this day is ""to kill a mockingbird" -- is "to kill a mockingbird". and -- because she greatly conveys how to be a child in -- what it's like to be a child of immigrants. i don't know how to pronounce her name but the woman who wrote "americana".

>> you both mentioned conflict. can you talk about something that you wrote that you thought was extremely important but you got criticism from. what was that like? did you push back? what is that like when you have to advocate for something. how do you know when it's time to just let it go. >> i'm thinking of the speech at little rock. i really wanted to start with an anecdote about one of the little rock nine who showed up and didn't get the phone call they were going to go in the back door and she showed up at the front door and all of these protesters surrounded her and there's a photo of the girl. i don't know

if you know that. i really wanted to start without. -- with that. there were people who thought that wasn't the right way to go. some thought it was a slow beginning or whatever. i was a little like, oh my god. it's brilliant. you can do this. my boss was like, don't worry. look at my pen. my pen is not moving. it was almost on its way out and clinton was concerned about it but in the end he read it and the decided to keep it -- and decided to keep it. at the end of the day, it's not your speech. while you are powerful as a speechwriter, there are people with you. i think i reacted a little too strongly but i hoped that the

principal would see the value of it and he did. it doesn't always go that way. it doesn't always go that way and you have to remember it's never your speech. there is always going to be -- they take credit for it and they stand to lose. you have to let it go. >> in the drafting process of the speech to caucus after 9/11, the september 20 speech, karen hughes, the president's counselor who worked with him in texas in his first campaign in the governor's office and in the white house, she advocated for the line, live your life -- leave your lies and hug your children, about what is asked

of us now in looking ahead to life in america. i think that was the line. live your lives and hug your children. but we didn't like that and we tried several times to remove it from the speech. i think we may even have 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 insisted be kept, although there was probably a joke that we thought was really funny but didn't resonate beyond the door.

>> i'm in the middle of been roads bill and he talked about mind melding with president obama. i'm wondering if you ever worried by trying to mind meld with your principal that you would worry that you would use your own writing style. >> i guess those five years, i didn't have much of my own voice. it comes back. there was no time to write for yourself when you write for the white house. mainly i did. maybe i write more in lists now and first and second and finally. >> i guess i feel the same. i will say that i felt, as long as i was involved with george w. bush, that may be a better

writer because of how careful he was as an editor and how logical he was as a thinker. 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 being sharpened just because of the demands. >> i always wanted to give my best to them. i always wanted to find the most evocative image in best words. i wanted to be very economical and that makes you a better writer. none of this flowery stuff, the best verb and fewer adjective and the best nouns and ways to be economical but yet evocative. i think that definitely made me a better writer, much more careful about word choice.

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

variety. in terms of policy, i would say , to become a clearer or more direct, more economical policy writer, think a whole lot about an audience, perhaps an audience that's 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 interesting books about the supreme court in history. in the introduction to one of them he said when he was writing he thought constantly of his wife who was educated at stanford like he was but was not a lawyer. these books were about law and the court. he said that having his wife, an interested and intelligent reader but not a technically

trained reader, keeping that in mind was a great advantage to the final product. whether it's thinking of one person or of a larger audience of the type of person, i promise you, what you write tomorrow will be better than what you write today if you put it in those terms. i know this from experience. >> also, keeping in mind what the policy means for real people, painting a picture of what is the human result of this policy; i think sometimes because we have to turn things over quickly, you have the fact sheet and you end up getting really tired of lazy and you are just rewriting the fact sheet, trying to elevate it a little. really, you should stop and figure out what this means and build on that fact sheet. what

is the human impact for the average family of four in ohio? how are their lives transformed by this policy? keep that in mind and paint that picture and that will communicate to a broader audience, what a policy means. >> thank you for the discussion. my question is about the relative lack of media exposure to presidential speechwriters over the last decade or so. -- who was criticized for negativism writing speeches for spiro agnew. because it is articulate and era died such as the clinton's

and barack obama as you mentioned, they speak dutifully -- it's their own speech. in the case of people like president nixon and spiro agnew, are those his words? we have to find out. my question is, for a presidential speechwriter, if you have a nitpicking president to my torture you, is that better or if they preferred the speech hook line and sinker. >> the entire obama team, they are famous. they've gotten plenty of credit and coverage from the media. they have gotten there fair

share of credit. i don't know about that. may be there are more outlet now because of podcast send things like that. now there are many more ways to claim credit and get your voice out and become famous. >> does everybody here know that chris matthews was a speechwriter for president carter? i'm thinking of a few. you mentioned bill pfaff tire -- bill safire who i knew who was a fine person in a presidential speechwriter for nixon and also did some very effective speeches for vice president agnew. another person on that staff was pat buchanan. he had been with nixon before he was president. he had nixon himself higher buchanan based on reputation, sometime in the mid 60s, when

he was still getting ready to run again for president in 1968. i've heard buchanan tell the story that nixon who worked very hard on his beaches, probably harder or as hard as most of his successors, he remembers nixon saying, why can't i get beach writers like woodrow wilson. and they would say, woodrow wilson wrote his own speeches. >> i think we have time for one more. >> could each of you share a few anecdote about 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,

speechwriting office. our fact checking was 100% accessible but 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 1 trillion. there aren't 1 trillion people on earth, anywhere close to it. it was billions. but it was during budget season and everything was in trillions and we wrote this speech about pope john paul at the dedication of the john paul ii center in washington. there were multiple drafts and the staffing process and it wasn't caught until surprisingly, late in the game when somebody said, do you need

