doing the things he wanted them to do while they thought it was their idea. announcer: sunday at eight eastern -- 8:00 eastern on cspan. 0 >> former presidential -- announcer: former presidential speechwriters spanning from richard nixon to barack obama are part of a writer's conference in washington, d.c. they talked about the experience of communicating the president's message and how the media landscape has changed over the years, specifically the rise of social media. they also talked on the messaging strategy and communications style of the current administration and the influence of president trump's personal tweets. this is just under an hour and a -- under half an hour.

>> >> good afternoon, it is our honor to host the speechwriters world conference again this year. welcome back. here at georgetown mcdonough, we are firm believers that learning never ends. whether you are attending a pursuing an advanced degree there is always an , opportunity to understand even more, to learn and explore. by nature, universities are

creators and conveners of knowledge. at georgetown mcdonough, the work of our faculty and experiences of our students are enhanced by our location in the global, capital city of washington, d.c., where we have access to national and global leaders in business, policy, government and much more. where else would you expect to find a session named "all the president's men?" thank you for organizing such a wonderful conference. thank you for being here today. it is my distinct pleasure to "white houauthor of se ghosts" and moderator of our

next session to introduce the panel. [applause] >> thank you and thank you to david and his team for organizing this. thanks to georgetown for hosting it. we have a terrific panel we will get right to their thoughts. going from your left to right, chronologically, not any indication of left to right in political spectrum. we have a presidential speechwriter who served nixon, ford and reagan. a speechwriter for jimmy carter, now a candidate for congress in florida. we have a speechwriter for president reagan, a speechwriter for george h.w. bush, a speechwriter for president clinton and a speechwriter for president obama. i think we might be joined by a

from -- by a speechwriter from the george w. bush team in progress. we will get to the proverbial man of the moment and our thoughts about him eventually because all conversations turn back to him these days. i want to talk about the moment first, which is the age of social media and what it is like for a president and those assisting him to communicate in the age of social media. i want to go chronologically down the line. in the case of the earlier presidents, to ask, how would your boss have handled social media? as we get down to the person who can answer that question with real experience, i would like

the panel to talk about, is a thing to engage on social media and engage the public in such a direct way? >> it is a good thing. it is a good thing for presidents to know how to drive, but some are more reckless than others. [laughter] >> politics is a lagging indicator. because by the time they are in , public office, very often they have already formed. they are learning after other people have learned these things. physicalld have needed health. he was a total klutz when it came to pushing buttons. would have needed physical help. he was a total klutz when it came to pushing buttons. he would've done it very cautiously and judiciously, the use of social media. gerald ford one of been very

meat and potatoes, when there was a legislative issue, but he would not have been zinging people. ronald reagan was a communications natural. early in life, he was involved in communication ethics. radio as a factor for the first time. hollywood as a unifying social factor. i think they would all learn how to do it and know what they were doing with varied effectiveness in terms of style. >> carter was skeptical of communications as artifice and not wanting to seem like he was using too much rhetoric. what do you think he would've made of social media? >> remember he was an insurgent candidate. he gained the office of the presidency by basically going out into the grassroots and winning in iowa and all of these other places he was not supposed

to win. i think he would've embraced that part of it as a useful tool. would he have been good at it? i don't know. he wasn't very good at speeches. he did not like to give speeches and he especially did not like speechwriters. [laughter] >> because we were part of his problem. he wanted people to understand what his policies were and all of the rational reasons they were good for them, and he just did not want to have to go out and explain that. it was a challenge. but he would've been ok and social media. social media back then really was cassettes. we would, people would trade cassette tapes of speeches. whenever we would feel depressed in the speechwriting staff, we would pull out a tape of gerald

ford's speech to the north carolina future homemakers, in which he had this great line where he said, you can be proud you are a homemaker and a tar heel homemaker at that. we would roar with laughter and feel better. [laughter] great would the communicator handled the age of social media? >> the same way he handled all media. you missed one form of media he was on the ground floor of, which was sound films. industryd the movie shortly after he goes to sound. for reagan's communication was his on personal discipline. he learned things, made it a

point to learn things and made it a point to understand the dynamics of the media and medium, and adjust how he delivered to it. here is a thought. in 1964, i think it was, the average sound bite on television was about a minute and a half. by the time you get to 1988, according to the new republic during the 1988 campaign, it was eight seconds. what is eight seconds? it is a tweet. a lot of the things we did, a lot of the things, we made a point of mastering was how to get media to quote us. that is why soundbites became so important. we had three little portals. really four or five.

