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now, with white house speech writers, discussing the process of turning the process presidents policies and political beliefs into a speech. this was part of the presidential ideas festival, held at the university of virginia. it is an hour. we appreciate you coming, we know there's a few of the panels coming at the same time. thanks for being at this, one will try to make it worth your while. for those of you who are on the wrong place, this is about speech writing. today, we are really -- on kyle o'connor. i'm a former speech -- writer for president obama. we're excited to have -- john mcconnell work for george w. bush. jeff cecil, who worked for president clinton, is supposed to be here. had a conference that kept him up in d.c.. but we will tell as many of his stories as we can remember. so, my hope is to use about half a time tonsils some questions for these two and they will spend the other half

taking questions that you have. if there's one thing i hope you take away from this whole session is that being a presidential speech writer is exactly like what you would think it would be on the west wing. that's it. i'm kidding,. so i will, since this is the presidential ideas festival, i'll start off with a question for these two about the relationship between ideas and speeches. sometimes what's starts off as an idea, and ends up as a speech, sometimes a speech writing process starts before you have the idea. just curious, what do you think about that process and how an idea becomes a speech? >> in a weird way, a speech writers, we are not coming up with the ideas. there are much smarter people in the building that are developing those ideas. in a way, i think that these ideas actually kind of get, they don't get crystallized until they get litigated on the page. and so, and a lot of speech

writing, and being a process job where you are managing the various interests of different policy staffs, who i want different equities, different interests and want different ideas. and you are helping them kind of shape how you are going to explain his message, and in that process, about decisions that i found especially for bigger policies, can sometimes be made through the speech writing process. we're not making the decisions, but this sort of happening on the page. and our white house, with president obama, a speech might get assigned to us. for a new trade policy, the first thing we would do is go and talk to the folks who were involved in that trade policy to get their input on exactly what's needed to be said. and then from there, we would go to the drafting process. but -- often help crystallized the idea of what it would be. >> working for george w. bush was a unique experience in the sense that when i want to go

work for him he was the governor of texas. and when you got to that position -- for things he wanted to do for the state of texas. it was a policy driven campaign. when i joined the bush operation, he was full fledged presidential candidate. and that was also a campaign on issues. so it was a very disappointing process, with him. you had your policy team, the speech -- writing team would be given the policy and it would be our job to turn it into a nice presentable persuadable speech. but it was a very very good policy operation, when the president got up to give a speech on whatever it was. he was proposing. it represented what he really wanted to say about everyone else, and also represented a very disciplined process that had been underway for some weeks or months prior to the event itself.

it's also the case that working with george w. bush, we found ourselves in many ways and a crisis of presidency -- things kept happening. and of course, the ultimate was the 9/11 experience and the monday after 9/11, the president made the decision that he was going to address a joint session of congress. or more precisely, he was probably going to address the joint session of congress but he wanted to see a speech wrapped before he made his final decision. and so, it was our job, my colleagues in my custodian and i, to do our speech for the president. that monday, and he asked that he'd be given that, entire speech that day. and the assignment came -- and as much as we protest, it it was made clear to us that we had to get it done. we got to work, it wasn't as if we were lacking for subject matter or material.

we knew exactly what we needed to write about, but we did need some policy direction which we received, mike ours talk to congress that morning -- then about 1:00 that afternoon, we get cold over to the overall falls to see the president we had seen him quite a bit since the attacks, the previous tuesday. but we hadn't seen him since we got the assignment, obviously. so we were brought, in and it was going, and he said it's going just fine mister president, but we're not quite there. he looked at us and said americans have questions. they want to know who attacked our country. they want to know why they hate us. they want to know what's expected of us now. they want to know before the, war how we are going to fight and win the war. from there we had a structure for the speech itself. if you go back and look at the speech from congress following

thursday, the president went through those questions, and because i always thought, because he gave us the basic contrasts -- construct in the beginning we didn't have a conclusion ready. he allowed us to move that over into tuesday. >> can you talk about how president bomb would kind of give you a framework for a speech like that? he is a lawyer. he would always give you that point, 8.1 a, one b. >> so what i think is interesting about president obama is that he himself is a writer. if he had time would write the speeches himself. but commander-in-chief doesn't have time to write speeches. so oftentimes what would happen is you go in the oval and sit with him, and you just start riffing. and then maybe seven minutes and he would say ok. so here is what i am thinking. one, then he would give you

sort of your opening. one, two, give you the next paragraph. one, a go back, give you that, then he was sort of walking you back through the outline. it was so irritating as a writer because you would be sitting in your office trying to come up with a structure for hours, and you just spent hours with him and he's got the whole thing down. it was both inspiring, but incredibly annoying. he was really good at this. what's also interesting i think is one of the challenges of being a president, really any elected leader, i worked for senator for many years and said the same dynamic which is that you are going from very different event, two very different event over the course of a very busy day. so he might be having a meeting with me about the national prayer breakfast speech, but i before that he was talking about china with people who are way more part than i am. then after that he's going to a

