Tonights guest was a fulltime speechwriter for president gerald ford and a consulting writer to george h. W. Bush. He served as founding president of the freedom of Expression Foundation in washington, d. C. He has won numerous awards for his research, including an award for political communication. It is with pleasure that i welcome dr. Craig smith. Would you please welcome dr. Craig smith. [applause] yous nice to be back in lawrence. Back in lawrence. You have written for some of the most powerful people in the world. Can you tell us about your early life and how you got to be a president ial speechwriter. Dr. Smith the way i became a president ial speechwriter could only happen in america. I was an undergraduate, i got a lot of training in how to make cases, how to sift evidence and build arguments. I went on for a phd in communication studies, where i focused on aristotle. All of those things are incorporated in the speechwriting craft. I then became a professor of communication studies, focusing on rhetoric and public address. I wound up after starting at san diego state, i wound up at the university of virginia and i was at the university of virginia in 1976 and i was invited to the university of North Carolina chapel hill to give a guest lecture at 10 00 in the morning. It turned out gerald ford was lecturing on the campus at noon to the future homemakers of america. And so, the liberal faculty turned to me, and i consider myself a legitimate conservative, so rare these days, so we went and we watched gerald fords speech and it was not good. [laughter] dr. Smith i went back to charlottesville and i could not sleep so i wrote a single space, fivepage letter and the next morning i mailed it off to the president , the white house, 1600 pennsylvania avenue, then i could sleep and i did not think anything would come of it. One week later, i was called by the director of white house personnel and was asked to come up for interview. When the letter came in, someone in the mailroom remembered they just fired the speechwriter. My letter was sent up to white house personnel. I came up for the interview, i began my interview with him, he took me to the editor for the speechwriters, i realized that if i screwed up at any point i would be out the front door of the white house, he then took me to the counselor to the president and we went through a long interview. About how i would write speeches if i wrote speeches, so on and so forth. At the end of the interview, he said can you wait here chester minette. His office was the old office that nixons secretary had, the one he came back in and he took me into the oval office and there was gerald ford puffing on a pipe. He said pending security clearance, mr. President , we would like to hire mr. Smith as your speechwriter. The president said professors have not done well here. I said i am not one of those absentminded professors. I write very quickly and i will be efficient and i will do what i can for you. He said please make me speak the language of the common man and that is how i got hired. Starting at the top. I had never written a speech for anyone but myself. As i said, only in america. You mentioned in the interview, you laid out how you would write for the president. How did that bear out in practice . Did you have to adjust your expectations . Dr. Smith the first thing that happened was they put me in a broom closet for an office and they said read all of the president s speeches and testimony when he became Vice President and see if you can come up with a style for the president. I did all that and i went into see Robert Hartman and he said, what you think of the president s style . I said i dont think he has one. It depends on who is writing for him. We have to get consistent with his persona. He said, we have a speech for you. The president have to speak at the Southern Baptist convention in norfolk, convention, following jimmy carter. Jimmy carter was a bornagain christian and the Southern Baptists loved him. You have me, a catholic, writing for the president , and episcopalian, to speak at the Southern Baptist convention. I consulted baptist ministers and worked up a speech and let it sit for a day, and then rewrote it, and then let it sit for a day. The art of writing is rewriting. The roosevelt speeches went through 10, 12 drafts. We did not have time for that when ford was president. We went through five drafts. The speech was done, he went down to norfork to deliver the speech and he was three sentences into the speech and he was interrupted by applause. He was not used to that and he lost his place. [laughter] dr. Smith he recovered quickly and he was interrupted by applause 13 more times during the speech and the Washington Post the next day said president hits homerun in front of the Southern Baptists and my reputation was made. From then on, i had a bigger hand in the process for writing for the president. How many people would check your work . Dr. Smith the editor would go through it, once that passed, the counselor to the president would go through it. Some speeches, peggy writes about this in her book, if it is about agriculture policy, it has to go to the Agriculture Department. If it is on Foreign Policy, it has to go to the state department. The only problem with that, whoever gets to do the staffing and see that the policy is right becomes the speechwriter and they start suggesting