the evening news shows. cnn was just coming on and did not have much audience, at the end of our administration. the new york times, which was not exactly friendly. the washington post, which was looking for its next woodward and bernstein moment. not great if you were sitting in the white house. and a few others. and their quotes would be about as long. we made a point and the president made a point. he basically taught us how to capture the media on the sentence you wanted. i think he would have done very well with twitter. >> george h.w. bush very much said, my predecessor was the great communicator, i am not that guy. he did not want to be that guy. how would he have handled the age we live in? >> when we came into office after you guys were leaving, cnn

had just started. there were huge wordprocessors with floppy disks. he would make a lot of jokes about the f7 button. and if somebody crossed him, he would say f7 that guy. he would be the first to admit he was not that tech savvy. likeneral, i think he, president carter, did not like making speeches. he was very good in small groups one-on-one. he would much rather do a press conference with questions then speech.give a i think that side of social media, if it had existed then, would've played to his strengths. he has a very good sense of humor and i think that would have brought it to the floor. a lot of people, i go across the

country, they say, why didn't we know how funny was? another thing he faced was all four years of the democratic congress and was able to get through quite a bit of big bipartisan legislation. the americans with disabilities act, clean air act and things like that. i think having social media would have showed some of the things he was doing behind the scenes to rally the votes and unify the coalition he was building. i think it would've helped and i think it would've been to his credit. >> his first lady would have been good. >> yes, she would be great. >> clinton was technically the first president of the internet age. i think you told me a story where you are working on a speech and he said, no this is a , speech, i want to talk to people. how would he have handled it? >> i think he would've had trouble with a 140 character limit. [laughter] >> it's interesting to watch him on twitter now.

he is not making a lot of news on twitter. i think that is by design. he has been pretty restrained in his use of twitter and he is trying to, i think, advance a couple of ideas right now. he is not president of the united states, so he doesn't have that need to push out arguments on a range of different things at once. i think for me, what it points out is he was a president during a time of intense transition. maybe that is always going to be true now given the pace of change. he was the first president of the information age. we wrote many speeches about the information age, the world wide web and what an amazing thing it is. at the same time, i think he was a little uncertain about the new technology himself. it is hard to put yourself back in the mindset of the late

1990's because it is similar and yet dramatically different in terms of what can be taken for granted. people were afraid to buy things online because they did not think their credit card information was safe. i don't know why anybody would ever think that today. [laughter] >> it was felt the president needed to demonstrate that this is ok. we set him up after careful vetting of websites to have him by a christmas gift online. we got him a laptop and we felt looking at it, it was sort of product placement for dell, and it did not feel very presidential. one of the junior people in the speechwriting operation printed out the presidential seal, and we stuck it on the back of the laptop.

the president went on the laptop and somebody brought up at the website that would allow him to buy a smoked ham or something. [laughter] >> he is looking at online and he starts to touch. either he was totally out of touch with the technology or way ahead of his time. [laughter] >> you have to tell the president in the oval office, it doesn't work like that, you don't touch it. i think he was in transition, the technology was in transition, and in terms of its utility to us, the jury was still very much out. we felt for a much at the mercy, as i think all presidents do now, at the mercy of the 24 hour news cycle. but the technological tools we

had i don't think we felt , enabled us to do anything affirmative. we were dealing with what was coming at us. we did not have twitter. we did not have facebook. video technology was not such you could put your speeches out there and have it be a useful thing to do. i think we were uncertain about what we could do with it other than tout it as terrific for the economy. to you alone, us about thelk real-world experience of dealing with this working for a president fully in the social media age. can you give us a sense of what it was like? >> what was interesting was, although the internet had obviously been around by the time president obama came into office, his eight years was really an evolution of social media. twitter and facebook and all these other platforms kind of grew with his presidency.

i came on during the second term and they already had a pretty robust digital strategy office integrated with the communications team and speechwriters. i think what it meant for us was that in addition to having to deal with this fragmented media landscape where twitter could slice and dice a speech and filter it through whatever news channel it wanted and the message intended was not always received, it also presented enormous opportunities for us. a speech might not be the only avenue to deliver a message. we would start with a speech about the importance of higher education, but that might be the opening salvo. from there, we might turn it into a instagram picture of the president and first lady in the ir college sweatshirt and remind

kids develop college applications. -- to fill out there college applications. and it turns into a facebook post that will get shared and tweeted, then it turns into a hashtag. it was a way to deliver policy initiatives and direct import audiences that maybe aren't watching his speech being shown on c-span. the audiences that needed to get the message. i remember a couple of years ago, the president -- i don't know how this happened -- but i guess the president was convinced to do interviews with youtube stars. i don't even really understand what that means. but it seems as though there are young people on youtube who have millions of followers, millennials or teenagers or someone watches event. [laughter] >> but you know, he said, i have important messages to deliver to these young people. let me do these interviews. as you can imagine, traditional media was not happy at all about

these 22-year-old, this young woman who promoted makeup styles or something, getting an interview with the president. but it was a great way for him to reach young people and the people, to their credit, asked him really good questions. one of the young women asked the president very boldly about why female sanitary products are taxed. the president gave a thoughtful answer and it turns into a policy push. i think president obama was strategic in his use of social media. often times, someone like me in the speechwriting office did not know necessarily the latest technology and i think maybe having two teenage daughters helped obama stay at not --t on the curve is

if not ahead of it. he would say, should we do this as a facebook live event where people can watch me talk about health care? should we do a snap story, which i still don't know what that is. [laughter] >> in contrast with where we are now, i think it sought as a way of reaching a lot of people and still being the voice of the president. while it might have been informal compared to his speech and obviously truncated, he very much put a lot of thought into what was appropriate to tweet, what he might tweet, who he was trying to reach and why. often times there were bigger events. >> if i could say something to follow up on that, complementary of president obama, that is something you will not hear me do very much, but president obama faced two communication revolutions, both of which he handled very well. the first was cable. you think of primaries in 2008.