ceremony with the girl scouts. i mean the date is so fragmented. your mind has to sort of a very quickly shift. for a whole host of reasons, president obama as a lawyer, writer, but also someone who's like president bush, extremely disciplined, was able to shift. i remember when we were working on the remarks for when pope francis came to visit the united states, and because the pope is the head of a state, at the vatican, we did a proper state arrival. it was a very early morning speech. they do the state arrivals on the south lawn, starting at seven or eight in the morning, so it's quite early. i had been working on the speech, and had handed and dropped a couple days earlier, and our white house the process is that we would write a draft, and the chief speech writer would at it. it would go around the building to many people for their input and edits. this included lawyers and fact checkers. the white house had fact check

yours. [laughs] >> so did johnson. and policy people. and they would offer their input which we would then incorporate. the draft would eventually go to the president, who had spoken to him beforehand about the, speech go through the process, and get back to him. i sent it back into him a couple nights earlier, and i got it back, and only one word was crossed out, and i thought this can't be right. the president loved pope francis. he felt strongly and was excited by this rival. i can't imagine that he would have no edits. of course i get a call for the president secretary the morning before the speech and he said he wasn't done editing, he wants you up here. so i go up to the oval, and he's behind his desk, in his very neat handwriting making that. it's he says come on in. i do a very bad obama

impression. he says i wasn't quite done. i want to boil down this part about where those who are most in need, that ties it to my own faith, i want to talk about that. it wasn't supposed to be a long speech which he, knew but he wanted to blow it up a little bit. so i go back to my office. i work on it. i sent it back to. him i get another call around lunchtime, and i'm summoned back, i go into the oval and i don't see him. and his secretary says he is having lunch in his private dining room, go back there. i had never been back there. i am both terrified and trying to take in everything that is on the walls as i make this you know to second walk to the private dining room. he is in there. eating a plate of carrots or something. and he has made his. he wants me to read them and

make sure i understand what he's doing. i see that he's kind of blown out that section a little more, and added a little piece about refugees. later on i had learned that he had been in a meeting about refugees. you could kind of scene the evolution of his thinking. but he was going to do something else right after that. and he said go make these at its. send me back a draft. i'm like oh i'm going to meet the pope later but i'll take a look at it tonight. i sent it back, at 8 pm i got his, edits what's so interesting about that day was just to watch the evolution of his thinking, where even though there was so much else going on, this is what any president has, he was able in those few minutes he had to really focus in on the speech, and give it the thinking he needed. not that it wasn't influenced by everything that was going on in the day. it was. but just the ability of anyone in that office to sort of

continually give something its focus, and tend to it even though there's all this other stuff going on. >> that is one of the value added to speech waiting for a president who's got so much going on, give him something to react to. give him something to look at. president bush wasn't really a writer, but he was a real serious editor. very, very confident editor. he had this very, very logical mind. he could, read a eight page speech draft, throw it on his desk, look at the ceiling and recite the outline of the speech. i'm not capable of doing that. but he can internalize it. he called me one morning real early, and he was going to make a speech across town, and it was one of those beaches where you had to go over two things that were unrelated, so he had the middle of the speech connect the two. and he was going through his

final read through before being taken over to the hilton or whatever. he said what is this on page three? middle paragraph. and it was 6:30 in the morning or something. i said it's in the nature of a transition mister president. he says just words. i said yes sir. he said take it out. . he wanted direct, clear, and he could feel in the way that swanson used to describe kennedy, he could feel the momentum of words. if he didn't feel it while reading a speech he saw a problem. but give him something to react to. the morning of 9/11 i was sitting with vice president dick cheney, and the reason i was with him was he had a speech coming up that friday, and the arrangement we always had was that i'm not going to go in and say you have a speech on friday, what do you want to say? i'm going to come in and say you have a speech this friday, here is what i recommend.

then you can get the gears turning. something to react to. because there's so many other things going on. after give a foreign policy speech in chicago. no don't do that. >> go ahead. >> i was going to say that feels very familiar to me because i had to write a speech the president obama gave at a historically black college in atlanta. i remember walking to the oval office, and my boss very helpfully said kyle has something he wants to say to the crowd. he is looking at me as the first black president, i'm going to let you finish and then i'm going to tell you what you should say. you probably remember this as well. the more and it's you got from president obama the better. >> always. >> if he spent time at night writing it out on a legal draft that was great, it meant he was very engaged. if you saw a bunch --

you never wanted to get a note on the top that said please see me. you are starting over. that was bad. it's true, you always want the person you're working with me engaged with the draft. i was also going to respond to something that's of john had said which is important which is that president john was looking for something momentum and his speech, i worked with many west wing writers, and one of the things that he taught me was that a speech ought to have a sense of inevitability throughout. it you have momentum so that by the time you get to the and the reader says obviously this is where we are. we get to the point and there is a inevitability about it. what president bush saw with that bad transition was there wasn't is sense of inevitability. the momentum got broken. i was thinking you could do the beau biden transition, like folks, let's head into a different topic.

