With the overthrow of Thrasybulus in 467 B.C., the island of Sicily restored democracy but suddenly was plagued with law suits concerning land claims.  The government ruled that petitioners were to present their own cases without the aid of counsel.  The more inventive Sicilians rushed to the offices of Corax and his former pupil Tisias and employed them to write speeches for the petitioners.  In the modern era, speechwriters are thought of more as stylists; they rarely teach delivery, and teleprompters have made memoria obsolete.

 In my examination of speechwriting in the Nixon and Ford administrations, I rely in part on personal interviews and experiences.  Throughout the Nixon years, I was employed as a consultant to CBS News, a role giving me the opportunity to interview members of the White House staff at conventions, at inaugurals, and on election nights.  In 1968 and 1972, I had direct access to the floor and dias of both political conventions.  In 1972, I also covered election night and the inaugural.  In this position, I conducted many interviews with members of speechwriting staffs and had full access to CBS' poll data, delegate survey, and other demographics useful to this study.  Information on the Nixon speechwriting operation also is based on observations and interviews with Patrick Buchanan, Ken Khachigian, Lee Huebner, and John Andrews at the 1972 convention and again in Washington, D.C. in November of 1973.1  I met with Richard Nixon to discuss speechwriting in the fall of 1967 in his Broad Street office in New York City, and in July of 1975 at the San Clemente compound.
  In 1976, I was employed as one of President Ford's fulltime speechwriters and had the opportunity to observe firsthand how the operation worked.  I had daily contact with Robert Hartmann, counsellor to the President, Bob Orben, our editor, and the other members of the writing team, George Dennis, Patrick Butler, Milt Friedman, and David Borstin.  I met with the President to discuss every major speech I wrote for him.

Augmenting this primary data with other scholarship, I will explore the Nixon and Ford speechwriting operations in terms of the following themes.  First, to what extent did the education of the president contribute to his speaking skills and his determination to make the text his own?

2  Lincoln's serious study of Shakespeare and the King James Bible helped him master decorum, the art of meeting and creating expectations, and ornatus, the art of functional adornment.  Franklin Roosevelt's tour of duty as editor of the Harvard Crimson made him into a detailed editor of the drafts produced by his speechwriters.  And Ronald Reagan's ear for a good line born of his participation in fifty motion pictures, made him his own best speechwriter and trained his voice for the media.A second theme emerges from an examination of the composition of acceptance speeches for national conventions and their relationship to the structure of the writing operation.

3  They are the most anticipated and viewed speaking events of the political campaign.  Furthermore, if the candidate is not the incumbent president, he takes a greater hand in the acceptance speech.  It is important to ask then, to what extent does the writing of the acceptance speech inform the process to follow in the White House?

4. A third theme centers on how speechwriters gain credibility and influence with the president.

5  From our first to our current president, speechwriters have helped to craft messages with varying degrees of success and influence.  Alexander Hamilton's suggestions for President George Washington often were incorporated into his speeches.  William Seward influenced the rhetoric of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.  Judson Welliver, a speechwriter for Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, first held the title of presidential speechwriter.  Some speechwriters, such as Theodore Sorenson, not only had a significant impact on the President's rhetoric but were able to influence policy matters.

6 Reflecting on what is reported from the investigation of these theme, this study will conclude by focusing on the priority of rhetorical strategies surrounding the presidential speechwriting process.  It will argue that our scholarship tends to neglect the importance of delivery while stressing style, organization, and invention.  This is ironic since it is delivery of speech that defines us as human beings and it is delivery that is the necessary though not sufficient condition of an effective public speech.

I. The Education of the President as Orator
By the time Richard Nixon made his second run for the presidency in 1968, he was an experienced orator.  At Whittier College he had been trained as an intercollegiate debater and orator.  His skills in argumentation were undoubtedly sharpened at Duke Law School and in his short-lived tenure as a prosecutor in the district attorney's office in Whittier.  Political oratory, particularly campaign debating seemed to come naturally to him.  In 1946, for example, he easily defeated Jerry Voorhis, the incumbent Congressman from Whittier, in part because of his debating skill.  A year later in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, when he took on another freshman Congressman, one John Kennedy of Massachusetts, he easily won the confrontation.

7  In 1948, Nixon sharpened his interviewing skills when he cross-examined Alger Hiss, a high ranking State Department official, and then dealt with a hostile press in the first of his many crises.  In 1950, exercising an overkill that would forever alienate him from most of the news media, Nixon defeated liberal Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas for a seat in the Senate.
Nixon's meteoric rise to power almost came to an abrupt end in 1952 when, as he ran for Vice President, he was accused of maintaining a slush fund.  While delivering an apologia on live television, he abandon his script and ended with an extemporaneous plea thereby saving his place on the ticket with Eisenhower and demonstrating his skill at audience adaptation.

8   Nixon also would learn from his losses, which would significantly change his approach to invention and delivery.  In 1960, Nixon learned how crucial polling was to audience adaptation in modern America.  Kennedy's pollster Louis Harris had divided the American public into 480 categories.  Kennedy's team then crafted different appeals for those various combinations of groups they met along the campaign trail.  Nixon also discovered that television, which had served him so well in 1952, would penetrate not only his top layer of skin to reveal a persistent dark shadow, but highlight his pale, nervous, and haggard visage.
With the advent of color television, Nixon came back, not only tanned and ready for the new cameras, but equipped with a self-deprecating humor that cooled him in the age of McLuhan.

9  The Nixon campaign would capture the Republican nomination and provide their candidate with the opportunity to consolidate support.  And by that time he had honed his delivery skills while holding his writers to a very high standard.

Gerald Ford's education did not include any extensive training for speaking other than law school.  In fact, he lost his campaign for class president in high school.  At the University of Michigan, he was a football star, not a star speaker.  At Yale, where he finished in the top third of a very impressive law class, he learned legal argument and developed a healthy respect for evidence and audience analysis, but did not distinguish himself as a speaker.

