The State of the State of the Union Address: Dreadful

To a query by Chicago Speechwriters Forum ringleader Rich Greb about the State of the Union Address, freelance speechwriter Bill Shaffer replied, before the speech was given,

Dear President Bush:

The Constitution requires that you report annually on the state
of the union. Send a global e-mail to those good folks up on
Capitol Hill. Don't tell anyone else about it. They don't care.

Respectfully,

Bill Shaffer

I, too, anticipated the speech with double doses of dread and resentment, and I wasn't let down.

Dread: Will I be able to stay awake for the whole hour? Will I be able to stay sober?

Resentment: Why do I have to pretend to care about this damned thing just because I'm editor of Speechwriter's Newsletter? The State of the Union is a "speech" in the same sense that an annual letter to shareholders in a corporate annual report is an "essay." Or, perhaps even more to the point, a grocery list, a "poem."

Dread: Why does this speech put me back in the fifth grade "current events" class and make me want to throw a spitball at the teacher and make the whole country crack up laughing? And why does the winking and smirking president seem to share my attitude?

Resentment: Am I the only one who can barely stand to listen to American life portrayed as a nothing more than a series of feeble new programs and initiatives, policy changes and tax reforms?

Dread: Oh God. Here it comes. The audience melodrama. This time, it's the orchestrated specter of the Iraqi woman, described by Bush as one of Iraq's "leading democracy and human rights advocates," hugging the grieving parents of the fallen Marine. Some CNN commentator noticed, as I did, how the soldier's dog tags got caught in the human rights advocate's gaudy shirt as the advocate and the Marine's mother embraced. The pundit thought that moment was SO TOUCHING--symbolic of how intertwined we are with the Iraqi people. I thought it was symbolic of the puppets' strings getting tangled. Also: The Iraqi woman reminded me of Starr Jones, who I don't like.

Resentment: My God, David, her father was killed by Saddam Hussein's intelligence service. What is the matter with you? Where's the wine?

Dread: Did you see that? Cheney just took a pill. Is that a nitrogen pill? Well it's probably not a fucking breath mint! What are we about to witness here?

Resentment: A president who mocked the very concept of "nuance" during the presidential election describes his foreign policy this way:

The United States has no right, no desire and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else. That is one -- (applause) -- that is one of the main differences between us and our enemies. They seek to impose and expand an empire of oppression, in which a tiny group of brutal, self-appointed rulers control every aspect of every life. Our aim is to build and preserve a community of free and independent nations, with governments that answer to their citizens and reflect their own cultures. And because democracies respect their own people and their neighbors, the advance of freedom will lead to peace.

In other words, "We voted for your form of government before we voted against it."

Dread: The grocery list will surely be strung together with those hideous, self-conscious, speechwriterly constructions that aim for "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" or "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

Resentment: Not even! Aside from the pedestrian alliteration and repetition, this speech made no attempt at artful or even ear-catching language. The morning after, I can't remember even a single line.

Dread: It might have been the wine.

A simple question: Do you know the answer?

Professional writers of the world, I need your help in answering a question that's been nagging at me for almost a decade容ver since 1996, when I launched for Ragan Communications the Journal of Employee Communication Management.

This publication is mostly a compilation of essays by corporate communication pros. Lately I've been working on a big revamp of the publication, which involves publishing shorter essays, but more of them. I just finished editing a dozen or so of these essays.

Here's the vexing question: Why is it that seven out of 10 professional writers place two spaces after a period despite the fact that word-processing programs automatically make more space after periods (and have done for more than 20 years)?

Luckily, the "search and replace" function allows me to remove all the extra spaces fairly quickly. But I'm terribly annoyed every time it says, "Word has completed its search of the document and has made 157 replacements."

I'm annoyed because I don't understand why professional writers haven't been able to make this small adjustment in the quarter-century since we stopped using typewriters.

I suspect I'm missing something.

I don't expect to change thousands of writers, even in this tiny and specific way. I only want to understand.

Dear readers: Help me understand.

Why are you reading this blog when the Speechwriter's Conference is going on?

I suppose a more committed blogger would be posting streaming insights from the Mayflower hotel as soon as they came out of the speakers' mouths.

Of course, a more committed speechwriter would be at the Speechwriter's Conference, rather than reading this blog.

And if you're at the conference and reading this blog, for God sakes get out of your room and back downstairs, where you can see the blogger saying foolish things with unearned authority in person.