george bush didn't like that. >> we are all speech writers. not all speeches are the same. and not always that the president gets the message across is the same. if it's a union address, talking to reporters, something on social media, what do you think that president bush and obama were best and when you think they weren't as good at, any good stories about a good or bad example there? >> he was pretty good in all of the settings. the issue of authenticity comes up. nowadays you hear people say it's more authentic if someone just tweet something off the top of their head. or it is more authentic if they are doing something in a interview or something more off the cuff, town hall meeting, that kind of thing. you can be authentic yourself of course, but you are also authentic we are seeing what you want to say. in the best way you know how to say it. i saw ambassador eric middleman

here in the conference and he's writing a essay on moscow state in 1988. that speech on the berlin wall, a memorable speech, one of the best speeches remembered by everybody was worked on very, very closely by his speech writers and the secretary of state i think was involved. the president himself. there wasn't a spear word, extra word in the speech. it was a carefully, well done. speech no one is going to say it wasn't authentic because reagan wasn't there standing there, saying what's popped into his mind. there is nothing more authentically reagan than that. >> being prepared is also being respectful of the audience. respectful of their time. >> president bush won tempted a town hall meeting in kansas. i wasn't on the trip.

but i sought on c-span or something. the next time i saw him i was like did you know you are up there for an hour and a half answered questions from the audience? >> he did but he said at the time i had no idea i was up there that long. but it was a very good event. he is the microphone. when he would commit to an event like that he wouldn't have a prepared speech. he would tell us to wintertime. don't give the prepared speech in your first couple minutes of a town hall. he would make his own notes on what he wanted to say. by notes i mean tax plan. public schools. freedom. >> always freedom. >> he was very good in all settings as well. i also thought that his secret weapon was the press conference. the late night comics were always making fun of george w. bush his word stumbles. especially if he was reading a speech. announcing a name. they would catch him and then

run these things constantly. but then everybody at some point, everybody is going to see the president or hear him in a situation that they're kind of it's the only thing that they can listen to, you're in your car and the person is making a announcement. or there's a press conference that's interesting or something. you listen to bush, and people thought oh he's actually very well informed, very well spoken, not what i was expecting because most people are busy with their lives. in these rare moments where they would hear him for 15 minutes or so he would say i'm pretty good, >> he's also really funny. >> he didn't have to write jokes. >> he came up with the best ones. >> i'd be curious what you say to this. we know president obama's reputation as someone who gives the sort of soaring speeches, with a lot of oratorical flourish. and some of the sort of seminal

speeches of the last ten years, 15 years, have been ones that he gave at critical moments, whether it was the 2008 philadelphia speech about race, selma, charleston, these are speeches that he put a lot of thought into. as john said, he was saying the thing that he wanted to say that he was prepared to say. i also think that, i'm sure you guys felt this. yes first time and a half in the second term. we were sort of his presidency follow the growth of social media. and so, it was a whole upper opportunity to you know communicate in a new way and also scrapping a new way. but also really reach audience in different ways and so and i think that he really followed and this is obama's lead on this the first lady was so on the cutting edge of using social media to reach audiences she wanted to meet people where they were and so she was always

getting to young people through whatever social media channel they were using she went on ellen all the time because she knew that those were the audience of women who watched ellen were people who she really wanted to reach with their policy ideas and also the kind of shift culture around issues like college access. and healthier food for children. she was really good about that, she was not above any of that. i think i that also helped inspire the president seemed to get more pulled about social media to. so, you know, he did in between two friends video which some of you may remember. encourage people to sign up for health care. but then we also did things like, he did a facebook live video to encourage young people to sign up for facebook. and then it turns out young people on facebook. so they use snapchat, i forget what it's called now. something like that. to remind people to fill out their forms, they went to

places where they -- at one point there was a day where he was interviewed by a bunch of youtube stars. and, i did at the time no with a youtube star is. but these are young people who have these shows on youtube, and have millions of followers. and your traditional journalists were extremely angry that he was doing interviews with you know these young people who are not serious journalists. and was not speaking to face the nation or whatever. but he really felt like this was an opportunity to reach young people. and, there arey s of this but i feel like, he was really good about finding ways to use every medium at his disposal to get his message across. it doesn't always work, but he tried. >> couple of quick points about bush. he was very funny as you said. he used the first page of his

speech, he would take acknowledgments that would just be names. we would write these acknowledgments, and he would rip off of names. that's where a lot of the humor came from and his speech. he wanted to thank the person who introduced them, and the local dignitaries and the band. everybody. he would refund these things, and then he would come up with these things somebody asked him the story somewhere, maybe around the time of the lincoln movie or one of the books about lincoln. some presidents they saw lincoln's ghost. have you ever seen lincoln's ghost? and he said no i quit drinking in 1987. cheney was also -- has a great sense of humor. very kind of low-key good timing. he called me one time, it was in the morning. i picked up the phone and it was at the voice of dick cheney said john, -- i've got us into some trouble.