every night, you may remember, it was clinton one week, obama the next, clinton the next. back and forth. it is custom for the winner to wait for the loser to concede. they each were getting about 10 minutes. mrs. clinton would come out, whether she was first or second, and she would do what politicians have been doing forever. she would recognize everybody in the audience by name. everyone who had helped her. by the time her 10 minutes was up, she was just getting to her message. president obama, at that time candidate, senator obama did the opposite. he would come out and he went right into his message. by the time his 10 minutes was up, he had reached a whole nation, or at least the whole party with why they should vote

for him. that was a clear understanding of the new media environment that no other candidate in that campaign displayed. you now moved to 2008. 2012. the reelection. dates are not my thing. [laughter] >> the reelection. the obama campaign very much did what you were describing. which i want to contrast to president trump. they very shrewdly used it as a way of segmenting voters in -- and reaching voters in the segment. whether it was a woman who was best known for taking baths with froot loops, which was one of those media stars, or someone else. that sounds funny and you did

not laugh. [laughter] >> you have to improve your tweeting skills. >> but it was serious. that was a way of segmenting voters and reaching voters through that segmentation. the difference between that and what we have seen over this campaign, although there has been a fair amount of that in this campaign, is that the trump strategy for tweets and other social media that he personally controls was not really aimed at the segmented voter. it was aimed at the media. it was his way and continues to be his way of capturing the television and newspaper news cycles. it used to be that each day the new york times the washington post and the , morning shows would follow from them. they would have the papers out

and be recording. the first time the white house would reliably be able to get into the conversation would be at the noontime news briefing. that might get them on the evening news. think of it. --"today,"ing joe i guess those are two nbc's, which these days republicans are , not supposed to acknowledge. that is another joke. [laughter] >> think of it. you get the new york times and washington post, they still have their story, they are primed up, and along comes a tweet and it controls the show. it is a different strategy. there is still the obama strategy of slicing. but the power of the strategy is that it has taken social media and used it to drive all media.

>> one other thing about that, it also is a way of taking all of the air out of the room. even when trump does a tweet that may annoy some people or puzzle some people, he has dominated that day to the exclusion of most of his opposition, or they are just reacting to what he said. he is dictating what they react to. in addition, he tweets so often that people fairly rapidly forget the last thing they were annoyed at. >> and then they get annoyed again. >> they get annoyed again, and there is a gradual numbness that sets in. >> does that hurt the effectiveness of presidential communication, where if people are becoming numb to presidential pronouncements, does that cheapen the presidential word? >> it works.

how can you argue with success? he dominates the conversation with these ridiculous tweets and they keep coming. every day there is another one. he is such a moving target, as a democrat, i don't know what to talk about when i am discussing issues. so i go after paul ryan. [laughter] >> i guess i would draw a distinction between dominating the news which he is definitely , doing, and leading the discussion. he is dominating the national discussion without leading it. what i mean by that is that he has shown, again and again, he has probably done it while we're sitting here, that he fires off a tweet or makes a straight statement and nobody can talk about anything else for the next 24 hours.

he throws everyone, as you just said, throws everyone off their stride. what he is not doing is what every president represented on this panel has done, which is to try in a sustained and disciplined way to lead the nation toward a particular outcome. how do they do it? all sorts of means, that and public statements are huge part of that. it won't surprise me that we all will say that, but i think we all believe it deeply. if you want to get anything done of this country, whether get something through congress, turn public opinion in your favor on a particular issue, trying to get your allies to subscribe to a particular policy change, you have to be out there consistently, speaking with clarity, and you have to lead a discussion. it is difficult to do because you are not the only one who

gets to occupy the stage. there is more and more noise out there than there has ever been before. right now, the noise is coming from the oval office. i think it is effective in the sense that everyone pays attention to it, although i'm not sure it will work forever, that it is not effective in getting anything done. there is not anything that president trump has done during his time in office that is the result of the careful effort at the bully pulpit. he has signed executive orders, as all previous presidents have done and done stuff by fiat, but not done anything for the country it would have done anyway. [applause] >> all of the presidents we worked for, they all saw their

role, not just to advance an agenda or drive us toward an outcome, but to at moments, unify a country that was divided and be a president of all people, even those who do not vote for them. where trump is, in addition to everything that has happened and the way he communicates in not leading the news, he is also not creating any kind of cohesive narrative that all of us can follow. even presidents we might politically disagree with would tell a story of america that we could all believe in. he has not done that. in addition to not developing his credibility. i think it becomes a problem at moments when a country really does need to come together and

