As I advised readers in an earlier post, “The Speechwriter’s Slant” is moving. After April 30, Ragan Communications will not be hosting further posts from me.

The good news is that I plan to continue posting from my own web site: http://web.mac.com/gordon.h. I may not post as much or as often –- since after April 30 I won’t be paid for it –- but I’ve enjoyed sharing my thoughts with you over the past couple of years, and I’ve had enough positive feedback to encourage me to continue. During the last speechwriters conference in Washington back in February, I was particularly pleased to meet some of you in person.

As an added incentive for you to follow me to my new location, I’m offering a bonus feature. Starting in about a week, I’m going to be posting selections from my quote file. If at all possible, I will be posting a new quote every day from Monday to Friday.

What’s so special about Hal’s quote file? The answer is that I’ve been collecting quotes, poems and anecdotes for going on 30 years now, and many of them are not to be found in Bartlett’s or other anthologies. I hope to offer useful tidbits that are out of the ordinary in the hope that my fellow practitioners can use them to enliven their own speeches.

I’m going to be in Albuquerque this week, speaking at the 2008 Communications school of the National Association of Government Communicators. I expect to resume posting at my new location on or about Monday, May 5. I hope to see you there.

In conclusion, I’d like to thank Ragan Communications for starting me off as a blogger, and to thank you for your readership. I hope we’re not saying “Goodbye” on this occasion, but rather, “See you soon.”

Signing off for now.

This morning’s New York Times has a story about national politicians making fun of themselves on national television. In particular, the story mentioned President Bush’s appearance on “Deal or No Deal” last night, and the fact that last week alone Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all appeared on the same episode of “The Colbert Report.”

Trouble is, when so many national politicians try to gull the voters into thinking that they are just plain folks by doing comedy shticks on TV, it gives the game away. The ploy becomes obvious.

There’s a lot that could be said about politicians trying to broaden their appeal by deliberately being funny. But the best and the shortest comment was made long ago, by one of the greatest comic geniuses who ever lived: Charlie Chaplin.

Chaplin said this: “I remain just one thing … a clown, and that places me on a higher plane than any politician.”

Send in the clowns.

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.”

This is a notice to readers that after April 30, Ragan Communications will no longer host The Speechwriter’s Slant.

I can’t say I blame the folks at Ragan for their decision. I know I’ve got great readers -- some of them in places as far away as Dublin and Hong Kong. The trouble is, I don’t have enough of them to make it worthwhile for Ragan to pay me to write the blog.

But this will not be the end of The Speechwriter’s Slant. I’m going to continue the blog from my own web site. Probably, I won’t be blogging as much or as often, but I plan on adding a bonus feature for readers who care to follow me to my new location. I’m still working out the details, but I’ll have more to tell you before the end of the month. Meanwhile, I hope you’ll stay tuned.

This past weekend, for the fifth time, I rode in the MS 150 –- a two-day, 150+ mile bike ride from Houston to Austin to raise a hoped-for $14 million for multiple sclerosis research. This morning, I received a singularly inappropriate email from the National MS Society, congratulating me for making the ride “look like a breeze.”

Well, thanks very much, but the 2008 MS 150 was no “breeze.” Rather, it was a vicious, bone-chilling headwind that slowed riders to an agonized crawl for most of the first day and a good part of the second. I’m a pokey rider under the best of conditions. With the headwind, it took me 11 hours to cover 84 miles to the overnight rest stop at LaGrange.

I don’t know the speed of the headwind that buffeted me all day long. But I dimly remembered a rule of thumb I learned in the Boy Scouts. It takes a wind of 8 to 12 miles an hour to fully extend a light flag. So I kept a weather eye on the flags I encountered along the way. Since every single one of them was not only fully extended, but tugging furiously at its halyard, the headwind must have been at least 12 miles an hour –- probably more.

Because I was riding with a team from my church (irreverently named the “Holy Spokes”) I was able to avoid the mass camp-out of 13,000 riders at the LaGrange fairground. Instead, our pious little band made arrangements to spend the night at a nearby ranch.

The accommodations were rustic. We lodged in a stable (actually a barn). About a score of us laid our sleeping bags down on the bare planks of the loft. After a hard day’s ride, I was expecting a quiet refuge for the night, far away from the boom boxes and raucous partying at the fairground. What I didn’t realize –- and was dismayed to discover –- was how the most well-mannered and considerate Episcopalians could turn into perfect animals once they were asleep. The snoring was cacophonous, but I managed to snatch a few hours of shut-eye before our 5:30 breakfast the next morning.

