David McCloud, the Chief of Staff of the Governor of Virginia, taught me how to write a great speech:
• Great speeches are primarily emotional, not logical
• Small shifts in tone make an enormous difference to the audience, so sweat the details
• A great speech has a clear voice speaking throughout
• A great speech conveys one idea only, though it can have lots of supporting points
• A great speech answers a great need
The lesson nearly killed me. I had a PhD in literature and rhetoric, and I was teaching at the University of Virginia, when the Governor, Chuck Robb, plucked me from academic obscurity to write speeches for him. The previous speechwriter had cracked under the strain, and had taken to shouting Nazi war slogans and charging around the office barefoot using his hatrack as a battering ram. So of course he had to go; he alarmed the Governor’s State Police detail too much.
I don’t know why that didn’t worry me too much at the time. I suppose I was blinded by the opportunity to put my academic ideals into practice. I was installed in the same office, and I spent most of the first day or two looking at the hatrack and wondering how bad it would have to get before I was tempted to pick it up and go horizontal with it too.
David called me into his office on Day Three for my first assignment. Four death-row inmates had escaped from Mecklenburg State Prison and were wandering around loose in the Virginia countryside alarming everyone. The Governor had to give a speech to show that he was in control of the situation.
“The truth is,” said David, “that no one pays any attention to prisons until someone escapes. Then everyone wants to know why we don’t spend more money, hire more guards, do whatever it takes to keep scary people from getting out. Write a speech which says that we care about voters’ security but won’t waste their money either.”
I made a face. “But those two things are logically contradictory.”
“Your first lesson in real speechwriting,” said David. “Logic has nothing to do with it. Figure it out.”
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