things. Why did you use this metaphor . Why did you say United States instead of america . Suddenly, hartman would say take all of that out, ignore that, just to the policy thing. Then the speech would be delivered and the president would be happy with it, the press would be happy with that, and someone and Agriculture Department claimed they wrote the speech. [laughter] dr. Smith he knows about how that works, having been in the cia. You worked with gerald ford during the campaign, how was that different or was it different writing for gerald ford the president versus gerald ford the campaigner . Dr. Smith what you do is adjust the speech to the situation, to the venue. For example, i was in charge of the bicentennial speeches, the six bicentennial speeches forgave during the campaign but we did not want use those for political reasons. I wrote the speech i was the main writer on the speech on valley forge, when the president went to monticello, which traditionally every year has a ceremony for immigrants and welcoming them to this country. That process was very highminded, very much a celebration of the declaration of independence and we wanted to move it away from the political campaign. When we went over to the arena for the acceptance speech in 1976, that was a political speech. That speech begins on a note where president ford challenged jimmy carter to debate him three times and that got a lot of headlines. That was a political speech and it was very different. Today, there is more of a melding of the political and statement side of speeches. How did you connect with george h. W. Bush . You work for him for a long time. Dr. Smith yes, as a consulting writer. After we lost the election to carter, i went into exile in alabama. I created a Communication Department at the university of alabama birmingham. I was yearning to get back into politics. I had potomac fever. At that time, in 1977, only 6 of alabama residents identified as republicans. That is the change we went through in the south. We needed to raise money and get people to come into birmingham and raise money for the republican party. We asked john connolly, he said no. Ronald reagan, no. We asked george h. W. Bush if he would come over. He was friends with a family and he agreed to come over. I was at a table at a fundraiser and there was this nerdy, blonde young man next to me and he said, i understand you were a speechwriter for president ford. I said yes. He said evaluate this for the table, we wont tell anyone. I said all right. George bush got up and gave the speech and then the nerdy little kid said, what did you think . I said the man is obviously sincere, he is authentic but he needs organization. There are stylistic devices he can use. He looked at me and said, my name is karl rove. I work for him. I said oh my gosh, i am sorry. He said how would you like to come up and have a cocktail with him . We heard from gerald ford you are a good writer and he would like to have a word for you. That is how i got on and it was coincidental. Talk more about working with president bush. Dr. Smith george h. W. Bush was my favorite. I had to clear with some of his other friends, jennifer fitzgerald, i was flown to houston to do another interview at the house. I showed up at the bush mansion in my threepiece suit and the door opens on the side of the house and outcomes george bush in a tshirt and he looks at me and said if you will get out of that silly vest, i will cook you breakfast. That was the kind of guy he was. Magnificent. We he gets me a cup of coffee, i go he gets me a cup of coffee, i took my kitchen and coat off and my vest off and he is cooking eggs. Comes barbara bush, she looks at me, she looks at george, she looks at me, she looks at george and says george, if that man spells a drop of that coffee on the floor i will never forgive you because the chinese delegation is coming into stay with us tonight for dinner. I do not know what came into me, but i looked at her and said, maam, i came to your door in a threepiece suit, i dont spill anything. [laughter] dr. Smith she laughed, he laughed, and i spent the rest of the day with them. He was such a gentleman. He was so highminded and so wonderful to work with, she was so supportive of the staff, very protective of him, and that is understandable. She was on the side of the better angels who were around george bush, or around any president , there are also some darker angels and you have to fight with them. That is always fun. They were wonderful people. Did you ever see what you thought was a good speech go bad . Dr. Smith none of mine, [laughter] dr. Smith of course not. I cant think of one, actually. There were glitches. There was one time president ford was delivering a speech i wrote in the white house, and it was for the pennsylvania delegation on the way to the convention. The pennsylvania delegation was up for grabs and eventually Ronald Reagan would name a senator has his vice as his Vice President ial candidate trying to steal the delegation. Ford got up to give the speech and he suddenly deviated from the text to tell a personal story, which she rarely did. He rarely did. Then he went back to the text. I had written the personal story in the text, so he repeated it. Everyone knew what happened. He recovered and he laughed and he went on. Eventually Nelson Rockefeller got up, applauded and got him off the stage. As a speechwriter, you