>> i said oh? >> he said the president is going to europe and he's not gonna go to the radio tv correspondents dinner. and i got to go there tomorrow. and be funny for ten minutes. and then he says, i don't be funny. but the truth is, he does. and my colleague matthew scalia and i said, we hurriedly put together a speech forum for the next night i think it was. and he's a great job. he was very good at that. >> i want to ask you this question, because i don't know the answer. the way the correspondents dinner works is usually a league writer who is the phony speech writer -- i've never been a fine speech writer ever. but everyone kind of summits jumps to that person, and i spent a lot of time like on a page two jokes and give them to john levant who is already speech writer. he's very nice about it, who maybe choose what maybe zero. do you have any jokes that were actually accepted in this correspondence?

>> i think maybe. david lip and then tyler ran our speech writing process for that. honestly, i can't remember. there was sort of this pressure to get jokes. but people sent jokes in, unsolicited and solicited -- whoever was running as lead pan on the correspondence schedule is getting all kinds of emails from everybody, suggesting jokes. but then also might reach out to comedians, comedy writers and others -- it was as big huge undertaking. always had the state of the union that is really hard speech to write. and you always see cody woodrow b during state of the union season, and then shape it at the end. but white house correspondent dana felt like that too, because there was so much pressure. like president bush president obama, he's pretty funny naturally. and so, he saw that delivery, saw that timing. and they were both good at that. so you could always trust them

to deliver, but the pressure to really pull off the speeches was like so great. >> going back to that thing about compartmentalizing how president who's been really good at -- it as something you may have heard but. there is a correspondents dinner, i think a few years in his presidency when, it was a joke in it where i think, his real name was saying is jokers with -- republican politicians whose middle name is osama. and he's a joke about that. our speech writers went into the final edits for this corresponded speech and said you know what? i think i'm just gonna cut this part out, we're gonna make it some other name. do you know the republican was? >> i can't. >> so we changed, it we thought ok that works. turns out, that was the day that they had the mission to kill him -- and they just come from a meeting in the situation room later that night they were actually going to do it. but he did not let on, and he just said let's does not do this.

>> that famous photo of all of them in the situation room is the day after the correspondents dinner. but the speech writers, they did not know that. and his book, david writes about how annoyed he was how he was not as funny as a samba. but of course, you gotta switch gears. . >> so one of the tough jobs as a speech writer is to reach different members of congress. members of the public, press. how would you think about as you writing a speech, which audience for talking to and how to reach the specific audience? >> it's always the first question i ask. what is the audience? it's an exaggeration, but in a certain sense you are halfway there when you know who the audience is. is it your friends? is that the on persuaded? is it an academic? is it an academic audience? is it the core of the brigade of -- shipment of naval looked had me. is it the chicago affairs council? the very rounds of foreign wars? republican club of cedar rapids.

you find out what's your audiences, and then you know probably how you are going to get into the speech, what's the general tone of the presentation is going to be. and things of that nature. however, it's the president speaking and therefore, as you always told us he said, everything is important. we want to think of a small rose garden event for the teacher of the year, as an important. actually, it was an important event and it was part of the full volume of statements he made as president of the united states. also, he was always after us, never to skip a step in making a case. even if you are speaking to the people who, an audience of people who are likely to be in agreement with what you are saying, don't skip a logical step because the president always has a broader audience. and, you know, if he's making his case for social security

reform, and he skips over the hard part and just tells all the great things that are going to happen, a person who disagrees and maybe a person who has not done a lot of thinking about it is going to go, well now you skip the step. he was always after us to explain things. regardless of who the audience was. >> you can get bogged down -- like john said the audience is the world for really any speech. you never know who is paying attention. i would have relatives in india say that the one of the president speeches was recorded on -- and a paper. you just never know, and so by the time we came into office everything is on twitter. and you can watch a speech that -- do this sometimes. a speech that i worked on. i'm watching it on tv, and i'm watching twitter at the same time. and it's a really great way to lose your mind. because you can see how any given news outlet will just