-- do you mean 1 billion. that never made it into the speech. that's where quality control came in before the president was involved. >> i was very paranoid about making a mistake. you triple check everything and have every -- everybody check things and harassment policy people to check things and never wanting to send out something incorrect or off by a zero or anything like that. it was very nerve-racking. i'm going to get fired if i get this wrong. i can -- this is self-serving -- but i can't think of a major mistake. maybe there was. i do have a good story. this is my naoveti because i was young and really new to washington ways and ranks and

titles. there's all of these titles and a deputy outranks and assistance, and all of this stuff. i was on the plane coming back from england with hillary and she was getting a lift. i had gone to college and i knew about assessors at harvard. i said, professor, good to see you. i read your article. what are you doing now? i said, you are at treasury, right next >> he said i'm the deputy secretary. and i was like, good for you. but i got home i talked to my boss a nice said, he is the deputy secretary. and i was like, do you know what the deputy secretary is.

and that's the number two person in the department. i was insulting him and i had no idea. i had no idea that the beauty secretary was number two. >> at one point i was -- the deputy secretary was number two. >> at one point i was reading a story about john philip sousa the composer. and i read that his family name wasn't sousa and his name was actually so, and out of love for our country he added usa. but it wasn't true. we dropped it in a speech draft and the first person who sees this is a fact checker who goes to check the fact and this best- selling book, notwithstanding, there was no truth to the story. >> you have to have 5 million

checks on things and sometimes something so gets her. >> one historian i talked to, i said every now and then i read something in a book or biography and i wonder if it really was that way. he says, as we say in the history profession, some stories are too good to check. >> or it's like, if you can't get that triple checked, i'm going to have to kill this and i don't want to kill this. >> a lot of people around here are looking to jump into speechwriting. i think the opportunity is quite interesting if you look on the democratics right, 2020. you have young congressmen and women looking to jump in. should someone work for this congressman or move to iowa or work for the labor department or work for the governor's office and moved to colorado? in order to really break in and

have an effect of impact in what you believe you are able to offer, what type of individual would you suggest really going and trying to break in with and gain confidence with? >> what kind of person? >> what kind of person would you be looking for? would you recommend starting as a fact checker in an office? would you recommend working with a younger principal? what would you say in this day and age? >> find someone you really like . if you can't get a job as a writer for the present, go work for that person anyway. if you really like this person and really want to write for this person and you can write, i can almost guarantee that if you get onto that staff and they find out that you are a writer and you are able to do this and you can do it under the conditions of the campaign or whatever other intense,

demanding conditions they have, they will use you. maybe you are on the finance staff or administrative team, fact check, research, whatever, press. if you say, i would like to, when you have a spare project, press release, policy paper or something, i would like to take a crack at that if you wouldn't mind. i don't inc. they are going to say no to you. if you are really good, they will come back and back and back, and they will be no limit to how far you can rise in that operation, if you can meet that standard. >> that's exactly what i was going to say. in a campaign, there are battlefield promotions. the talent rises. other situations are murky but in a campaign it all hands on deck and the best people need to -- will rise and need to look

at opportunities. also, there aren't a lot of good writers out there. if you can write, it's like a needle in a haystack, especially on a campaign. there are so many operatives, people with ideas but very few people can write. if you can do that and you go in at any level, any job and volunteer yourself, once they figure out you can write, there are so many things that need to be written in a campaign, not just speeches but questionnaires and all of those things. they need good writers. once you are identified, they will keep coming and you will get great jobs. ' -- jobs. you are going to take a low- level job for little money. the only way to stay happy is to believe in the candidate and believe they are the best thing for america. you should find 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 know people who have made that very decision and maybe the majority, it's a snap decision. that's my person. >> you fall in love. >> getting coffee is not beneath you. do everything. be a yes person. make copies. get the coffee. and say, if you are overloaded with talking points, i'd like to try a few. let me try a few. to mega ticket was ari fleischer that said the good interns always go and make -- >> i remember it was eric fleischer that said the good interns always go and make the copies. >> but some people say i want to do subs until things. no! you have to do the copies too. look for the opportunities but do the copies.

>> june and john, thank you very much. >> [ applause ] >> thank you everybody for joining. there's a little reception. you can join. thank you. if you missed any of today's discussions you can see them tonight during american history primetime which begins at 8:00 eastern time. thursday evening we look at a conference held in new orleans focusing on the 1998 academy award-winning film "saving private ryan" which includes a discussion among historians about the d-day invasion.

american history tv primetime begins at 8:00 eastern time. this sunday, we continue our series on women in congress with former democratic congresswoman pat schroeder. >> when i first got a like did, i was in this really idealistic mode. this is wonderful. how long do you think it will be until half of the houses fema. i asked library of congress, somebody, what they thought and they said probably 300 years. laugh back -- [ laughter ] it has been very incremental. >> in the weeks ahead we will hear from helen bentley, nancy johnson, and many others. watch oral histories sunday at 10:00 eastern time on american

history tv on c-span three -- c- span 3. sunday night on q & a, richard baker, donald ritchie and respond. >> one of the questions i hear people asking all of the time; is this the most uncivil time of history. certainly if you look at the years leading to the civil war, in 1856, there are a lot of senators who cheered on a house member. >> there is a musical now about alexander hamilton who was shot by the sitting vice president of the united states. with had a lot of difficult times. >> there was one time, a brawl with 80 members rolling around on the floor fighting one

another, before the civil war. one of the members had a wig and one of the members pulled his wig off during the fight. and someone said, he scalped him. that was enough to stop the fight. >> richard baker, donald ritchie and ray fund on c-span's q & a sunday night at 8:00 eastern time. next on real america, a look at the tumultuous month of june 1968 through the camera lens of the photographic unit as it covered the activities of resident lyndon b. johnson. during 1968, it covers the investigation and funeral of robert -- the assassination and funeral of robert kennedy, a nuclear nonproliferation treater with the soviets and chief justice earl