people need to seek a leader, there is a vacuum, and absence there. he is very much the president of just a few people, and the bully pulpit and all the avenues we have now, aren't opportunity for him to offer that narrative, even if it is not one that everybody necessarily agrees with, and he is not doing that. it is very fragmented. it is ver. >> there is an element here, why is he different the way he is different? everyone for years has been saying some of what we really need are citizen presidents who are not politicians. we got one. one of the differences between someone who was never been in public life before and runs for office at a high level, people who have been in public life a long time have a structured set of values, aims, policies that evolve over time. that's what they have spent their lifetimes working about and thinking about. this is the first president who does not fit into that mold in the century. we should not be too surprised. events -- thee

evidence would seem to indicate whether you are on the left or isht, the path they use increasingly a tempting path for not politicians to go for the big one. we have an audience that has been dumbed down in many senses culturally, attention span, everything else. has come a keyty in a way he could not have been in past generations. >> i'm not sure i agree with what has been said. goalsof all, one of the of the tweeting is to keep others from dominating the news cycle. in an environment that is as hostile as this one has been, no honeymoon, starting the night of didelection, the opponent not even concede until the next day. that reflected she may have been incapacitated, that it reflected a general view in that party.

this is the kind of environment that is extremely challenging. at the same time, he has had a message. i disagree with that. ,t might not be your message but the make america great again slogan encompasses within it a message of renewal, reform and renewal. ofalso encompasses a message alarm at the current state of affairs, both of which he has been effectively communicating as he went along. the fact that we are still in the process of a long legislative struggle on health and other areas indicate home both divided his own party's and his own -- and the country is. both parties have within them in s youenate independent are caucusing with -- who are caucusing with their parties. senator sanders and senator king

are on the democratic sign. was a write inki candidate on the republican side. senator mccain is clearly, he clearly views himself perhaps for personal reasons, independent of his own party now. both parties are facing that. independents stick pretty loyally to the democratic party. the republican ones are more problematic. that is the character of the country. i would not write off or make a judgment on the legislative program yet. we know republicans are continuing working on health care. they may continuing -- the maybe working with democrats, too taxgh this is true with

reform. we have a very challenging environment in washington, more closely divided the people think. the president sometimes has been brilliant at mobilizing and other times has stumbled. the one thing i would say about the tweet, to get back to twitter, is it is implemented of the new age, which is fairly unfiltered. i have been dealing in my business, communications business, for a decade and a half in the new age, and all that time we've been telling people that authenticity is a big issue. but what does authenticity bring with it? you don't have remarks as filtered as they once were. it is true in business and in government and politics. sometimes he really missteps. other times, he hits home runs. but that is the nature of the new age. if you going to use --

are going to use the new social media, if it is scrubbed to a shine, people will see through it and you won't be affected. you have got to find a way to be authentic, immediate and not like yourself up -- not blow yourself up. >> i think it's fair to admit clinton's hesitance to concede on election becauseuld simply be they wanted to make sure the results were accurate. seen the did munition -- dimunition of the soundbite, the noise, etc. you wrote that the president has not abated the bully pulpit.

-- abandoned the bully pulpit. will you all become obsolete? i can't think of anything than being oneg of donald trump's speechwriters. all of the things you learn about what it takes to write a good speech and the process of ttingng and setting -- ve and giving a speech has completely gone out the window. do i think there was a future for? of course. i have to believe that people want more than just angry torrents, they want coherence, they want to be inspired, they want to think the future is going to be better for them. trumpunning in a district

won with 66% of the vote. i'm an optimist. [laughter] >> but i grew up among people like that, i was an enlisted man in the navy. i know the kind of challenges people like that face, and i am going door-to-door and also giving speeches, and putting them on the internet and i have gotten good responses. -- this is not normal. [laughter] m.k., you are an optimist, is this normal? >> every friday, i have to be on canadian tv explaining to the canadians what happened in washington. it is a joy. as a result of that assignment, i actually watch a lot of donald trump speeches, i've got to know

some of his speechwriters. i would respectfully disagree with bob. they're actually very hard-working, midcareer professionals. 22-year-olds. many of them have come from governor's offices or capitol hill. if you listen to, for example, his speech to the u.n., he had a great sense of democratic capitalism in it. he said the problem with venezuela is not that socialism was implemented incorrectly but that it was implemented 100% incorrectly. however, in the same speech, the president, i believe, i don't think the speech writers did this, put in the reference to rocket man. he rolled it out there in the press went for the shiny object like he thought they would and no one covered the democratic capitalism. his value summit speech last

live withd to listen the canadians and immediately comment, they had a great discussion on religious liberty and why it is important in this country. the speeches are advancing an agenda, they have a very coherent, populist reform message, to clark's point of making america great again rather than just standing with her, and i think that is why he continues to be so popular outside of the coasts. you that werprise are respectfully disagreeing, but i hope we're doing it respectfully. >> this is washington. >> respectfully disagreeing isn't so much a washington thing. [laughter] rate the success of donald trump speeches by your

tunedty, eight and in -- a in a group of people, your ability to turn to the person next to and tell them his position on tax reform. i would ask you to articulate to someone at home when his position is on health care, except that obamacare is a disaster and apparently we learned yesterday it no longer exists. he doesn't have a clearly articulated position on the issues that are supposedly at the center of his reform agenda. his ability to articulate those has not yet been established. his level of understanding of the issues has not been established. the open -- established in the open press availability she does. everybody has seen that he changes his position. sometimes it is born of a basic