filter pieces of that speech through its own view, and then slice and dice it and reinterpreted however you want. and it appears on twitter and a very different way that it was taken. all of this can make you lose your mind. but i agree, i think you have to sort of think about about for the primary audiences and one of our colleagues, terry zoo planet, who would always say -- a member was working a speech for memorial day he said, think about ... don't get bogged down and all the potential people were paying attention. focus on the emotional hard center of the speech. who is the person whose heart you are most trying to touch? start with that. and then you can work out. for memorial day speech, it's the spouse of the fallen soldier. start with that person. and then move broader. that was a really helpful way to kind of stay focused, and not lose sight and not let twitter ruin your life. >> i will ask one more question, and then if you want a lot of

that microphone right there, will start accepting questions from the audience. my last question, i know you are domestic speech writer. but there's a big difference between writing a domestic speech and foreign policy speech. can you talk a little bit about, based on what we have seen on colleagues, and we know, what's the different considerations are for those to? >> sure he will start? >> well. i was fortunate -- lawyer by training but i'm not an expert in any policy area. i had to write speeches about things that in many cases had not that much thinking about. but, one of the great things about the white house is that you have policy experts. and, they love talking about their area of expertise. and they are very good at it. so, i was already's toggling back and forth between the foreign policy slash military stuff. and the domestic, and all the other things that fall into that umbrella. president bush, his signature issue as governor of texas was

education reform. he wanted it to be the signature issue of his presidency. and, that was ted kennedy and john boehner, coauthor the legislation and it was really a big part of his -- of what he wanted to accomplish. it fell far into the background. but we can never make him happy with education speech drafting, he simply knew too much about it -- and a granular level of detail that speech writers can never get. so we can go through the snapping process, everything is fine. and then we get to the presidency, i don't get it. don't have it right. [inaudible] so. one time, it wasn't 2004 in the middle of a reelection campaign. a lot going on. i said to mike, and matthew my colleagues you know? the president and likely last education speech we did, we have another one to do. let's take the one he did not use, and look at the transcript

of what he actually said. and use that. and so we did, we took that transcript from that last speech, we cleaned it up and did some -- ... we put in some current local references and data to freshen it up. and, you know, i thought this is what he wanted to say. clearly, that day it was the rare event he had a speech and he didn't use it. but it was education. he took that transcript, made that into speech draft, pass it around send it to the president. and see if he likes that? when it comes back, he loves it. it's exactly what he wanted to hear. because he rode it. >> so, my understanding from colleagues who worked with bill clinton is that, previously the speech writers were sort of all in one kind of shop. and when sandy broker was national security adviser for

clinton, he really wanted to foreign policies a speech writers under -- they move technically over to nsc. national security council. even if we were in the white house, i don't know if it was true we wear your white -- house when we were in the white house our colleagues who are foreign policy speeches, their email addresses were nsc. not like ours were. they were part of the nsc, even though they were on our team. they had a different level of clearance, and everything in their lives. they were looking at classified materials, and their speeches. it's a very different process. few times i did have to work with, and see staff on foreign policy realize that it really is a different ball game. you know, foreign leaders and populations of foreign countries are really looking to the president of the united states what he says. they are pulling over every word in a way that no one is ever poured over in my economic policy speech. and so, there is a level of

care that needs to be given to those speeches. not that you are careful about every single speech, but the considerations that go into those speeches, i think is really different. i think sometimes, that would have an effect on the -- pros you'd be going back and forth with various members of the nsc staff, who wanted something said in a very precise way but that didn't sound like him in english. so you'd be going back and forth, trying to get to a place where it sounded like something a person would say. but what was accurate in -- precise in the way that they needed. i remember one friend from the nsc told me that he wasn't a speech writer, he was a policy person but he was helping one of his bosses with remarks that she was giving somewhere. and in the speech, the draft said something like we are going to do this for the american people. the nsc lawyers came back and said you have to say u.s. persons.

you can't say the american people. which is of course ridiculous. but there are these considerations. they are just different from foreign policy. >> piece of trivia. when the president of the united states goes abroad, all of the public remarks he's going to make on that trip, whether it is two days were, ten those are all done and cleared and approved before air force one leaves the united states. so it is a real crunch for speech writing. >> please tell us your name. >> as a former resident of south carolina, and charleston, i would like to hear you elaborate on his decision to sing amazing grace. >> do you know cody story about this? go for it. >> we will tell our bosses story. i wasn't involved in writing the charleston speech, and i wasn't there. our director of speech writing tells the story that they were actually on the plane, heading

down there, and the president said there's a 50 50 chance i will sing. i think he was probably in the moment that he felt that it was the right thing, he felt it. >> our bus who wrote that speech with him said he would never have imagined suggesting that he sitting. it he said i think he should just stick with the song, but yes, in the moment. >> thank you. >> to what extent do you try to speak in the voice of the president? to mimic his frazee oligarchy, or make it sound like something that he himself would say? or is that a road too far? >> that's a huge part of the speech writers job. i would say it's the hardest aspect of the beginning of speech, reading getting someone's voice, speaking like they would speak. >> does it come from getting to the know them well? or how does that -- >> i think once you overcome the initial hurdle of how am i going to sound like 55-year-old