Ford served in the U.S. House of Representatives for 25 years and as its Minority Leader from 1965 to 1974, during which time he gave 530 speeches at Republican fundraisers alone.  Like many in Washington, Ford succumbed to the flattery of party regulars and believed himself to be a good speaker.  He became Vice President with the resignation of Spiro Agnew, and President shortly thereafter with the resignation of Nixon.  Like Harry Truman, whom Ford admired, he ascended to the presidency with less preparation for national speechmaking than his predecessor and unlike most executives, his speaking style would evolve dramatically while he was president.
As his presidency began and with the help of his old friend and Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Bob Hartmann, he crafted a speech worthy of Truman's best moments.  Ford told the waiting nation that its "long national nightmare [was] over"; it was time for a "little straight talk among friends."  Ford's desire to be honest and forthright would for a time overcome his sometimes inarticulate nature.  However, his lack of training as an orator and a writing eventually disadvantaged him.  Nixon's rhetorical education, on the other hand, seemed to serve him well.  He was able to critique his speechwriters directly without the use of an intermediary.

II. The Writing Process
Nixon's acceptance speech for summer of 1968 represents a pattern of adapting his discourse to an audience with considerable success.  It therefore reinforces the point that audience analysis, speech writing and speech delivery are highly interdependent processes.  In June Nixon began to outline his acceptance speech on his famous yellow legal pads, a process he would continue as president.

10  Nixon had access to poll data while working on a draft at Montauk, Long Island in July.  His pollsters not only ranked important issues such as Vietnam, crime, and inflation, and voter preferences for solutions to each problem, but they also focused on such intangible qualities as "leadership," "trust," and "ruthlessness."  The data from the polls were converted into a "profile" of the "target audience" accompanied by a series of two page "position papers."  This practice would continue through the end of his administration.

While there are those who deny Nixon's heavy reliance on poll data -- notably Martin Anderson who was in charge of policy development -- the others whom I interviewed support the proposition that poll data was to Richard Nixon what eucalyptus leaves are to a koala bear.  By overlaying the poll-generated profiles of national and delegate audiences, Nixon's political advisors could exploit points where issue-positions converged.  Thus, on crime, Nixon could talk about appointing a tough new attorney general, more conservative Supreme Court justices and spending more on law enforcement, thereby appealing to a majority of voters.  On Vietnam, which divided the national audience, he could avoid solutions that would exacerbate the split by claiming he did not want to interfere with the ongoing peace talks in Paris.  Thus, the crucial section of the speech developed this way:  first, Nixon detailed the issue by acknowledging home viewers' conceptions of the war as frustrating and misguided.  Second, he issued a disclaimer that since ". . . there's a chance that current negotiations may bring an honorable end to that war, . . . we will say nothing during this campaign that might destroy that chance."  Third, he praised American troops for courage and the "loyal opposition" [Republicans] for supporting the administration so that America could present a united front at the bargaining table.  Fourth, Nixon implied that he supported an "honorable and negotiated" end to the war but kept his suggestions vague on this score.

Nixon's position on Vietnam overcame the division revealed by poll data and functioned to secure adherence among the national and delegate audiences.  Nixon cemented his persuasion with a moving peroration that exploited the tension between the American nightmare of young boy growing up and dying in the jungle of some foreign land and the American dream of achieving success embodied in Nixon himself.11  He was so pleased with the results of the address that he used several of its segments for campaign commercials.

12 Nixon's judicious use of issue-position rhetoric would serve him well during his tenure as president.  After every speech he delivered on the Vietnam question, his approval ratings rose.  And, in the 1972 campaign, he exploited the fact that he led George McGovern on 15 out of 16 major issues in public opinion polls.

13  In short, Nixon's national pulse taking became a hallmark of his rhetoric.  Audience adaptation and authoritative delivery served him well. As work began on Ford's acceptance address of 1976, suggestions from friends poured in and Hartmann filed away statements and phrases he believed might prove useful at the Kansas City Convention.  By mid-summer, Ford found himself fighting for the nomination while running 30 to 33 percentage points behind his likely Democratic opponent Jimmy Carter.  Ford narrowed the gap with his speeches celebrating the Bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence and closed it further when he cinched the nomination over Reagan.
In August, writers crafted a version of the acceptance speech containing many more stylistic devices than Ford had ever used.  Earlier successes with them in the Bicentennial speeches seemed to have eased his mind about employing them in the acceptance speech.  Hartmann also insisted that the speech needed to make a headline with its first few lines.  After consultation with Stu Spencer, his chief political advisor, Ford decided to challenge Carter to a series of debates, the first since 1960.  The ploy worked, exciting the crowd and baiting the media.

Carter's campaign organizers, particularly those drafting his acceptance speech, sought to transcend issues in an effort to hold together the broadly based special interests of the Democratic party together.  Carter talked about competence, honesty, his religious faith.  Ford's advisors believed that if they could get Carter into a debate, he would be forced to take specific stands on issues that would alienate some in the Democratic party, break apart his coalition, and reveal him as less conservative than he claimed to be.

As to the substance of the speech, Ford made clear what many Republicans knew: he was in fact more conservative than Nixon, and perhaps the most conservative president since Herbert Hoover.  This was an important point to drive home since from the beginning of the primary season Carter also had portrayed himself as a conservative.  To win the election, particularly in crucial southern swing states, Ford had to bring back into the Republican fold the conservative Democrats Nixon had so carefully courted.

Ford claimed that "the issues on our side" but it was his delivery and style that finally made that clear to the American public.  He rehearsed his speech not once, but five times, using live television cameras in the convention hall.  It was easily the best delivered speech of his career and earned applause sixty-five times in forty minutes.14  The speech contained more memorable lines than most of his political speeches.  For example, Ford encapsulated his service to the nation in phrases marked by alliteration and homeotuleton:

We will build on performance, not promises; experience, not expedience. . . .  My record is one of specifics, not smiles. . . . To me, the Presidency and Vice Presidency were not prizes to be won, but a duty to be done.