or policyof the facts details, even coming from his own white house. i don't doubt speechwriters are working hard or that certain passages of certain speeches articulate an idea, there's effort being made. undercutffort is being by a president who is not able to string together a coherent or consistent thought within a given 20 minute block work from day-to-day. i judge that not for my level in northwest washington, d.c., but by the inability of anyone who really pays close attention to -his to actually into it -0- intuit what the president saying. yes, he wants to make america great again, we understand the impulse towards some notion of toatness he has yet articulate but we still don't

know what he stands for, never mind the republican party, what is this one man elected to this office believe on any of the central issues of the day? that has yet to be established. what we see in his speeches is a weirdly split personality where the speeches that require something formal that is written feels a littleed like a hostage video. he looks uncomfortable, he seems to want to get out of there. it's not that clear he believes what he is saying. he often contradicts it the following day. when he gave in the middle of in crisis he helps to create charlottesville, in the middle where he took back what he it inously said, he did an extraordinarily inert statement given from a teleprompter, and it says to the

obvious -- it says to the audience, i am reading this and we are going to get through this together. [laughter] >> there is free associating trump, and buttoned up, i don't really believe it trump. it is clear where the real trump is, but that trump is not a consistent thinker. we are waiting for it but not seeing it. i think this is more than growing pains or intraparty divisions. it is a lack of clear thinking. trump has a theme, not a program. he landed in a situation where the parties were more antagonistic with each other than ever before and more divided within themselves before -- than before. talking about the staff and the other problems we are dealing with today, he reflects the condition that

exist before he got there. we have had a policy wonk presidents, jimmy carter was probably the ultimate policy wonk. he did not like giving speeches but he thought people should know that and understand it. i think the senior bush was the same way. my job is the way to do the right sort of things, i shouldn't have to explain that to people. trump does deliver serious speeches from time to time on major issues. if the audience cannot remember them specifically, it's not because of what he did or did not say in his speech, is because he was simultaneously driving the headlines with other things. it isn't that the speech was deficient or the speech writers did not do their job or even that the speech of record did not matter, because it will matter with the constituency. when he speaks to the wind, it will matter what the message was to the constituent members. to follow up, a lot of what

you see trump doing is a reflection also, not just of divisions in the country, but his assessment of where the media is going. the media is not interested in serious policy. if you have to pick between him and clinton in terms of who got policy messages through to the 10,000 pagesrote of policy pages but got the messages through to the public, he won hands down. it wasn't that he was such a got that.hat he does have a sense of the frivolity or the way the media goes to things, and he will give them that thing they go to. don't want to relitigate

the 2016 campaign, but those are fighting words. democrats? [laughter] i don't have much of a poker face. there is a lot to unpack there. message gotolicy out, it was because, and there have been studies to show this, the media was excessively interested in litigating and relitigating the closed scandal of secretary clinton's emails and not her detailed policy platforms, and this sort of make america great one-liners he called policy, build a wall, etc. that was really salacious and interesting in every but he jumped on it. to just point, there was not a coherent policy platform. if trump has a sense of anything, it's that he is a

symptom of a disintegrating republican party that has had an internal war basically between donors and the base. people who elected donald trump who claimed he was going to cut taxes for the middle class were not voting for paul ryan's agenda. timeeople who the entire were supporting this, and quite frankly republicans in congress who for eight years were claiming they were going to kill obamacare had seven years to do -- and ended up as the dog who caught the car. they did not know what to do with it. if america -- if make america great again is anything but a slogan, based on what he has done legislatively, it just seems to be a racing the presidency of barack obama. , his -- the people that

voted for him to give him a chance, i don't know if they will be as forgiving if a racing the obama agenda makes their lives worse. . if you take a less health care and just cut taxes on millionaires, will they be ok with that? i don't know. at some point, there has to be a reckoning. unpacks much more to some of but i will leave it there. this as the dawn of the agent" listen. post globalism. increasing trade, format .conomic activities i think the failure of that is that we haven't spent enough not for the people did

benefit from that. i'm running in a district that is 57% rural, and roll america has been in decline for decades. employment,cultural long-distance commuting is about the only way for people to make a living if they live in a world county in my part of -- a rule florida. my part of diagnosing theat problem and recognizing it but we democrats did not. the solutions are not coming from him. there are not any solutions, it is just let's get angry all over again, get angrier and angrier. we are doing great with getting people angry.

you take the issue and put it back together in a coherent form for speech writing. you come up with solutions that make sense, when you read through it, is logical and rational and compelling. >> at a speechwriters, professional speechwriters, in 140 words or less, what advice would you give trump or his speechwriters. let's work our way down. trumpism in instinct and impulse. he has great instincts, spotting vulnerabilities of opponents. it is always there, but sometimes you have to think a

step beyond that. i think he should reflect more, use his skills to reflect better than he has. >> my advice is, quit your job. [laughter] >> before his too late. eight-month entry on your resume, you can get a knife job -- a nice job in the private sector like i did. >> clark? [laughter] >> that's career advice. >> speechwriting advice? >> the cartoonist who does "dilb ert" says he is the best brander we've ever seen. there's a lot to be said for his

communications ability. he would not be president having -- what hise opponents spent or less. without having substantial communication skills and having got a message across, his presidency will rise or fall in my judgment on how he deals with korea and how he deals -- and with anhe can come up economic strategy, including health care reform and tax reform that gets is over 3% growth. , he will havehat a successful presidency. if he can't, he won't. advice, focus on the doughnut

