Winston Churchill’s complete speeches, from 1897 to 1963, fill eight volumes and total five million words. A few years ago, Churchill’s grandson produced a representative selection of the great man’s feats of oratory –- and that single volume ran to 500 pages.

Even Churchill’s less well-known speeches are instructive for speechwriters today. In fact, in this political season, I have found myself tantalized by a recurring fantasy: If Churchill could be brought back as a speechwriter for the 2008 presidential election, which party would vie more eagerly for his services?

The answer is by no means obvious. Churchill changed parties twice – from Conservative to Liberal and then back. Democrats, focusing on his Liberal period, might snap him up for a single speech he gave in 1905, warning of what would follow if the ruling Conservative Party won the next election: “We know perfectly well what to expect – a party of great vested interests banded together in a formidable confederation, corruption at home, aggression to cover it up abroad, the trickery of tariff juggles, the tyranny of a party machine; sentiment by the bucketful, patriotism by the imperial pint, the open hand at the public exchequer … dear food for the million, cheap labour for the millionaire.”

Republicans, for their part, might also hire Churchill on the strength of a single speech -- this one from 1933, after he had returned to the Conservative fold: “Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians. But what have they to offer but a vague internationalism, a squalid materialism, and the promise of impossible Utopias?”

OK, John McCain would never say anything like that to a group of potential voters. But other Republicans might be very glad to have Churchill’s eloquence and sheer output on their side.

The rate at which Churchill churned out words is astonishing. It seems beyond the capacity of any one man. Indeed, when Churchill’s grandson lectures in America, he says that one of the questions he is most often asked is, “who was your grandfather’s speechwriter?”

Each time the question is posed, the great orator’s grandson replies with a twinkle in his eye, “He was a most remarkable man, by the name of Winston Spencer Churchill.”