After generous helpings of pancakes, grits and bacon and eggs, we set out for Austin, shivering in the 38-degree dawn. The MS 150 is a grueling ride, but it is made bearable by the many dedicated volunteers who monitor the health and safety of the riders on the highways, and man the rest stops that are spaced about ten miles apart along the route. At the rest stops, weary riders can find mechanics to fix their bikes, medical attention for sunburn or minor injuries, and ample supplies of Gatorade, fresh water, and healthy snacks.

I always gorge on the bananas at these stopping points, hoping that the rich store of potassium they contain will forestall muscle cramps. So far, I’ve avoided cramps, but I harbor the uneasy suspicion that scarfing down all those bananas may one day trigger some sinister, reverse-evolution process. I have nightmares that one day I’ll end the ride by peeling a banana with my toes.

Is all this agony worth it? Well, as a recurring sign along the route reminds us, we have two days of pain, MS sufferers have a lifetime. So it’s for a good cause.

Also, the ride is never dull. MS 150 riders are a colorful bunch. Along the way, I noted one bold spirit doing the ride on a unicycle, perched high on his single 36-inch wheel. Elsewhere, I spotted a group of women riders decked out with pixie wings. And then there's a guy I’ve seen every year I’ve made the trek to Austin: an Errol Flynn look-alike with a dashing moustache, a coxcomb of artificial flames atop his helmet, a Saint Arnold Brewery biker jersey stretched tight across his beefy torso and a devilish grin.

Beyond the riders, there’s the scenery. There are carpets of wildflowers to admire along the way, along with the rolling Texas hills, even though I may huff and puff while pedaling to the tops of them. But there was one moment at the start of the second day that I will particularly treasure. The morning sun had just risen over a low-lying mist. For an instant, the Texas landscape was transmuted into silver and gold. In a pasture on the other side of the road, a pair of lusty young horses frolicked like unicorns from a fairy tale. At that moment, I forgot my numb-with-cold fingers and my straining legs. I recalled the words of an old poem: “With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.”

And with that, I looked ahead and pedaled on to the finish line at Austin.

Fellow-speechwriter Lorne Christensen was so taken with my recent post on celebrating speechwriters that he emailed me today from Hong Kong. He tells me that “W” –- Oliver Stone’s forthcoming movie about President George W. Bush –- is going to open with a scene about writing one of the president’s speeches.

The depiction, at least according to the link to the working script that Lorne sent me, is anything but flattering. It shows Bush with his speechwriter and a gaggle policymakers and sycophants struggling to get from “Axis of Hatred” to “Axis of Evil” with a pit stop at “Axis of the unbearably odious” along the way.

Reading the script, I was reminded of a scene from the 1994 movie “Speechless”, with Michael Keaton and Geena Davis. (If you don’t remember the film, it’s a frothy but tolerably amusing comedy about two speechwriters from opposing political campaigns who fall in love.) At one point, Michael Keaton is tasked by his candidate to put positive spin on the fence he wants to build between the U.S. and Mexico to stop illegal immigration.

Keaton obliges with a line from Robert Frost: “Good fences make good neighbors.” I winced when I watched that scene, because the Frost poem would have been the first thing to occur to me had I been given the same assignment.

Anyway, if you want to compare that scene with the one that Oliver Stone is supposedly working with right now as he begins shooting his latest film, it may be viewed at http://www.riskybusinessblog.com/2008/04/the-real-w-or-a.html.

I suppose speechwriters should be grateful that moviemakers acknowledge our existence. As they say in Hollywood, the only bad publicity is no publicity.

This weekend, for the fifth time, I am taking part in the MS 150 -– that’s a two-day bike ride from Houston to Austin to raise money for a cure for multiple sclerosis. It is one of the biggest such events in the country. About 13,000 riders take part and, over the past few years, the MS-150 has raised over $10 million a year for research to find a cure for multiple sclerosis.

I don’t just ride, I sometimes give speeches to urge people to donate money to this effort.

So how good is a speechwriter when he steps up to the podium himself? You be the judge.

In one of the speeches I gave -- in this case to my church -- I told our parishioners that I could talk to them about what a terrible disease multiple sclerosis is. I could talk to them about how it usually strikes people in the prime of their lives. I could talk to them about how there is a new case of MS diagnosed every hour. And I could talk to them about how there is still no cure.

But, I said, I’m not going to do this. I’m just going to tell a story. And I did.

The story went like this: One year, when I was riding the MS 150, I was stopped for a traffic light and I happened to glance over at the rider on my left.

Immediately, I took a closer look. He was riding alone on a tandem bicycle. What happened to the other rider, I wondered. Had he fallen off? Been taken sick? Had the two riders possibly had an argument and split up in the middle of the ride?