, not the whole. that is your doughnut. agree on 3%ely growth would solve a lot of problems. wouldice to speechwriters be more humor. going to see president bush friday night, and every time i see him, he asks if i have jokes for him. i ask around before ahead done to see him. everyone i have asked lately, nobody has any jokes right now. we need more humor in political rhetoric right now. i would vote, get a ghost writing joke writer on retainer. think these are problems speechwriting consoles. the speechwriters can solve. remember at the end of the

clinton administration, a few of shopved our corner of the to the private sector, one of the first corporate clients i had brought me in and said, our and we want you to turn him into the clinton. i is not turned bill clinton into the clinton. -- i did not turn bill clinton into bill clinton. we helped him raise his game. speechwriters can do that. there is a lot speechwriters can do, but i don't think any amount of creative, death or thoughtful work by speechwriters is going to solve the set of fundamental ofblems that at least some us on the panel see in this presidency, even the purely rhetorical part of the presidency. he has to figure out what he believes, what exactly he thinks he is going to do with this time in office.

you can write it anyway you want to write it, but he has to believe it, he has to own it, he has to articulated and do it consists -- he has to articulate it and do it consistently. as far as i think any of us can see, this has been lacking in this presidency. as i said before, i think these are more than growing pains, i think they are basic deficiencies. i don't question his ability to get attention or his ability to grab the nation by the throat or his ability as he demonstrated in 2016 to articulate some very basic yearnings a lot of good americans are feeling, as well is a lot of that americans are feeling, and he gives voice to those, as well. but he has not yet understood how to speak like a president, and i don't mean to be like my president or yours or president reagan or president bush.

the solution is not to make him a policy wonk and not making -- and not to make him read from the teleprompter, it is to get him to articulate in a clear way what he thinks. we don't know it and am not sure we will find out. i would tell speechwriters to you need only because to be able to kick -- to look your kids in the eye and tell hildren what you es.d to do, that he li as a speechwriter, truth is really important. we are in this -- in a people are questioning how trump has changed rhetoric. presidentsged how speak? i hope not.

we had an office of fact checking, i think we all did. speeches went through rigorous fact checking. there was the truth. is asour principal advantageous as this one, it is hard to do your job. i think this would make your job impossible. >> let's go to questions. i currently write for president clinton, i'm really here,d jeff, you are thank you all of you for being here. bob, youon for you, mentioned speechwriting is solving a puzzle. how in the voice of a former president, when you're supposed to show restraint and respect for the person occupying the

office, do you respond in the age of trump? do you have any advice for anyone who for a former president, maybe someone in the public sector has to respond and show restraint but also respond thoughtfully? >> what i said before, this is not normal. and it is not sustainable. i looked at the policy prescriptions for the problems we have today, and the impact on --al people of north care most florida i care so much about and it will make things far worse. dismantling health care. the rural health care system is on its last legs. the wall street journal did an deserts,bout maternal

and that is most of rural america. within 50,o ob/gyn's 100 miles of a lot of expectant mothers. keep trying to think logically and constructively, and i think my colleagues here has been very good about things like that. but this just is not going to last. >> i would add briefly, nice to our first client coming out of the white house was president clinton and we work for him for the first four years of his post-presidency and occasionally afterwards. i was very much part of that transition he made to post presidency and understanding what the limits really were on his voice and freedom to maneuver and how he could be most helpful in advancing the

ideas and policies and programs that have been such a part of his presidency. one of the things that struck me at that time and still strikes me about bill clinton in his post presidency, and i think this is true very much of the and carter,shes reagan did not get quite the same post-presidency as others because of the onset of alzheimer's. the restraint and respect they have shown. i think one of the most heartening stories and politics is the heartening friendship bill clinton and both bushes share. it is real. bush wouldresident have been president another four years had it not been for bill clinton, so he did not have to be accepting. that is a very special thing. i think the restraint we have seen from president obama during

these first months is very much ofkeeping with that set values. at the same time, i do believe we are in different territory now, and what is jeopardized is not simply a program you pass or therplus you develop in federal budget, but something more fundamental than that. i think that president clinton -- presidents on the other side of the aisle, president obama, they will be tested in the years forward as to how restraint they can be outside of the context of the campaign. bushnk president george w. has very subtly and appropriately indicated his displeasure with the campaign and presidency we have seen so far. i think he has been awfully restrained and you can only imagine what he really is thinking.