black man who's the leader of the free world when i'm me is to think about how that voice, the idea of how somebody speaks, their, voice is really about how they think. if you start there than you'll understand what words they, use whatever eases they gravitate towards, but how do they approach the world? how do they approach problems? at least for me, you had a lot more time with president bush certainly that i did with president obama, as soon as i got to the white house and got that job offer i immersed myself in everything i could about him. i read his books. i read every speech he had given. i watched when he was on jimmy fallon. i spent a lot of time embarrassing by self in the mind and soul of barack obama which is kind of creepy that i think is how you sort of, you wake up in the morning and you're not thinking what do i think about what happened in the world? you're thinking what does brooke obama think about what

happened in the world? >> when i left the white house, there were a few months there where i was right emails to friends as the eye was barack obama. doctor. kyle >> i imagine many of the presidents speeches are written and re-written endlessly and cleared by dozens and dozens of people. mechanically, how do you know with the draft is, given moment a? too, the practical question. what happens to all the drafts? are they shredded? are they a racist? read the file sent to the archives? or what? >> everything for us was comments in the speech writing office, say 5:00 on the same day that the draft went around the staffing process. nobody was given during the draw -- staffing process, nobody was

given a electronic copy of the speech. colin powell said one time everybody likes to dream papers. everybody would love to get on the computer and play wizard word. we insisted on at its on a hard copy. if it comes to us. we'd have a stack up. >> i really wish we had done that. there's no other way to do it because you put it in their hand, and also when somebody has to take the time to write something, that's thinking too, rather than just dashing something off, the idea of having all of these electronic copies of the speech, redlined and all of, that it made our job miserable. but you go through them. and the president, if you worked on the speech, your name and your phone number was on the bottom of the last page. and the president always made clear, and the vice president, you are accountable for this speech, which means that you

have the power to make sure that the speech still works as a whole. that doesn't mean that you can overrule the national security adviser on a question of wording or whatever. but it does mean that when you get all of these multiple suggestions from people who haven't done a lot of thinking about the speech, maybe just commenting on the fly, and don't feel strongly about the suggestion they are making, all those factors come into play. but it is your sponsor realty to go through those and accommodate the changes that need to be accommodated. laugh at the ones that you know -- >> right. exactly. become annoyed at people who don't appreciate the artistry and all of that. that's the moment to answer the question that you have to process -- stick to the process. otherwise it becomes chaos. the final thing is what happens to the graphs. they are in the bush memory.

all of those papers, we have to give everything, two sets were on, it it became a record. >> actually going forward where we are in the world, and the current occupant of the white house, you should know that they can't just throw things out. every record must be kept under federal law to that effect. i was just going to say that we unfortunately did not have people do handwritten at, it's a surely wish we did. but i think everybody had a different method. similarly, 5:00 every day we circulated, i think most speech writers that i know, we are all kind of obsessive about version control. so i have a elaborate system of how i need my files to make sure that i'm looking at the right version. when i got a lot of edits i would actually point out all that it's that i got so i could check off that i got through all of them. oftentimes, if, i might be getting a bunch of edits from members of the same team, say

the economic policy team, i would ask them to combine it all. litigate among themselves what they wanted to send me, and then send it to me. i wouldn't accept you no different at its from people on the same team. >> there is also a mental illness and the people that you had to take into, account and those you could. ignore obviously we don't tell them. yes please. >> thanks for coming first of all. you mentioned earlier that when you're writing a speech that ideas can just be your own, as just mentioned, you can't overrule the records are going to see, so there are certain factors have to take into consideration. you're the voice of the leader of the free world and that carry some weight. to what extent did you feel you had influence over policy as a speech writer? >> i don't know -- i personally didn't feel any influence over actual policy. a couple of our colleagues were

also policy people, like ben, who was very instrumental in president obama's foreign policy. but i did feel like i had some influence in shaping how he talked about something. so specifically, by the time that i got there i felt like i could kind of help the president be more vocal about his feminism. so i used various opportunities, like essays we, had and then culminating a speech that the white house held in 2016, that i could kind of build up and sort of help him find a voice. give voice to what i knew he truly believed. and that i could push, it and see whether he pushed back in a way. i worked on a team of men, so i felt like i had the ability to do that. and to kind of challenge it a little bit. and through each piece of writing about this issue that

