The Art of Fitting Words to the Man

How does the same speech writer, Peggy Noonan, who crafted some of Ronald Reagan’s most visionary rhetoric, also write George Bush’s deliberately low-key words, “I’m a practical man; I like what works”?

What does it say about our leaders’ use of language that a candidate can proclaim his hope for “a thousand points of light” in a formal address, and then demonstrate thoroughgoing confusion about the phrase in a live debate?

Fundamentally, is there something unseemly or even corrupting about a key figure mounting a rostrum and reciting words shaped by someone else?

As a one-time speech writer, I take a tolerant, even affectionate view, of the art of speech-writing. No candidate or office-holder should spend his time shaping the hundreds of thousands of words he must speak. But more to the point, speech-writing is, like any other form of writing, something between a craft and an art. A public figure who knows what he means to say, and then finds someone to help him say it clearly and concisely, is no more dishonest than a President who wants to cut taxes, and then finds the economists and lawmakers who can help him design the best piece of legislation he can get.

The idea that our modern, TV-age leaders have abandoned a once-great tradition of personal authorship is, of course, historical nonsense. George Washington’s famous Farewell Address was crafted by Alexander Hamilton.

And when Andrew Jackson sent a well-written message to Congress in 1829, a friend told him, “They say it is first-rate, but nobody believes that you wrote it.”

“Well,” Jackson responded, “don’t I deserve as much credit for picking out the man who would write it?”

That’s what Franklin D. Roosevelt would have said of Raymond Moley and Sam Rosenman, or John F. Kennedy of Ted Sorensen and Dick Goodwin, or Richard M. Nixon of Pat Buchanan and William Safire, or Ronald Reagan and George Bush of Noonan.

The problem with most speech-writing, of course, is that it is mass-produced, like extruded food that is chopped, pureed, blended and then shaped to resemble chicken or seafood. A powerful style of rhetoric--say, Kennedy’s richly formal prose, can trickle down to the point where candidates for sewer commissioner will begin intoning, “those to whom much water flows are those from whom increased mill rates shall be requested.”

It all has the feel of a customer who admires a friend’s suit, and then buys precisely the same suit even though he is 50 pounds heavier and half a foot shorter. The suit may be a good piece of work; the fit will be ridiculous.

By way of illustration: Some years ago, Sen. John Glenn of Ohio was giving a speech at Harvard. Seeking to “class up” his act, Glenn said, “Socrates said it best, I think . . .” whereupon the audience dissolved into laughter.

Maybe, in fact, Glenn read the ancient Greeks in his spare time; for the audience, the line simply didn’t ring true.

By contrast, it was ghostwriter William C. Hudson who coined Grover Cleveland’s famous slogan, “A public office is a public trust,” as a keynote of the future President.

When Cleveland saw the phrase, he asked, “Where the deuce did I say that?”

“You’ve said it dozens of times publicly, but not in those few words,” Hudson replied. “That’s so, that’s what I believe,” Cleveland said. “But this has the merit of brevity.”

That, in essence, is what a good speech writer does: distill out of a principal’s beliefs and impulses the words that give flight to the thoughts. When it works, it becomes inextricably linked to the speaker himself--no one except a few historians cares who penned “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” or “ask what you can do for your country,” because they have become the embodiment of F.D.R.’s optimism and John Kennedy’s idealism.

What makes the words work? In part, they must fit the intended stance of the speaker. When Kennedy ran for President in 1960, he was seen by many in Washington as a callow son of privilege with a checkered public record. The declamatory style shaped by Sorensen--it was always “the globe” or “the planet,” never just “the world”--was designed to make Kennedy appear more mature, more “presidential.”

When Lyndon B. Johnson tried to use that kind of rhetoric, the effect was almost embarrassing. They were not only words Johnson clearly did not write, they were words he probably never read. When he talked with blunt, practical words, he was far more imposing; yet, he tended to avoid such attempts because he believed the Kennedyesque rhetoric was more “presidential.”

Imagine if Noonan had tried to use the words that worked for Reagan while writing for Bush--a thoroughly different person. Could anyone credibly believe Bush saying “Go ahead . . . make my day”? Or invoking John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill”?

Instead, Noonan traveled extensively with Bush, picking up his cadences and--more important--his persona. Rather than reaching for grandiose rhetoric, she captured a more authentic and appealing Bush--not some larger-than-life John Wayne figure, but a personality closer to Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper; not silver-tongued, but good of heart.

“I’m a practical man; I like what works,” he said in New Orleans. “I may be a quiet man, but I hear the quiet people others don’t.” It was a case of brilliant rhetorical judo: taking a presumed weakness and turning it into an asset. And it worked because it was far closer to the essential Bush than some attempt to make him over into another Reagan.

Finally, finding a good speech writer may sometimes be--literally--a matter of life and death. In 1840, William Henry Harrison wrote his own inaugural speech, replete with windy references to Roman history.

His friend Daniel Webster vainly tried to cut the speech down to a more sensible length. But Harrison prevailed, delivered a two-hour speech in frigid weather--then caught pneumonia and died within a month.

Had he been willing to rely on a ghost, Harrison wouldn’t have given his own up as soon as he did.