>> the most important political speechwriting done between now and a year from november will be the speeches being written for candidates on both side running in the midterm elections, because to the extent that the issues, whether i agree with your interpretation or take thoseto the extent that elections clarify things and the composition of the legislature shapes up in a more orderly way, that will determine what will stop things you may not like real trump, or accelerate programs where he will have to deliver. if he delivers, he may deliver things some of us like, he may deliver some of us -- the some of us don't, that he will be resolved. the real election is the midterms. my name is dan, i am a speechwriter from canada.

do you listen to marry kate? -- mary kate? >> i do. >> hello. without throwing stones and anybody in particular, are starting to see the same thing in canada, you're also seeing it in europe, with the rise of the right, the polarization of the body politic has gone to a point where it used to become you would have more or less common agreement on what the facts were thedifferent ideas about solutions. now the disagreement is about what the facts are. it is very hard from a rhetorical standpoint to build an argument when you are talking to half of the body politic about this issue but the other half is saying, that is not reality for us. what advice do you have in terms of trying to overcome that barrier and talk to the country

as a whole? >> i am a historian by training, one of the things you learn history is that nothing ever happens for the first time. i reject utterly that we are more divided than we've ever been before. have you ever heard of the civil war? [laughter] >> in my defense, we cannot have one of those. [laughter] [applause] to my wifeot engaged , i said, let's honeymoon in toronto, and she said, are you nuts? [laughter] we are divided, we have always been divided, we will keep being divided. what is going to make a difference is the level of civility we practiced. that is what i think in this case has been very destructive. in, you oughtjump to take a read or listen to lincoln douglas.

nasty thingsot of about each other in a civil way and had lots of disagreements whethersic facts like one had endorsed his party's platform, things like that. expectedhis is to be in the period where the country is very divided. it basically has not made up its mind for a while on what direction wants to go. we have had very able men, all of us here represented very able men who have debated on both sides of this. the country still not quite sure where it wants to go. i think we have got to keep at it, to give him his due. president trump is keeping at so is senator schumer, so is whoever comes in against

president trump the next time around. at some point the public will make up its mind. aght now, it is repeatedly very narrowly divided senate, often narrowly divided houses, and sometimes the president is not with the senate and the house. in other ways, very balanced constitutional orders, and sent the back and effectively said, you guys have to figure how to do this. >> is there a moment when the fracturing of media and the rise of social media, which increasingly people, is where people can do news, some of it real and some of it legitimately made up, does that make it as our canadian friend

asked, for politicians in either party to make an argument if it is harder to have a common set of facts? >> i think it is reversion to meme. i think the period of the major networks and national newspapers was an aberration. >> think it's more difficult, but there are opportunities. i think about the times that president obama, who is governing during a pretty divided time, many people do not like him, but was overall pretty popular. he had an entire network dedicated to take him down. he was operating in a fractured environment. when you think about the speeches, now we look back on lauded likeversally selma. i think what he did was tell the story of who we are honestly and then who we could be.

it was an honest reckoning of all that has passed, and yet a helpful note. i know some of those marked -- mocked the message of hope, but i think that's what people wanted, and in a way that is what trump with offering a sliver -- trump was offering a sliver of the country. i think if you can help your speaker tell universal truths in an honest way, you can break through. beautifullyo this pretty consistently. my friend, her speechwriter, would say say something true. was authentic and was able to break through to audiences who might not have always given her a chance and to speak to the entire country as first lady. i think there are opportunities, it is just harder.

>> the fragmentation is not just media and news sources. we've had for about two generations now a politician aarts on the left and then -- politics, it starts on the left now is on the rate, identity politics, dividing and building of coalitions but not common ground. politics ofcolor, gender, of region, etc. age brackets. what has finally happened is that after all of the other minorities were identified, what is no longer a majority, but sort of the average, white american, has become the biggest toority, and may have begun respond to the messages all the grievanced minorities used to respond to, identity politics.

it is part and parcel of something some of the same people who are decrying it now set into motion. >> just to return to a point made earlier, from the perspective of history, there are aspects of this that are not at all new, in the idea of appealing to the grievances of white people is not a new strategy in international politics. it was important to the victory of richard nixon in 1968, the so-called southern strategy, speaking in the code of steve's right and so forth -- states people whoso forth, are gone disaffected with the embrace of civil rights. the same way wallace in 1958 had had i marched from rallies -- people have emerged

from rallies for wallace shouting like power. ronald reagan making a campaign appearance in 1980, i believe it was in mississippi, understanding the signal to speak in a language of states rights. even as the democrats -- demographics of the nation have shifted, the resentment of white people in the south and other parts of the country who have hated elites and intellectuals for a long time, have hated the coasts for a long time, that this is a new phenomenon. in this sense, what we are seeing from this president is not new. i think what you saw was president nixon, what he saw was president reagan was that on assuming the presidency, there was an understanding that they had been elected -- they have not been elected by all of the people, that they were in fact president of all the people, and

the role of the president was to be, to an extent, president of all the people. consistentlyeen as as divisive of performance in the oval office as what we are seeing now. i think that is what is new about this very old appeal. with all due respect, if this were the nixon period and you were reading the press, you would not have that kind of interpretation about what richard nixon was doing. also say is the cast you put on those attitudes is the same reason the democratic party has been on the decline, it shows a contempt. interpretationg for white people voted for trump, what he had in their minds. i see some shaking of heads in the audience, that i will say, these people are responding to