The speech proved to be the most effective of his career, and its impact in terms of poll data was striking.  Had he been re-elected, I have no doubt that he would have continued to rehearse major speeches and be receptive more highly stylized drafts.  In short, his successful acceptance affected his presidential speechwriting operation, short-lived though it was.

White House speechwriting operations can be very complicated, and the Nixon operation proved no exception.

15  Writing was the product of collaboration informed by the President, his press office, the research staff which supported the writers, political consultants, cabinet and other executive offices.  While these groups provided speechwriters with almost unlimited resources, Martin Anderson focused the policy development operation.  Like the speechwriters, Anderson knew that these groups could threaten the writer's own voice; his or her draft often had trouble surviving the input or "staffing" process.  National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger explains how he played the staffing game:
In addition to a folder of speeches, Nixon had voluminous briefing books prepared for him by my staff and the State Department.  They included an overall conceptual paper that explained our objectives, the strategy for achieving them, and their relationship to our general foreign policy.  In addition there were talking points for each country, discussing the issue likely to be raised and biographical material about the leader he would meet. . . .  [T]he talking points. . . . were broken into the issues the various leaders were likely to raise; they listed the suggested responses and warned about sensitive topics to avoid.

16 Speechwriters have to guard against those who provide the president with information becoming speechwriters themselves.

Early in both the Nixon and Ford White Houses, cabinet members or their assistant and under secretaries would submit entire speeches.  Political consultants felt free to alter drafts of speeches once they were on the road with the candidate.  But a year into each administration, speechwriters, using their researchers as loyal servants, had gained the upper hand.  In the case of the Nixon administration, this was due in large part to the talent of the writers and their ability to wield language in ways that impressed Nixon.  It was also due to the talent of James Keough who adroitly administered the speechwriting operation.  His counterpart in the Ford administration was Robert Hartmann whose dogged protection of the speechwriting operation guaranteed his writers direct access to the President.

17 This is not to say that cabinet level contributions were ignored for they could come to dominate a speech during a crisis.  For example, Nixon's very important April 30, 1970 address on the military incursion into Cambodia relied on Henry Kissinger's Special Action Group, CIA and Defense Department reports.

18  The intramural debates of the Special Action Group were particularly influential because they were summarized for the President, allowing him to choose evidence and arguments that impressed him.  In like manner, President Ford's address to the nation on the Mayaguez crisis relied extensively on Defense Department information and was constructed for the most part in the White House operations room.

Researchers provided a layer of internal support for speechwriters and were responsible for insuring the accuracy of drafts.  Like their predecessors in the Nixon White House, Ford's researchers had access to remarkable resources, including the Library of Congress, various executive agencies, and a library in the Old Executive Office Building where the speechwriters were housed.  In addition, researchers were motivated by the fact that they might, with some luck, be promoted to writers.  Researchers were kept abreast of current affairs because, in both administrations, they were responsible for compiling the daily summary of news items about the President.

19 The political operation was vital to the speechwriting process because it, along with schedulers, provided speechwriters with much needed audience analysis.  After Nixon won the nomination in 1968, he instituted a twenty-four hour tracking poll that kept his staff unusually well informed on the issues and the positions people took on them.

20  Ford discontinued this practice when he became president with adverse consequences because it prevented his writers from staying current on the nature of the audiences Ford faced.

21 Nixon's speechwriting staff was the largest in White House history.

22  Pat Buchanan -- who joined Nixon's staff in January, 1966 --  William Gavin, and William Safire were the conservatives who could write effective political punch lines.

23  During the White House years, Safire worked mostly on domestic speeches, particularly economic ones.

24  Ray Price, who joined Nixon's team in late 1967, was the most philosophical and liberal of the group.

25  He was used to stylize major speeches, including the acceptances, inaugurals, State of the Unions, and the resignation address.

26  Price also wrote most of Nixon's radio campaign speeches of 1968 and 1972.

27  Lee Huebner, the former Northwestern University national debate champion, was a utility hitter who focused on arguments and issues, as was the Jesuitical John McLaughlin, who was added to the staff in 1972.

No staff has ever been more successful after leaving the White House than Nixon's, a fact that is all the more remarkable considering the disgrace of their leader.

28  Buchanan became communications director for the Reagan Administration, is a talk show personality and candidate for president.  Safire is a syndicated columnist for The New York Times.  Huebner was editor of the Herald-Tribune, the paper that keep Americans in touch with their country while they travel abroad.  And John McLaughlin is one of the most successful political moderators on television.  The post-presidential careers of the Ford writers pale by comparison.  Hartmann retired.  Orben continued to write comedy.  Pat Butler became a lobbyist for the Times-Mirror Company.  David Borstin tried his hand at playwriting.  And I keep bobbing in and out of the academic community and up and down in the political world.
Once he became President, Nixon did not participate as fully in the drafting process as he had when he was a candidate.

29  According to Price, he suggested "pieces of texts, good ideas, and memos" for major speeches and sometimes marked up drafts for less important occasions.  In order to keep lines of communication untangled, Nixon used only one writer per speech.  Those I interviewed said that no important speech went through fewer than five drafts.

After I joined the Ford administration and established some degree of credibility (see below), I suggested that two writers be assigned to each major speech and that they write independently of one another during the construction of the first draft.  Hartmann with the President would then decide which was the superior draft.  The writer of that draft would then become the primary writer of the remaining drafts and incorporate what was valuable from the other writer's work.  This process had at least two advantages: it produced a competitive environment that led to better speeches, and it assured better continuity in Ford's style.

In both administrations, the vice presidents maintained their own speechwriting staffs.  Agnew was allowed four writers of his own and a "research team," according to Herbert Thompson, one of his writers.  Vic Gold, the pugnacious former journalist, emerged as the lead writer when he transformed Agnew into a household name with punchy lines that became instant sound bites.

30  Having much more time on his hands than the President, Agnew enjoyed reworking drafts that were submitted to him.  Vice President Nelson Rockefeller retained the private speechwriters he had used for years and kept most of them off the government payroll.