Maybe you can even get his attention long enough to hear him say a foolish thing to you!

In any case: Back at you from Chicago next week.

2005 Speechwriter's Conference report:
In dribs and drabs, this week and next

Last Friday morning, after I'd spent two days worrying about microphones, between talking with what seemed like every fascinating speechwriter present (and some boring ones, too) ... all the while plotting to find a moment to go to the bathroom, an attendee came up to me and asked, "So, how do you think the conference is going?"

As I slowly turned toward him, I tried to marshal the energy to fabricate what would sound like an objective answer. But when I looked at him, I saw he was smiling and his grin said he understood: I had less idea how this conference was going than the bored union guy slouching at the mixing board.

He knew, because he is a speechwriter.

Speechwriters: my species.

More observations on the conference and the 250 speechwriters who attended it as I decompress, slowly and safely, over the next couple of weeks.

And look for my official, comprehensive report on the conference in the April issue of Speechwriter's Newsletter.

Glory, in the back of the room

AARP CEO Bill Novelli keynoted the Speechwriter's Conference on Feb. 10. The day before, he delivered a major policy address at the National Press Club. His speechwriter Boe Workman invited me to hear it.

I was thrilled, of course.

The National Press Club is not a place in the world, but rather a channel on my television set and a slot on my radio dial. The channel is called CSPAN, that slot is NPR. So getting into the National Press Club, for me, was a trip into another dimension.

Any trip to Washington is a trip into an at-once familiar and strange Otherworld, where Dick Gephart is spotted at the Mayflower Hotel restaurant looking just as plasticky and shiny as he does on TV, where men humiliate their secretaries in front of strangers on elevators (saw this at the National Press Club), and where one can be overheard in a hotel bar worrying about the safety of a potential presidential candidate named Hillary Rodham Clinton and be passed a note by a person claiming to be a longtime friend of hers urging one not to express such sentiments in public.

As creepy as Washington can be, it's probably the best home for serious speechwriters. It's the place where the words that are chosen for the speeches that are given will truly influence the course of history.

That fact never seemed so real to me as it did as I sat with Workman and a half-dozen other AARP communicators and friends of the organization at a table in the far back corner of the room, listening to Novelli hold forth on the subjects of Medicare and Social Security reform in a coherent, big-picture speech. Novelli not only laid down the organization's nuanced opposition to President Bush's intention to radically reform Social Security, but he drew a holistic economic picture in answer to the real question that Bush and all of us should be asking, "Can America Afford to Grow Older?"

And all as those CSPAN camera's rolled and the NPR microphones recorded.

At the end of the speech, several hundred raised faces applauded Novelli enthusiastically as he nodded graciously at the lectern.

Not our table.

We all turned and smiled and clapped at our man Boe Workman, who sat there grinning happily. He and Novelli had worked very hard on this speech, and he was glad it was over and glad it went over, and he wasn't trying to hide that joy.

"Great speech, Boe!"

"Yeah, fantastic!"

"So smart!"

And after the Q&A, as Workman and I made our way through the crowd between that back table and the podium揺e wanted to introduce me to Novelli預 half-dozen more people came up and shook Boe's hand or slapped him on the back. One woman gave him a big hug.

Does Novelli have no need at all to publicly claim authorship of his own remarks? I wondered. And isn't Workman even a little shy about getting all this credit?

The next day during Novelli's and Workman's joint presentation at the Speechwriter's Conference, I would hear some answers.

More to come.

Complete access to meetings

It isn't easy writing speeches for a former professional communicator傭efore becoming CEO of the AARP, Bill Novelli founded the PR giant Porter-Novelli傭ut the situation has its advantages.

When Novelli came on board at the AARP, he made two speechwriting-related demands:

1. He told chief speechwriter Boe Workman to drop all the administrative responsibilities he had acquired over many years of working at AARP. Why? Writing speeches for him would be a full-time job. (And it has been, Workman says, because Novelli "knows exactly what he wants to say," and feels strongly enough about his messages to go through draft after draft.)

2. He told everyone in the organization that Workman must have access to any meeting he wanted to attend in the organization. Why? Because Novelli knows he can't spend limitless time with Workman, and allowing Workman to attend high-level meetings is the only other way to ensure the speechwriter has all the high-level information he needs.

Novelli shared these policies during his keynote session at the Speechwriter's Conference last week in Washington.

Come the Q&A, one of the first questions was for Workman, and it was about Novelli's policy of carte-blanche meeting access.