have input over the venue or any other production details . Dr. Smith once you get credibility as a speechwriter, the glory of it is you can sometimes influence policy. I began to suggest certain campaign changes that the president speak less, but speak on certain topics very in depth. I thought his strength was on the issues, whereas carters strength was transcendent. There was a debate over my proposal between various people in front of the president and the president said i am going with what craig wants. It is stunning. He wrote me a note. He said thank you for that suggestion. The note said when we win this election, i will move you to the political division, which would have been nice, but we did not win the election. You have to be credible first. You have to have successful speeches. What would you say was perhaps the biggest challenge related to writing for the president . Dr. Smith it is a collaborative operation. The speechwriters want the president to be as effective as possible. The political people want him to say what adjusts to the poll data. There is a tension between those two things. We think there are certain things said a certain way, they think they should be said a different way. There is always that tension, but i talked to a friend of mine who was a writer for richard nixon, and the nixon people the writers were very good adapting to the poll data. Nixon had a 24 hour Polling Group in 1968. One question was what was the most important problem facing america . Once the person answered, they went to a second step and asked what was the suggested solution . In 1968, number one was vietnam, number two was the economy, number three was crime. The solutions, half the people wanted to withdraw from vietnam, half the people wanted to escalate. What the nixon writers did for his speech, he spent four long paragraphs on the problem of vietnam, meeting the expectation of the audience, but he does not suggest a solution because the audience is divided. He said because we are in negotiation and paris, i cant undercut our operations, but i promise you peace with honor. He transcended the division. When he went to the economy, it is one short paragraph on the problem and a lot of solutions, because he has 75 of the audience on his side, same thing with crime. People were nodding as they went through that. At the end of that speech, if you ever flash back to it, there is a wonderful at the end about hearing trains at the night and the American Dream and nixon comes to embody the American Dream. The speechwriters get to go full force at the end of the speech by giving into the pollsters at the beginning of the speech. When everything clicks together, it is really wonderful. Our last program, we talked about great president ial speeches. Would you weigh in on what might be your greatest president ial speech . Dr. Smith for me, i think the second inaugural of lincoln is really wonderful. It is compassionate, healing, calling for bringing the country together. I think that is a wonderful address. I think one of the addresses that is a little underrated is jeffersons first inaugural. The election had been horribly better between jefferson and bitter between jefferson and john adams. The federalists and the antifederalists, all kinds of dirty politics had gone on. If you think it is bad now, it was really bad back then. Jefferson said it one point, we are all federalists, we are all antifederalists. He tries to unite the country. That is an awfully good president ial speech. What speech of yours is your favorite . Dr. Smith i think the speech during the bicentennial at valley forge, where i start by talking about the soldiers surviving with their rag bound feet around the fires, starving and eventually surviving at valley forge. But then looking forward to what that tells us about sacrifice and how sacrifice has worked for america, particularly for its soldiers and how we need to honor that moving forward. I was very proud of that speech. We talked about speech writing during a campaign in for a sitting president. You have written speeches or language for people involved in debates. How does that relate to speechwriting and what is your preparation like . Dr. Smith the debate thing is an entirely different world. It is very difficult. I coached the president for the debates, along with other people. I coached dan quayle for his debate in 1988 and i can tell you about that experience. [laughter] dr. Smith you just dont know what is going to happen. It is all about the expectation. When ford went into the first debate with carter, the expectation was ford would lose because carter was this Nuclear Engineer when he went to annapolis. Ford attended to bumble and mispronounced words. Ford came out of that debate beating expectations and carter and suddenly the race was dead even. Then we went to the second debate, we knew questions would be on Foreign Policy, it was at the palace of the arts in san francisco. We prepped the president. Remember, Ronald Reagan criticized fords policy with the soviet union. Reagan wanted a tougher policy. We knew that was going to be in question. The question came from the New York Times and the reporter said president ford, how would you defend your policy with the soviet union when they are such a brutal nation . Ford said yugoslavia has never given into them. Romania is moving toward freedom. They dont dominate poland. He