Tear Down This Wall - Back Story

How does a Presidential speech get written? As I’ve mentioned here, or here, a Presidential speech is almost never a case of one writer, no matter how talented, sitting down at a desk and whipping up some stirring rhetoric. It almost always involves input from various departments of a very large government.

Each of those has specific, and to their mind at least, quite convincing arguments about why the President should say what they want the President to say. Most often, they get their way.

In fact, it’s a wonder a President ever has anything to say that’s even worth listening to.

Today I ran across a fascinating blog post by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who was one of President Reagan’s speech writers for his “Tear Down This Wall” speech.

He describes the strategy the President’s speech writers employed to get the speech past powerful figures like Secretary of State George Schultz, and General Colin Powell. Rohrabacher and his colleagues knew that the phrase “Tear down this wall,” would be problematic for the senior advisors who normally have enough influence to get things taken from a speech.

By getting their draft into the President’s hands before it could be watered down by his advisors, the speech writers managed to create something powerful, and memorable.

Today, the line they had to fight so hard to preserve, is what is most memorable about that speech.

Just imagine if Reagan had gone to Berlin and merely said “we think this wall is a really bad idea,” rather than hurl his unmistakable challenge to Gorbachev, with the whole world watching.

Bonn might still be the Capitol of a nation known as West Germany!

From The Bully Pulpit - Tom

In Confidence

I did not vote for President Obama. At the current rate of things, my disapproval will again be voiced at the ballot box in two years,  just as I suspect many Members of Congress will endure an expression of collective disapproval in the 2010 election.

That said - I am a loyal American. If the President called tonight and asked me to meet him at the White House at Noon tomorrow, I will be knocking on the door at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at 11:00 AM - latest. And if, while there, he asks me to draft a speech, he will get the best of which I am capable.

So, it is no surprise that Mort Zuckerman, a news media mogul who has no doubt had occasion to consult with several Presidents, and obviously had great hopes for the performance of this one, would lend his services to this President.

However, if so called upon, the President may also depend on my confidence. That is obviously not the case with Mr. Zuckerman.

Here is the transcript of this exchange with interviewer Neil Cavuto on Fox news this summer:
MZ: “Well, I voted for Obama, I helped write one of his speeches, we endorsed Obama ...”
NC: “Which speech?”
MZ: “Uh, uh, I’d rather not go into that for the moment.”
NC: “Did it get a lot of applause?”
MZ: “Not, not from the people I hoped it would.”

No one believes the President writes his own speeches. It was actually something of a minor scandal when it was first revealed the second President Roosevelt employed a speech writer, but we have come to accept the obvious. Simply put - a President’s time is far too valuable, to spend writing speeches.

The same can be said of most busy executives. Were I such an executive, even given my own facility with the speech writing process, someone else would be doing the writing and I would have a hand in the fine-tuning.

But there is a certain expectation of confidence that the President, or anyone else for whom the speechwriter is working, absolutely deserves. I think that expectation was not met in this case.

And as a personal note to Mort Zuckerman - from one speechwriter to another. It’s never a good idea to publicly embarrass the President of the United States.

From The Bully Pulpit - Tom