But as I looked even more closely, I noticed that the rear pedals on the bike had been removed. No question about it; this man was deliberately riding solo on a bicycle built for two. Why? I asked myself.

At that moment, the light turned, the other rider pulled ahead of me, and suddenly I had my answer. The rider had a sign propped up on the empty rear seat. The sign said: “Last year, I rode with my wife. This year, I’m riding for her.”

That was all I said -- or needed to say.

Speechwriters don’t have an equivalent to the Academy Awards yet, but we now have a recognition that is distinctly our own.

Last month, more than 20 speechwriters from around the country were honored for excellence in speechwriting in the inaugural Cicero Speechwriting Awards. This awards program is presented by Vital Speeches of the Day and The Executive Speaker, and it is the first of its kind to recognize distinction in speechwriting.

“Today, communication in a public forum is dominated by PowerPoint presentations and impromptu speaking,” says Scott Accatino, general manager of professional resources at McMurray, Inc., which publishes Vital Speeches of the Day and The Executive Speaker. “In that environment, the power of a well-crafted, on-point and moving speech is more pronounced than ever, and this awards program helps keep the established and powerful art of influence through the spoken word alive and well.”

“Prior to the Ciceros,” Mr. Accatino continues, “there was no national awards program for those in the speechwriting field. Now there is a way to measure the accomplishments of these talented writers and recognize them for their valued contributions to the art of speechwriting.”

The award-winning speeches were selected by a distinguished panel of judges. The judges included Thomas F. Daly IV, editor of Vital speeches of the Day; Robert O. Skovgard, editor of The Executive Speaker; Peter Robinson, author, television host and former White House speechwriter; and Robert Veninga, Ph.D., award-winning author and Professor Emeritus at the university of Minnesota’s School of Public Health.

The winners and the full texts of their speeches may viewed at http://www.mcmurry.com/award/cicero/doc/2007Winners.pdf.

Yours truly is represented, appropriately enough, by a speech I gave about speechwriting to the Washington Speechwriters Roundtable in the fall of 2006. It’s called “Bearding the Lion: Leadership Strategies for Winning Over Tough Audiences.” It rated a Silver Cicero. Maybe next year I’ll go for a gold.

Andrew Sullivan, who blogs The Daily Dish, says he’s taking a mental health break to get away from the trench warfare being waged by the Clinton and Obama campaigns.

I don’t blame him. It must be terribly stressful to be required, in his phrase, to “have an opinion every 23 minutes.”

While he’s away, his blog will be covered by his research assistant, Patrick Appel. Mr. Appel claims to “keep tabs” on 500 blogs. Is such a thing possible? How many blogs can one so much as glance at in a day? But whether Mr. Appel was exaggerating or not, I’ll give him credit for finding and posting some very titillating facts and commentaries.

Meanwhile, the March 17 issue of The Ragan Report contains a link to what Britain’s Manchester Guardian calls the 50 most powerful blogs on the Internet. Here it is: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/09/blogs.

The Daily Dish ranked number 40 on the list. The Drudge Report ranked number 11. First place went to The Huffington Post. Unfortunately, I didn’t make the cut, but I get enough favorable feedback from readers like you to keep me posting.

Earlier this week, ABC News senior correspondent Jake Tapper interviewed a Democratic Party official who predicted that Sen. Hillary Clinton could still win the party’s presidential nomination –- but she would have to exercise what he called the “Tonya Harding option” to do it.

In other words, she would have to destroy her rival. She would have to make Sen. Obama totally unacceptable as a candidate for the nation’s highest office.

The DNC official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, asked, plaintively, “Is that really what we Democrats want?”

It remains to be seen whether Sen. Clinton will exercise the “Tonya Harding option” –- but there are plenty of people in both political parties who wouldn’t put it past her.

Some time back, I offered my readers a selection of political quotes from H.L. Mencken as an antidote to the hothouse rhetoric of a presidential campaign season. Today, I’m going to offer a quote from one of my favorite political novels, Democracy by Henry Adams. Although it was published in 1880, it contains many passages that still ring true, even today.

In particular, the novel contains a devastating portrait of an unscrupulous and ruthlessly ambitious senator named Silas Ratcliffe, who intends to be president –- whatever the cost. At one point, Ratcliffe frankly avows to the heroine of the novel that the pleasure of politics lies in the possession of power: “He agreed that the country would do very well without him. ‘But here I am,’ said he, ‘and here I mean to stay.’ He had very little sympathy for thin moralizing, and a statesmanlike contempt for philosophical politics. He loved power, and he meant to be president. That was enough.”

Sound like anyone we know?