by The speechwriter has one of the hardest jobs in the realm of writing. They must carefully choose words that will be spoken by politicians of different levels including the President of the United States. When the person gives the speech and it is a success, people applaud and think of how well the speaker has spoken. When the speech does not go well, on the other hand, nearly everyone wonders who wrote the terrible speech.
As an example, the speech that presidential candidate Mitt Romney gave at the Republican National Convention was not the one he needed to inspire — it is quite probable that those that were going to vote for Romney on the basis of his not being President Obama. Here are a couple of key low points from the speech.
The speech was not at all personal and came across more like one that was given by a CEO of a company to the shareholders. This is how we are doing this year, shareholders. In fiscal year 2013 we need to increase revenue and decrease expenses in order to be more profitable. If voters were all robotic mathematicians, that would be perfectly well but since voters are humans with human needs, they need to hear more of an emotional speech than one that is solely concerned with facts and figures.
At no point did he even attempt to connect with women voters. The female vote is crucial to winning the election and many of the Romney / Ryan platform seems to discount the importance of this important vote. Ryan has voted to make all abortion illegal, even in the cases of rape and incest. Additionally, Ryan has voted to defund Planned Parenthood — who will provide low cost pap smears if Planned Parenthood is no longer around.
To make matters worse, there was the odd clownshow that was Clint Eastwood argument with an empty chair. If the best part of your convention is a beloved actor arguing with a chair and pretending that he has all of the answers that he thinks the invisible chair person would offer, you have really missed the boat on having a good set of convention speeches.
For this reason I most certainly would not want to be a Romney speechwriter right now. I can’t help but think that they are getting quite the brunt of verbal abuse from the rest of the Romney / Ryan team.
Great article, Gordon! It seems to me that Romney is not really interested in winning. I don’t think he wants to govern. I think he wants the experience, but not the winning end result. He hasn’t reached out to moderates in any way. He’s playing to an extreme base that doesn’t want him anyway. What’s the point of his campaign?
I still think we’re in for some October surprises. Those around Mitt are desperate to win. It will get ugly and probably irreparable.
Your Eastwood comments are interesting. I will likely write a full article on that performance for Monday’s UnitedStage.com SMILE!
I look forward to reading it on Tuesday night! 🙂 (Since Monday and Tuesday are Rosh Hashana and I won’t be able to read it until then…)
I rather enjoyed the Eastwood speech. It was lighthearted in the midst of a bunch of seriousness.
Speechwriters have a tremendous job. It has been said that someone questioned the presidency on a subject, and rather than ask “O”, they (perhaps out of habit??) turned to the speech writer of all people. I found that amusing.
To each their own, I suppose. I find questionable any story that starts with “It has been said” and is so vague.
I heard a clip of Rush Limbaugh telling that story.
To me that means it probably didnt happen. Sorry — but good Shabbos!