Thus, the structure of speechwriting operations is often a matter of chance depending on the whims of the president and strength of his staff.  However, continuity in style is important not only for the projection of a persona but to ease the delivery of the speaker by not forcing him to learn new or overly varied language and arguments for each speech.  Speechwriting is also a matter of influence, a topic to which I know turn.

III. Establishing a Reputation
How speechwriters gain credibility and influence with the president is a matter of luck, timing, effectiveness, and infighting.  For example, Kissinger writes this about the Nixon logographers: "On a fast-moving foreign trip . . .  there would be no time for extensive editing, and the speech writers would come into their own.  The choice of writers always determined the tone and not infrequently the substance of a Presidential speech."

  What makes a writer valuable to the president varies.  Some chief executives like applause getting lines; some like quotations that prove memorable; some want an original approach to issues; others simply like the writer personally.  At first, both Nixon and Ford took advice from their speechwriters because of their expertise.  If certain strategies proved effective -- that is, impressed the president -- the writer was able to suggest more alterations in invention, delivery, style, and arrangement.  To explore the issue of influence in both the Nixon and Ford White Houses, I will explore three specific cases, those of Patrick Buchanan, Robert Hartmann, and myself.

Patrick Buchanan was working as a conservative editorialist at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat when he cornered Nixon at a cocktail party in Belleville, Illinois in 1965.32  At first, he was turned down, but Nixon came to admire Buchanan's persistence, and after an interview in Nixon's office in New York, Buchanan became the first staff member for the 1968 campaign.  He began as a researcher but his ear for a good punch line soon advanced his career.

33  When Nixon became president, Buchanan took charge of compiling the daily news summary.

34  Because Buchanan knew the journalism business and compiled daily reports from every major news source, he soon found himself briefing the President for news conferences.

35  This proved to be a crucial placement of his skills since Nixon was obsessive about his press conferences.  He wanted to present news more than he wanted to answer questions;

36  he wanted to appear spontaneous and direct, refusing to use notes, and thereby making Buchanan's briefings even more important.  Nixon even went so far as to try to memorize the seating chart set up for the reporters.

37 Buchanan's next step up the ladder of influence began with his suspicion that the press was trying to undercut the Nixon administration.  When Buchanan heard the "instant analysis" of Nixon's address on Vietnam in May of 1969, he was convinced that the media was dominated by liberals out to destroy Nixon.  Buchanan had not forgotten the damage done to Lyndon Johnson's war policy by opinion leaders such as David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite.  So he devised a plan whereby the Nixon administration would be inoculated against press attacks.  The President would deliver a speech specifically pointing out the tactics used by the news media and calling on the "silent majority" in America to exercise skepticism.  Buchanan's plan sat on hold until November 3, 1969 when Nixon again spoke to the nation about the war in Vietnam.  The vitriolic and cynical reaction of the media gave Buchanan the excuse he needed to present his speech to the President.  The President, however, found the draft to be unpresidential and suggested Buchanan show it to Agnew.

38Agnew was taken by Buchanan's plan and even more impressed by the address.  He agreed to deliver it in Des Moines, Iowa where it was broadcast live by the three major networks in late November of 1969.  In the speech, Agnew characterized the broadcast media as a "small and unelected elite," "a small group of men," "a tiny, enclosed fraternity" who "decide what forty to fifty million Americans will learn of the day's events."

39  Agnew's and Buchanan's anti-intellectual, geographic, and gender biases were apparent in their use localization for persuasive effect:
[T]hese commentators and producers live and work in the geographical confines of Washington, D.C., or New York City, the later of which James Reston termed the most unrepresentative community in the entire United States.  Both communities bask in their own provincialism, their own parochialism.

Agnew said the cause of the so-called "credibility gap" in government was not the fault of officials in Washington, D.C., but "the networks in New York."  The response was sensational and Buchanan's credibility was firmly established.

40  Theodore White called it "one of the most masterful forensic efforts in recent public discourse."

41  Buchanan had set the stylistic tone for Nixon and his administration.
Perhaps because of this success, Nixon chose Buchanan to be the major writer of his address of April 30, 1970 concerning the "incursion" into Cambodia.

42  In preparation for the 1970 Congressional elections, Buchanan sent Nixon an eleven page analysis of Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg's The Real Majority.  Nixon embraced Buchanan's recommendations:
If this analysis was right, and I agreed with Buchanan that it was, then the Republican counterstrategy was clear:  We should preempt the Social Issue in order to get Democrats on the defensive.

43When the strategy paid off, Buchanan was elevated to the post of Presidential Advisor and subsequently became Special Consultant to the President.  In this new capacity, Buchanan wrote a book called The New Majority which extended some of the themes he had developed for Agnew.

44  He also advocated using the Federal Communications Commission's fairness doctrine to break up liberal control over the mass media.

45  John Osborne wrote that "Buchanan . . . thrives as a special consultant to the President and as an assistant without portfolio.  He still works on occasional speeches.  His principle chore, however, is just to be there, at the President's beck when he is wanted."

46   Once the Watergate crisis began, he was often wanted.
Though Nixon recalled Ray Price to speechwriting from his special consultancy as the Watergate crisis deepened,

47 he did not include Price in his inner circle.

48  "Only three assistants -- General Haig, [Ron] Ziegler and Patrick Buchanan -- were consulted during the discussions of when and whether to follow up the August 22 [1973] press conference with another one in Washington," writes Osborne.

49  An entry from Nixon's Memoirs is emblematic of the President's reliance on Buchanan: "[Haldeman] had asked me to check with Pat Buchanan and find out how he felt.  I had done so, and I wanted Ziegler to read to Haldeman what Buchanan had written to me."

50  The issue was whether or not Haldeman and Ehrlichman should resign.  A few pages later the President wrote, "I asked Buchanan if he would call Haldeman and tell him that I had come to this conclusion."