we did, i could kind of push the envelope a little bit more so that by the time he gave a speech and he got in front of 1000 people and was like this is what a feminist looks like. slowly moving us towards that direction. it wasn't that i was putting a idea in his head. it's something he already had. i was just giving it voice. >> the thing that is most rewarding about writing for a president, a president you like, is -- and the vice president i need to say as well, is that the reasons you like the person that you are writing for, you want the whole country to see what you like about the person, so you think about that when you are writing. and i don't consider that as having influence on policy. so much as giving him

confidence, expressing his best thoughts, putting all you can't into it to ensure the qualities you like and admire are there for all to see. i will quickly add, in the bush cheney white house, the speech writer for the president for more than half the administration was a senior policy adviser. so he had real standing on the white house staff. that was a good influence because he was very good at what he did. >> -- widen the circle of people who care about something. i was there when they were trying to pass health care and that was important because he spoke on it a lot, we really had to persuade people in congress, and people indifferent states to not only approve this law, but to sign off. we end up going through all of the letters that president obama received dozens of letters, and read ten every night, including from people who are saying i am dealing with this issue, this is why

this is important, so we will tell a lot of the stories as a way to tell why this matters and who is going to make a difference for. >> thank you. >> my good friend just basically put a much more eloquent version of the question i had. i'm in a bit of a scramble right now but if i was schiff the prospect of a little bit on how you as a speech writer have been influenced, i think one thing that's been talked about a lot during the festivals of the president surrounds himself with people who are able to respectfully disagree and whole discourse around him or her when we get a female president. i think one of the questions that i had was in the time that you guys were speech writers, were their moments were you able to challenge the president on the way that he was approaching a certain topic or issue? or perhaps even the topic itself? were there places where you are

able to have that kind of discourse with him, and kind of show that there was maybe a different path from what he was originally thinking? >> not many times. i will say, if there was something that i really felt strongly about, that i wanted to say to president bush about policy i wouldn't say mister president could i grab before a second. i remember talking to a deputy chief of staff once about something that i had a strong opinion on. and that was good enough. i knew that this would be presented to the president. i didn't care if he said who thought it was, you could be a little more free with the vice president, cheney isn't the man in the oval office, he was chief of staff to a president, secretary of defense, he's a serious guy. i never lobbied or anything

like that. but i remember raising a couple of things with him. he is the kind of guy that you wouldn't hesitate to do that. but you would also want to make sure that you had done some serious thinking before you talked about it. he respects anyone who's talking to him. but you need to respect his time. don't come in with a half baked idea or something like that. and in terms of speeches, you always have to tell yourself this is his speech. i'm not contributing to the corpus of his work. >> this is him talking. >> nobody would say this great speech by -- , they would say this last speech by barack obama. you have to be cognizant of. that i don't know if you ever challenged him on policy. i certainly never did. but my understanding of people who worked on policy is that he

really wanted really robust discussions about policy happening in front of him where his experts were disagreeing with each other, and talking about it. there are really great accounts of those conversations happening during the financial crisis. during the transition before he took office. when he did, and the conversations, the transmission was really smooth in large lee due to president pushes personality. i think that transition, during that transition, there were these really robust conversation that many people have written books about at this point. i think he wanted, that i think that from a writing perspective, we were giving him our best in a draft. and the edits would come from him. it was rare i have never had an experience where they said no i can come something better than the edits you gave me. he would cross saw with two of your words, and come up with a better one. >> i had a story that robert styles told he was a longtime democratic -- he told about, he had big

problems with the vietnam war. and he went into talk to president johnson -- and to tell him he was on the wrong track. i remember he was saying something like, mister president is the greatest man in the world. and he said, he left the oval office, he was so angry at himself that he made -- he made a vow to himself that if he was ever to speak president, he would tell them exactly what is on his mind. and he maintained that he kept that. he ended up in the cabinet in the carter -- he maintain after that he had stay true to that. i was in the meeting and the oval office and one time, it was glenn hovered. one of the economic advisers, who later on became dean of the columbia business school. i don't remember what the issue was. but, he was there, and i was there. obviously speech was being talked about. i remember that there was kind of a, loose consensus forming around some idea. and, the president looks like

glen humbird and says what do you think of that? and he says mr. president, i believe in that at all. i never forgotten, that i mentioned to glenn hovered over the years, it was one of those moments where it actually happens, where someone -- president asked them opinion and tell them instead of holding back. and, that was kind of the tone that i always felt president bush had. even though i never felt in a position where i needed i disagree with something. >> it's hard to overstate how hard that, is first time it was in the oval office, i forgot the complete thing. i don't remember ... you just there i'm in the room it's so bright. one of my do with my hands. and then it's hard, you get used to it. especially seeing people get used to it. thank you. >> an impeachment of andrew johnson, the articles of

impeachment involves speech writing. -- and had apparently been so crude and offensive unpresidential in his criticism of the radical republicans that they wrote that as a reason for his removal from office. is it possible for our president to say something, write something, or tweet something that would justify removal from office? >> justify the removal of the writer. that's something with you live in fear of. johnson did not have riders. we >> legally, i can't answer that question. i think if he says something that is, where he perjured himself, then yes. >> it seems like it could be a sign of an actual crime. >> there are questions about