real problems in their lives and they are not related to gender, not related to ethnicity, they are related to an economy that is stagnating, that because of the heavy load of regulation and in -- it'ss a place place in the world has been slipping because of the passivity of the previous administration. a lot of real problems they have been responding to. turning up in nose of them and casting them as you just did is not a way to talk to them. >> let me be >> let me be clear. let me be clear where my contempt is directed. bill clinton would not have been elected twice, would not have won back a number of the southern states considered permanently lost to the democratic party, would not have

won back a good measure of reagan democrats if we collectively turned up our nose at the economic concerns of working-class white americans in any region of the country. these are speeches i know how to write, because these are policies that were directed to benefit people who have been economically distressed, with some success and a lot of failure. every administration represented here. where my contempt is directed is not at the aspirations of people of any color or region of this country who are economically distressed. my contempt is saved for openly racist appeals, for scapegoating of those concerns, and a pointing of those concerns at the intellectual, at black people, at immigrants, at muslims, at any other group. that's -- [applause] get paintedg to into msnbc's corner on this. it's a mythology of the

republican party that there is a contempt on any side for these voters who are so central -- this, you are say right about president clinton, and he is among the more recent democratic party presidents. the message is that came through loud and clear this last time more in the world deplorable and in a lot of other ways in the message i just described. you can turn up your nose at them, that that is not the way to talk to people. >> obviously i agree but i think,, again, secretary clinton's comment was taken out of context. i disagree with her having said that, she was directing it at the people he talked about, not the entire electorate that voted for trump. but again he was not held to the same standard.

so he could say deplorable things about any number of people and he was given a pass. i think the other point i wanted to make quickly is that we are going to have a difficult time coming to any kind of politics that mean something to people people, thats advances a policy agenda, if we continue to talk about bringing up the concerns of women, minorities, and call them identity politics. as long as we do that we are not going to get out of this. >> i am an expert -- south in in the deep the 1950's, and identity politics was alive and well. system ofhrined as a racial segregation and racial superiority of white people that was every bit as cruel and oppressive as south african apartheid. that lesson has stayed with me.

that was identity politics. [applause] >> one more question. >> i'm in have been. i'm a political junkie, historian, communications advisor, canadian. [laughter] i actually had just a quick question and a comment, i'm surprised when you mentioned optimists you didn't mention trumpists being optimists. they keep giving the speech is clearly, doesn't reach them. i'm wondering has trump irreparably damaged communications? from my perspective, which is only me, i think he has. place has taken us to a we have never gone before. i don't see we have ever had this must sling -- this mudslinging, out and out

name-calling, done anywhere before. we didn't have the open access we have now, and things were not preserved for posterity before, and they are now. has he damaged it forever? is it all downhill from here? >> an uplifting closing question. [laughter] iron crosses to people who were critical of his foreign policy, saying you were and not see stooge -- a nazi stooge. the things that were said about --mas jefferson may have they were disgusting in a way that nothing we have read today -- what it is, the political discourse is getting more and more like the social discourse and what you see on television and sitcoms. when abraham lincoln wrote a speech, he could appeal to people of every education level and draw on the beauty of

language, like the king james bible. today, to get the universal language, you would have to wrie in a tone that was half "seinfeld" and half "simpsons." he's deplorable. but there has been a debasing of the popular culture, which is being reflected. politics has been an indicator of what is happening all around us. you can see it in social stats, behavioral, and down the line. this is not a political issue on one party of the other, it is something that is happening to america. it is a more fragmented, disoriented period of question of what true values, traditional values are. but it is not the first time it has happened in history. in the long-term, they are all footnotes. >> can i end on a more positive note?

so i'm involved at the miller center down at uva, which launched the first year project to advise whoever won the election, when we had 17 people running on each side. i was tasked with researching the changing nature of political communication. thought i would share with you that the 2016 election cycle really didn't break new ground in terms of the number of people who got their political news from youtube, which is shocking to me. how do you watch political news on youtube? what is snapchat? it was all new to me. nownumber of people who regularly listen to podcasts equals the number of people on twitter. what those things tell me is that despite all the cultural debasement the name-calling,, all the craziness we are seeing, that says to me that there is a

hunger out there on the part of voters for content, that they are educating themselves, they are not sticking their heads in the sand and saying you people are all crazy. there is a tremendous yearning that i have seen, in a documentary about president bush but i take around the country to young people, tremendous hunger for stories about american greatness, bipartisanship, what we can learn from the current situation, and i think there is great hope for us coming through this period with a better educated citizenry. i think there's a real feeling in a lot of people's minds that we need civic education in our schools again. i think there is great hope. nd i could end on that note, a not about the decisions that we hear about so much every day, and think about where do we go from here and where do we improve our situation. [applause] >> i would just add that i think

this panel, which had a lot of very strongly held in strongly expressed disagreements, very respectfully expressed, also gives us that hope. i would like to thank them. [applause] and i would like to thank all of you. thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] announcer: this