51  Price was then asked to write a speech announcing the resignation of Haldeman and Ehrlichman for April 30.

52 With Haldeman and Ehrlichman out of the picture, Buchanan's influence continued to grow.  In September of 1973, he took an aggressive stance before the Senate Watergate Committee in contradistinction to the approaches taken by those going before him.  His effectiveness before the Committee after the timid performance by Haldeman and the blustery appearance of Ehrlichman sealed his bond with Nixon.  The President called Buchanan's testimony the "public death blow" to the televising of the hearings.

53  The Watergate Committee was so cowed by Buchanan that they canceled the appearance of Ken Khachigian, fearing that another combative speechwriter would prove even more embarrassing.

54 Nixon's respect for Buchanan's intellect is revealed in one of the stranger passages from his Memoirs.  Speaking of Hafad Assad's brilliance, Nixon writes, "What he reminded me of, curiously enough, was that he had a forehead like Pat Buchanan's, and my guess is he has the same kind of brain and drive and single-mindedness that Pat has."

55  Buchanan was now at the peak of his power.  The following passage from the President's Memoirs reveals how much trust Nixon put in Buchanan, but also reveals how wrongheaded Buchanan could be when it came to saving his boss's neck.

Pat Buchanan was assigned to go over these transcripts and compare them with John Dean's testimony.  When I read Buchanan's report . . . I was reassured by the thought that anyone reviewing the tapes would agree with my view that Dean had lied. . . . Buchanan . . . was strongly in favor of releasing the transcripts.  I shared his belief that if we could survive the first shock waves, the tapes would end up proving Dean a liar.

56 Obviously Buchanan's prediction faulty, but despite the misperception of the rhetorical nature of the transcripts, he remained at the center of power.  For example, Tricia Nixon Cox allied herself with Buchanan in opposing her father's resignation.  Buchanan tried to work out a compromise wherein Nixon would be censured by the Senate but allowed to stay in office.  In the end, however, even Buchanan saw that it was hopeless and finally came round to the position that it was better to spare Nixon the humiliation of impeachment.

57  And so Buchanan's reign came to an end in that White House.
Few people were more influential with President Ford than Robert Hartmann.  They enjoyed a long friendship that was still in existence when Ford was asked to address the Republican Convention in 1992.  When Ford became President, he made Hartmann a "Counsellor", who in turn gave speechwriters direct access to the President.

Hartmann's first chore was to craft a speech that Ford could deliver upon his ascendancy to the presidency.  Hartmann's eloquent words resonated with the public and, consequently, Ford enjoyed a period of high ratings in the polls.  But soon Hartmann and an ever-changing group of writers were faced with the daunting task of writing a speech that would grant Nixon a pardon.  The situation was highly constrained, most significantly by the fact that Ford's pardon of Nixon would lead to speculation that a deal had been cut between them.  Ford overrode the objections of his loyalists, particularly Press Secretary Gerald Terhorst, because the President believed that pardoning Nixon would end the Watergate crisis and Nixon's suffering, would constitute an admission of guilt on Nixon's part, and would clear the way for Nixon to testify against others involved in the Watergate cover-up.
But the speech Hartmann wrote, as well as its timing, undercut the President's objectives.  By delivering it on Sunday morning, Ford opened himself to charges of trying to slip the pardon under the rug since the public attended to little news on the sabbath.  By failing to delineate the legal thinking behind the speech, Ford missed a major opportunity to justify his action beyond claiming that it was a fair moral act.  There is some evidence that the speech was shaded by the fact that Ford needed some of Nixon's former employees to help with the governing coalition.

58  In any case, according to the Gallup poll, Ford's popularity fell from 71% to 32% in the month following the pardon.  Nonetheless, Hartmann's credibility with the President, based as it was on a long standing friendship, endured.  And so he survived the debacle of pardoning Nixon, though Ford eventually would pay dearly for that action.

My credibility with the President had to be earned.  I was an associate professor at the University of Virginia, and professors had not fared well as Ford speechwriters.  During my first week on staff, I spent my time reading Ford's biography, his testimony when nominated for Vice President, and all of the speeches he had given as President.  I noticed that Ford was giving too many different speeches and that their style was uneven.  Despite these observations, I was precluded from making recommendations until I established my own credibility as a writer.
Almost as a challenge, the first speech I was commissioned to write was Ford's address to the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Norfolk, Virginia in June of 1976.  I was a Catholic composing a speech for an Episcopalian that would be delivered to Southern Baptists.  I consulted with Baptist ministers, revised after the President refused to say the name Jesus Christ, and finally produced a speech he accepted.  Once the speech was delivered, my influence grew because the address was interrupted by applause sixteen times and received a good review in the Washington Star, a rare event in Ford's rhetorical history.

59  When Ford decided to deliver six major addresses during the celebration of the Bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence, Hartmann recommended putting the speeches together into a booklet with a theme that tied them together.

60  Hartmann asked each of the speechwriters to submit a six-page outline for the speeches, one page for each speech.  Hartmann folded in outlines that had been submitted from outsiders and former friends of the President, such as Bryce Harlow and Phil Buchen.  He presented the stack of blinded outlines to the President and asked him choose the one he liked most.  The President picked two, one jointly written by Borstin and Butler, and mine.  My influence thereby increased as the three of us coordinated the project.

61Because of the epideictic nature of the speeches, Hartmann allowed us considerable stylistic latitude, so long as there no "whiff of pomposity or pretentious elegance."62  Nonetheless, I argued for vivid imagery, periodic phrasing, and decorum.  For example, at Valley Forge in a speech of which I was the primary author, Ford said:

They came here in the snows of winter over a trail marked with the blood of their rag-bound feet.  The iron forge which gave this place its name had been destroyed by the British when General Washington and his ragged Continental Army encamped here -- exhausted, outnumbered, and short of everything except faith. . .  Yet, their courage and suffering -- those who survived as well as those who fell -- were no less meaningful than the sacrifices of those who manned the battlements of Boston and scaled the parapets of Yorktown.

Hartmann also made sure the speeches reached "for the [future] while retaining a reverence for the past."

63  For example, at Independence Hall the President said, "Each generation of Americans, indeed of all humanity, must strive to achieve anew.  Liberty is a flame to be fed, not ashes to be revered even in a Bicentennial year."
The speeches went well, helping to assure Ford's nomination.