"Is it," the speechwriter wanted to know, "true?"

"Yes," Workman said with a Cheshire smile.

Devoting a whole position to writing speeches and correspondence for the chief executive � and giving that trusted speechwriter total access to corporate meetings: These practices seem at once like no-brainers and also like impossible dreams.

Speechwriters, what's your take?

What of him will we miss?

Hunter S. Thompson fans have undoubtedly recognized my attempt in the photo in the logo of this blog to cultivate HST's look.

My friends and close readers no doubt find this an obnoxious pretense on my part.

Not that I wasn't a Thompson fan: I was. I read a number of his books and most of his published letters. I have also benefited by Thomson's invention of first-person "gonzo" journalism; I've written some of the stuff, albeit from my much tamer point of view, for various publications.

But I'm no Hunter S. Thompson (and my wife and child, not to mention the local authorities, thank me).

I do, however, admire the man's balls洋ost importantly his belief that his own perception of things, however weird and warped, would be compelling to others if well rendered.

Even when he was wrong about that耀ome of his stuff, especially toward the end, was actually boring to read揺is instinct was right, and there's an important lesson in that, if not a central one, for every writer.

Postscript:

And to this trite little tribute, Hunter S. Thompson would no doubt reply: Who asked you, you waterhead pigfucker?

Well, right back atcha, HST.

Conference speakers: Cheekiness is charming; but not in a form letter

Nerve: To be a good conference speaker, you've got to have lots. But it is possible to have too much. Two speakers at our recent Speechwriters Conference demonstrated the difference.

The week after the conference, HeSheOrIt wrote me a nice e-mail thanking me for the invitation, and then asked:

"Favor....Could I have a walk on water letter that states who the audience is, how well educated they are, how well you think I connected with them ..... If you want to send me a quick email with thoughts, I can clean it up and send back to be printed on your letterhead. OK?"

HeSheOrIt was a great speaker. So, despite chuckling at HeSheOrIt's cheekiness, I indulged HeSheOrIt with a testimonial, calling the session in question a "triumph." (Sharing more of my heartbreakingly beautiful letter would reveal HeSheOrIt's identity.)

I wrote the testimonial because I thought: Okay. We're both pros. Why mess around? If you want a "walk-on-water letter," just ask for one. Right?

But then, the very next day, I got an e-mail from another speaker who will also remain nameless. HeSheOrItJunior, we'll call him, her or it.

HeSheOrItJunior was another fine speaker預 proven pro who had spoken at the conference before. But HeSheOrItJunior went over the line of obnoxiousness in several ways.

First, by commandeering Ragan's attendee evaluation forms, tallying the feedback and sending me the results in an e-mail:

"Looks as if your conference participants enjoyed participating my program as much as I enjoyed working with them! Thanks again for bringing me to Ragan Speechwriters Conference.

"One-hundred percent of your colleagues requested that Ragan Speechwriters Conference bring me back for another program -- and I couldn't agree more! I'd love to join the Ragan Speechwriters Conference again. Your colleagues had several suggestions for follow-up programming, including � [HeSheOrItJunior inserted three of HeSheOrItJunior's bread-and-butter topics here].

"In the meantime, could I get a letter from you outlining what your group got out of my session and how you've applied the ideas we discussed? I know a letter from you would be very impressive to my potential clients. I also know that you're very busy � so please let me know whether you have time to do this."

Aside from being glib as the day is long, it's a form letter!

Note the awkward insertions of "Ragan Speechwriters Conference." Note how little sense it makes to ask me, the conference organizer, "how you've applied the ideas we discussed." I remembered the last line�"please let me know whether you have time to do this"庸rom the last time HeSheOrIt spoke at the conference.

That time, I had time. This time, I didn't.

As the saying goes: Fool me once, shame on me. Try to fool me again, and I don't think I'll have you back next year.

Most bombastic business speech in recent memory

A better blogger would have given you an item on this Wednesday.

That was the day that Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott gave a bold defense of his company and a truculent attack on its critics at Town Hall Los Angeles. The speech should be required reading for all speechwriters who can't remember the last occasion they've had to write a truly persuasive speech.

And CEOs, who are afraid to say anything, should read this taut, well-argued speech that says everything.

Much more detail to come in the next issue of Speechwriter's Newsletter, where we analyze the speech, paragraph by paragraph傭ut meanwhile, read the transcript in the What's New section of Speechwritercity.com