You have to get inside a person’s head — the person giving a speech — to be able to write a speech for someone. You have to think — as you’re writing — the way the person you’re writing for, thinks. You have to actually become the person in the time it takes to write a speech. Your writing has to capture and reflect the person’s speech patterns.
I know something about that, having written speeches during my career.
Sometimes writing speeches, speechwriters, themselves, may be actually determining — rather than just reflecting — the key messages in a speech. The dynamic can be interesting, and perhaps, sometimes, a bit weird.
You know that speech President Trump delivered at Mt. Rushmore, last Friday? The speech in which the President was lashing out, as he’s known to do, enough so to be described in the weekly magazine, The Nation, as “a merchant of anger.”
Seeing the President reading from teleprompters, as he was speaking to the Mt. Rushmore crowd, I was wondering about the speech. Wondering, with so much lashing out and such harsh rhetoric, who wrote the speech. Who could have entered Mr. Trump’s noggin? Unless, of course, the President wrote his own speech. But then again, he seems to be more of a tweeter than a speechwriter, don’t you think?
I didn’t have to wonder for long, though, as I was reading the article in The Nation. “Stephen Miller, the hard-right White House adviser known for his hostility to immigration, was reportedly the main writer of the speech.” That was in the third paragraph.
So, now we know where some of President Trump’s patented lashing out may be coming from. Maybe. But, still, you do wonder who’s running the show. Mr. Trump or Mr. Miller?
Or are they both looking into a steaming cauldron, conjuring up angry rhetoric?
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.