64  At that juncture, I wrote a memo calling for an integrated approach to issues during the ensuing campaign.  Hartmann took the memo to the President, who read it, signed it and sent it to his campaign coordinators, who were more than a little annoyed at my interference.
Buchanan's and my experiences indicate that a speechwriter can gain influence by doing his or her job well, and that the influence can carry over into campaign and even policy matters.  Hartmann's case demonstrates that long friendships can create credibility for a writer who can then prove influential on other matters.  All three cases indicate that speechwriters can gain enough influence to have an effect on policy.

IV. Delivery as a Neglected Canon
But I believe their influence would be even more substantial if instead of thinking of themselves as writers, they thought of themselves as rhetors.  To make my point let to turn to the importance of delivery in presidential rhetoric.  Most of us have watched our clients ruin a perfectly good speech with bad delivery; not enough of us are ready to admit that some of our clients have saved a mediocre speech with a stellar presentation.

Aristotle spends little time on delivery in the Rhetoric.  In fact, he argues that delivery would be unnecessary to teach if audiences concentrated on the facts and arguments of a case.  But people being what they are, Aristotle concedes that delivery is important.  He discusses such matters as "the right management of the voice to express the various emotions. . . .  volume of sound, modulation of pitch, and rhythm" in Book III, Chapter 1 of the Rhetoric.

Theophrastus, who succeeded Aristotle as head of the Peripatetic School, provides a fuller treatment of delivery in his lost book, On Delivery, by dividing his advice between voice and gesture.  Cicero claims that delivery is "the dominant factor in oratory; without delivery, the best speaker cannot be of any account at all, and a moderate speaker with a trained delivery can often outdo the best of them."

65  Both Cicero and Quintilian claim that when Demosthenes was asked what were the most important elements in speaking, he replied, "Delivery, delivery, delivery."

66  President Clinton clearly understands this lesson.  A close reading of his 1996 State of the Union address reveals its lack of evidence, its failure to develop arguments, and its swing to the right, especially on the issue of illegal immigration.  Former Governor Jerry Brown called the speech a string of "vacuous bromides" when he appeared on "Politically Incorrect" immediately following the address.  But the address was widely praised by the media because it was so well delivered.  Senator Dole delivered his response so poorly that the contrast was glaring.  Dole simply ignored the advice of Cicero, Quintilian and Demosthenes.

Delivery is often subject to ridicule, especially in the postmodern world where a David Frye can make a fortune imitating Nixon's mannerisms and a Chevy Chase can launch a career by mimicking Ford's flubs.  While there are numerous items with which to quarrel in Richard Goodwin's draft of the Chappaquiddick speech for Senator Edward Kennedy, it is clear that when Kennedy lost his place in the speech, the glitch revealed that the speech had been written for him and he was not speaking from the heart.  As a result, his credibility was severely damaged.

Perhaps Thomas Sheridan and Gilbert Austin were not far off the mark when they argued that delivery was the most important canon.

67  While both relied heavily on Roman rhetorical theory and Edmund Burke, Sheridan preferred a conversational style and Austin, who acknowledged his debt to Sheridan and John Walker, preferred a choreographed style to demonstrate that "gesture without grace (gesture uneducated) is undesirable and vitiating. . . . because gesture is inclusive of all human behavior."

68 In Ford's case, his stumbling combined with his pardon of Richard Nixon nearly destroyed his presidency.  Jules Witcover reports:

Ford's inability to pronounce difficult words, and some not so difficult was immediately seized upon as a measure of his brainpower.  In a speech in Atlanta, in early February [1974], he stumbled an inordinate number of times in a speech on his energy proposals before getting out the word "geothermal" correctly.  A tape of the speech became an overnight box-office hit in the White House press room.

69 The cynicism of the press media knows no bounds.  So when Ford gave a speech in Kansas making reference to the "Wizard of Oz", reporters composed the following ditty based on the song of the scarecrow:

I could while away the hours
Reflecting on my powers,
As we go down the drain.
I could spend like Rockefeller,
I could talk like Walter Heller,
If I only had a brain.

Richard Nixon also came to understand the importance of delivery.  Nixon narrated many of his commercials in the 1968 campaign; he also commissioned Price to write sixteen addresses for radio only in 1972.  Nixon realized that his voice without his face was a powerful persuasive tool.
For these reasons, speechwriters need to be delivery coaches if they are to be as helpful as possible.  They ought to perform a diagnostic examination of the delivery skills and proper venues for their clients as part of their jobs.  One of the oddest pairs of rhetorical missteps underlines this point.  During his administration, President Reagan normally conducted his news conferences in the evening when most Americans could watch them.  Unfortunately, this was one of Reagan's worst venues; aides often spent that evening or the next day correcting "misstatements" by the President.  As Deputy Director of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, I recommended to White House Political Advisor Ed Rollins that if the President continued to hold press conferences in the evening that he do it sitting down with three or four reporters in conversation.  The one time that advice was followed, Reagan sat down with Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and Peter Jennings -- fairly tough interviewers in a competitive situation.  Yet, the President did extremely well.  Inexplicably, the venue was never used again.

The contrasting example is ironic.  President Bush performed better in press conferences than in any other venue.  And yet, so as not to be seen as imitating Reagan, he chose to conduct his press conferences during the day when few Americans could watch them.  When he finally decided to hold an evening press conference in the summer of 1992, the networks saw it as a political ploy and refused to carry it.  In both cases, presidents were ill-served by their advisors in terms of proper venue.  Clearly, the constituents of delivery such as venue, rehearsal, pronunciation, gesture, and body movement need to be given more attention by speechwriters.
Conclusion

This examination of the Nixon and Ford administrations has touched on role a president's education plays in his speechwriting ability, analyzed how acceptance speeches reflect the speechwriting process, observed the paths to influence that are trod by speechwriters, and argued that a full service speechwriter should engage in coaching delivery.  Several other salient points should be clear from this study.  First, it is essential to have direct contact with the president.  Access guarantees that writers will not lose their voices to other staffers less skilled rhetorically.  It prevents unschooled intermediaries from undoing the effective prose of writers.  And it assures writers of an avenue of influence with their superiors.  As an extension on this point, we should continue to study the ways in which speechwriters have risen to policy makers.  Perhaps the way onto a president's brain trust is through effective speechwriting.