whether this presidency used up his twitter account deleting tweets. whether he's in violation of the presidential records act, by doing certain things. i think, as john said one of the things that speech writers live in fear of, is just being wrong. and writing something, maybe not these current speech writers -- but afraid of being incorrect. hence the fact checkers, the lawyers. who made sure that what we said was not in violation of anything. and like you said, johnson didn't have that. there also of the reasons they impeached. we >> for all of us perspective speech writers, what are you doing now? >> i write speeches for private clients. i work with a former white house -- may matthew storm. >> i also have my own sort of

one woman shop, i do speeches and all kinds of writing. but also message strategy communications, coaching for different clients. >> i graduated from uva in 2008 -- i moved back to just vote about -- i worked with jim ryan in the presidents office during communications with him. >> not this president, now that president. >> all i'm just curious, once you have all the words on the paper, how much time did your prospective presidents spend, practicing or did they just have the ability to read it a few times and really be able to deliver in a way that, with the appropriate positives and all the go -- to really communicating that. is that the kind of thing that you are doing at night in front of a mere?

>> i don't, that's a good question. i don't know the answer. i don't know how much he spent on it, now and then, we gave him the speeches and 23 point type. he read i'm usually on cards that are about two thirds the size of a sheet of paper. it was big type, and he can read it without his glasses. and on occasion, i would ask the staff secretary to give me the presidents reading copy, because i want to look at it and see what he had done and it. and the last moments, what changes he had made and would cross, outs or additions or things like that. which weren't terribly common, but they did occur and i wanted to see -- it my point is i would notice, that he would underline words for emphasis, he would mark out where he wanted to stop and pause. he wouldn't write notes to himself, but he would put signals. we would underline. and so, that suggests that

there was at least one serious practice of the speech. i've been in the oval office where he reads an entire speech allowed. for the small audience of people sitting around the desk. and that is when he's, that's typically when he was doing his first major edit of the speech. if it was, and then if it was going off to a city in the heartland and read the speech, there wouldn't be a practice session, but there would be practice sessions in the family feeder. in the east wing of the white house, and the family theater is about as deep as this room. and about half the with maybe. and set up like a little movie theater, and set up the teleprompter. but he's the teleprompter, i know president bomb use a lot. president bush probably used it. for five times a year. but he would practice. it practiced those things, and sometimes he would end it while reading the speech from the

teleprompter. and stay there with us while we did it. but in the ordinary course of things i know there was some, i just don't know, i never really ask them how much time he spent with it. >> my understanding, you nobody better than i do. my understanding is that the speeches of the president obama sort of rehearsed where white house correspondents dinner the, state of the union, the convention speeches but, that the one thing he was doing regularly, as a president you get so used to delivering the speeches. and because he had prepared the speeches, there was a subset of the population that would mock present obama's use of a teleprompter. but it really is a better way to deliver a speech. it'll looking out at the audience. you have written a, down if that about what you're going to say. he just got accustomed to doing that. he's really just a terrific corridor. and he's able to do that. the first lady is always

prepared, does her homework early, and so i know that she will rehearse her speeches. she wanted to make sure that she got it right. she wrote about this in her book. she knew that little kids were listening to every word she said. people were hanging on every word. what she said mattered. so she really wanted to put a lot of thought into what she said, and how she said it. she really took her role seriously and wanted to be very prepared. i don't think president obama -- he took his role very seriously. i don't think he researched the way she did. >> she was also not a politician. >> right social need it to do this. >> the only thing i remember about him practicing was in the campaign that he was doing in iowa, jefferson, the stages route and there is no podium. no kinds of notes so he had to memorize. it so i think it was like a 20

minute speech. ahead speech writer at the time said you have to memorize this. we have to start learning. it and he was like i'll get to it. it turns out the night before he started memorizing. it reggie love remembers walking by and hearing espn just blasting on the tv. it's because he was in the bathroom talking himself in the mirror, trying to memorize the speech and didn't want people to hear it. so he apparently hated doing, that so he didn't rehearse anything ever again. we are out of time. thank you so much for coming. [applause] enjoy the rest of the day. 20 years ago one of the most highly contested u.s. presidential elections took place. the presidential contest between texas governor, george

shelby, bush and vice president al gore. saturday morning at eight eastern we look back at the election with washington post columnist and the bulwark, editor at large, william, both editors of the book, bush v. gore, the book in the commentary. watch bush v. gore 20 years later. live saturday at 8:30 am eastern, on c-span 3, and see spans washington journal. up next on the presidency, former secret service agents talk about protecting the first family, and the challenges they faced.