Second, poll data is essential to the speechwriting process.  Rhetoric is a unique art form because it draws so many of its strategies from the audience.  Understanding the American audience in terms of the issues it holds dear, the positions it takes on those issues, and the way it measures character is crucial to crafting speeches that resonate with the public.  Furthermore, due to the modern media, the president often addresses more than one audience at a time.  Having poll data that allow a comparison of the various audience helps speechwriters to craft messages which build consensus and avoid alienation.

Third, having a sense of style is an important asset for a president and there are ways of providing one for most speakers.  Often style evolves over time as with Truman and Ford.  It almost always become the hallmark of an administration which is often remembered for its rhetorical trademarks whether they be a new frontier, a new deal, or a new beginning for America.  Speechwriters can help the process by cooperating on drafts, agreeing on a level of style that is consistent, and by competing with one another to produce solid drafts of important speeches.

Finally, speechwriters ought seek ways to enhance their role in the coaching of delivery of speeches.  No effective speech has deficient delivery.  My suspicion is that we do not talk about it seriously for fear that we will be identified with the Sophists of old.  But remember that the Sophists dominated their culture, while Socrates was forced to take poison and Plato's Academy languished outside the walls of Athens.  By ignoring delivery, we limit our consultative powers and weaken our credibility with those who know its importance in the political world.  Even the earliest speechwriters such as Corax and Tisias knew that delivery is far more important with the public than we have imagined.
 
 

1. I refreshed this information with recent interviews with Ken Khachigian, who began as a Nixon researcher and then became a writer under Patrick Buchanan.
2. See, for example, James Golden, "John F. Kennedy and the Ghosts," Quarterly Journal of Speech, 52 (1966): 168-76.
3. See, for example, Russel R. Windes, "Adlai E. Stevenson's Speech Staff in the 1956 Campaign," Quarterly Journal of Speech, 46 (1960): 32-43.
4. See, for example, Craig R. Smith, "Contemporary Political Speech Writing," Southern Speech Communication Journal, 42 (1976): 52-67.
5. See, for example, L. Patrick Devlin, "The Influences of Ghostwriting on Rhetorical Criticism,"  Today's Speech, 32 (1974): 7-12; Craig R. Smith, "Nixon's 1968 Acceptance and the Dual Audience Adaptation," Today's Speech, 29 (1971): 15-22.
6. Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 101-210.
7. Ironically, Nixon success in McKeesport would spur him on to accept the challenge of a more polished John Kennedy in 1960.
8. The "Checkers" speech was so well geared to the moment that Nixon would be haunted by it for the rest of his career, for only a decade later, it seemed out of time and out of place in a less gullible America.
9. Joe McGinnis claims in The Selling of the President (New York: Pocket Books, 1970) that pages of The Medium is the Message were stuck to the walls of Nixon's media advisors.
10. See, for example, Kissinger, p. 503, and Theodore White, The Making of the President -- 1972 (New York: Athenaeum Publishers, 1973), p. 13.
11. The chief author of this section was Nixon with some help in style from William Gavin who wrote the line, "He hears a train go by at night and he dreams of far away places where he'd like to go."
12. In his poll of October 3, 1968, Louis Harris reported that Nixon's acceptance speech was the most memorable event of the Republican convention and the memory was favorable.  Hubert Humphrey's acceptance, by comparison, was ranked fourth and not remembered favorably.  Washington Post, October 3, 1968, p. A3.  Nixon led Humphrey 45% to 29% in the Gallup Poll following the Republican convention.
13. Kevin Phillips, "How Nixon Will Win," The New York Times Magazine, August 6, 1972, p. 36.
14. Newsday's assessment was typical: "Far and away the best stroke at the convention was Jerry Ford's personal accomplishment at the podium Thursday night. . . . [I]t was the finest oratory heard by a party that had summoned all its best campaigners to Kansas City."  (August 23, 1976), p. 1.
15. Interestingly, Nixon does not use the structure of the Eisenhower White House wherein writers reported a "head" writer who in turn reported to Sherman Adams.  Adams staffed the drafts to other senior advisors.  One wonders if the difference in procedure would have been as pronounced had Nixon won the election of 1960 thereby following Eisenhower into the White House.  Ford's sudden ascendance to the presidency certain played a role in his emulation of the Nixon structure.
16. Kissinger, p. 78.
17. In the Summer of 1976, Ron Nessen with the support of David Gergan attempted to place the speechwriters under his control.  Hartmann forced Nessen not only to retract the proposal, but to apologize personally to the writers.
18. See David R. Maxey, "How Nixon Decided to Invade Cambodia," Look Magazine, August 11, 1970, pp. 22-25.
19. The influence gained through this process is acknowledged by Theodore White, 1972, p. 251, 262-63.
20. Joe McGinnis in his book The Selling of the President claims that Nixon's aides even applied semantic differentials to the voters.  Khachigian denies this.
21. Robert Teeter of Market Opinion Research in Detroit provided poll data to Ford's political operation.
22. I mention only the most prominent members of the staff using as one measure Nixon's discussion of them in his Memoirs.
23. Kissinger writes that "Buchanan was the resident conservative, deeply wary of those whom he suspected of deflecting Nixon from his natural right-wing orientation, convinced that a cabal of intellectuals was confusing the pristine quality of the President's philosophy, unwilling to accept that it was in the nature of our many-faceted principle to show a different face to different people." White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1979), p. 78.  Buchanan readily admits the influence of his father who was an "authoritarian figure who revered Senator Joseph McCarthy and Spanish dictator Francisco Franco."  Richard S. Littleton, "The Making of Buchanan," Time, February 26, 1996, p. 32.
24. Later Safire would denounce the President over Watergate and the discovery that Safire's telephone line had been tapped because he was suspected of leaking stories to the media.  See William Safire, "Another Who Had A Party Phone Line," Chicago Tribune, August 10, 1973, p. A23.
25. In his Memoirs, Nixon refers to Price as his "principle idea man."  The memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), p. 279.  See also Kissinger, p. 77, 1093.
26. In his book, Price, who had been a writer for the New York Herald Tribune, confesses to voting for Lyndon Johnson in 1964.  With Nixon (New York: Viking Press, 1977), p. 3.  For his role in the resignation, see Theodore White, Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon (New York: Athenaeum, 1975), p. 30.
27. Like Theodore Sorenson, Price was fond of counterpoint and repetition: "And a party that can unite itself can unite America" (1968 Acceptance of the Nomination); "By facing the realities of the world . . . we can make peace a reality" (State of the World Address, February 9, 1972); "Nothing is served by silence" (which was repeated three times in the Vietnam Address of January 25, 1972).
28. Kissinger dubs the Nixon speechwriters "unusually talented and varied." p. 77.
29. Part of the problem is that the president has to give so many speeches.  In his short reign, Ford delivered 1,142 written speeches and remarks.
30. Some attribute Agnew's clever lines to a campaign worker from Baltimore; others are attributed to Gold.  However, the line "nattering nabobs of negativism" was Safire's.
31. p. 77.
32. Buchanan, according to his memoirs, had snuck into the party uninvited.  Earlier he had once served as Vice President Nixon's caddie at the Burning Tree Country Club in Maryland near Washington, D.C.  When Nixon needed to urinate, Buchanan showed him to the bushes and urinated beside Nixon in perhaps one of the oddest male-bonding rituals in our history.  Littleton, p. 33.
33. After a suspension for fighting with local police, Buchanan graduated cum laude from Georgetown and then the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
34. This process was retained in the Ford administration.
35. Buchanan often relied on the skills of Ken Khachigian, a former college debater who received his law degree from Columbia University who would go on to write for Agnew and Earl Butz.
36. See William Safire, Before the Fall (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), p. 351.
37. Joseph C. Spear, Presidents and the Press: The Nixon Legacy (Cambridge,MA: MIT Press, 1984), p. 81.
38. Nixon, Memoirs, p. 411.
39. S. T. Agnew, "Television news coverage: Network censorship," Vital Speeches of the Day, (December 1, 1969), pp. 98-101.
40. Agnew became a mouthpiece for Buchanan's thoughts.  In 1970, for example, Buchanan sent a memo to Agnew suggesting he craft a speech on integration: "In the South, the trend of integration of the schools will result in socioeconomic segregation, which is worse for education than racial segregation; it is unfair to the poor who integrate, while the middle class retain the freedom of choice to go to the schools they want."  Agnew incorporated the philosophy into his addresses on school busing.  "Buchanan Quote File," Los Angeles Times, February 25, 1996, p. A21.
41. p. 251.
42. This was the only foreign policy speech that Buchanan wrote, and he relied on an outlined provided by Kissinger's staff.  Kissinger claims that the speech's "major thrust was Nixon's" (p. 503).
43. Memoirs, p. 491.
44. Buchanan used White House photographs in the book and was compensated by the publisher; but White House Counsel John Dean cleared Buchanan of any wrong doing.
45. John Osborne, The Fifth Year of the Nixon Watch (New York: Liveright, 1974), p. 64.
46. p. 63.  See also, Theodore White, 1972, p. 13.
47. Osborne, p. 119.  White claims that Safire, Price, and Buchanan were Nixon's favorite writers (1972, p. 221, 228, 364).
48. Osborne, p. 148.
49. p. 147.
50. p. 836.
51. p. 839.
52. Memoirs, p. 849.  Nixon refers to Price in these passages as the "most honest, cool, objective man I know."
53. Memoirs, p. 905.
54. Osborne, p. 164; for further evidence see pp. 194-97.
55. p. 1014.  See also, p. 1020.
56. Memoirs, p. 968.
57. As a consultant to CBS, I was in direct contact with Khachigian regarding Buchanan's machinations.  See also Price, pp. 331-32.
58. See Craig Allen Smith and Kathy B. Smith, The White House Speaks: Presidential Leadership as Persuasion (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), Chapter 3.
59. It's headline read, "Ford Wows Baptists."
60. On June 10, 1976, Hartmann wrote us the theme would "The American Adventure."  "All drafts should be short, taut, and straightforward. . . .  [T]here should be no campaign code words or partisan insinuations whatsoever. . . . Noble and profound thoughts can be expressed in direct and simple words, as Jefferson and Lincoln did."
61. I was the primary writer for "the Spirit of Washington" address delivered at Valley Forge, the speech at the "Washington Gala", and the speech at the opening of the centennial safe from the Grant administration.  My backup drafts for Independence Hall and Monticello were popular enough with the President that major portions were included in the final drafts.
62. Memo of June 10, 1976, p. 2.
63. Memo of June 10, 1976, p. 3.
64. For example, the New York Times of July 5, 1976 read, NATION AND MILLIONS IN CITY JOYOUSLY HAIL BICENTENNIAL.  The subhead read, "President Talks: Philadelphia Throngs Told U.S. is Leader."  A second story on the front page lead with a large picture of Ford travelling and quoted more material from his speeches.  On page 18, the Times reported favorable comments on the speeches from persons in the crowd.
65. De oratore, Trans. E. W. Sutton (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 3.56.213.
66. See Institutio Oratoria, Trans. H. E. Butler, 4 vols.
(London Heinemann, 1969), 11.3-6.
67. Of Sheridan's eleven books on rhetoric, A Course of Lectures on Elocution was the best on delivery.  Reverend Austin published Chironomia: or, A Treatise on Rhetorical Delivery.
68. John Bulwer, from whom Austin borrows, published a Chirologia and Chironomia in 1644.
69. Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency 1972-1976 (New York: Signet, 1977), p. 49.