had a followup. Did you say the soviet union does not dominate poland . He said yes, that is what i said. After the debate, we went up to the president and said you said the soviet union does not dominate poland. You need to hold a press conference and immediately say you misspoke. He said i did not say that. Whatd you think he said . What we rehearsed. What was that mr. President . The soviet union does not dominate the hearts and minds of the polish people. I wish you had said that. [laughter] dr. Smith Henry Kissinger came up and said what is going on . We explained the situation and the president immediately needs to hold a press conference and say he misspoke and kissinger said you cant do that. I am trying to get that man out of the soviet union. If you insult the soviet unit, union, our talks will collapse. They debated him for five days and finally in california, ford corrected the record but it was too late. The election slipped away. These debates are mindbogglingly tense. When lever hearst debates with dan quayle come the person who stood and was his colleague from the finance committee, bob packwood. He is an excellent debater. He did very well. Dan quayle got into the senate by winning a debate against someone who is no slouch. We thought he would be ok when he went into the debate with lloyd benson. During our practice session, Marilyn Quayle interrupted what was going on and said, you need to tell them you are more qualified than john kennedy was when he was running for president. You are just running for Vice President. Lee atwater was there and said you cannot say that. You cant compare yourself to john kennedy. He is a saint and a martyr. Whatever you do, dont do that. The debate goes forward and we are all watching what is happening. Outcomes dan quayle. Coach, youa debate have seen this. Intohe first time you get a round and it is like a deer in the headlights. They are stunned and they cannot say anything right. Dan quayle was a little discombobulated. It is the bright lights. He recovers and gets going. Then comes the inevitable question. What is the first thing you would do if the president were incapacitated . We had rehearsed if the president died. Incapacitated, big difference. If the president is incapacitated, you have to bring the cabinet together, vote that the president is incapacitated, so on and so forth. It is a different question. He took the advice from one of his mentors and dodged the question. You really need to ask them i am i qualified to be president , and he gave his qualifications. It came back, with ask you what if the president is incapacitated . He dodged again. Tom brokaw said, do you know what you would do if the president is incapacitated . He said, im more qualified now than john kennedy was when he was elected. You could see him licked his lips. Then, we were all like, what is going to happen with the pull data . That had no impact on the election whatsoever. The media made a big deal about it. We got off on that one. Debates are tough to coach. The other one, i helped with george w. Bush in the 1984. He was Vice President. He debated geraldine ferraro. That is a tough thing to do. It is tough on women, because they face a binary. If they are tough, then that has a bad word associated with it. If they are soft, they are not up to the presidency. Handling that situation for a woman is very difficult, and i have coached some women in debates. On the other hand, when we were coaching george h. W. Bush, we told him, you have to be careful. You dont want to be mean to your female opponent. At the same time, you want to establish yourself as an expert. We recommended that he simply answer the questions and always look forward and not respond or direct anything to geraldine ferrero. That worked until three quarters of the way through the debate, and she said something about Foreign Policy that did not make sense to him. Suddenly he turned and said, let me help you with that, geraldine. We had this mansplaining moment. We all went, oh my god. So dont blame the coaches. [laughter] other tense situations. Did you ever do any writing for Crisis Response . How is the process different . Mr. Smith it is very different. At one point in the ford administration, cambodia seized a merchant marine vessel. I was on vacation, and my pager went off. They said you have to get back to the white house. We need your help on this one. We are writing a speech for the president. He is going to deliver it from the oval office. How are we going to respond . It was a very different writing experience. What are we going to do . How is the president going to express that to the nation . The response kept changing. I had to keep changing the i had to keep changing the speech, but there was nothing political about this. There was nothing in terms of there could be some patriotism involved, but it was just to inform the public not to panic, we are doing something about this, and eventually we actually seized the ship and special forces did a terrific job. We always try to keep those things out of the political arena. If you get those things into the political arena, you sully them, and they are open to attack from the other side. I have no problem with somebody attacking the handling of this. The president mishandled it or we are in a war we should not be in, but the announcement of a crisis is pristine and objective and should be isolated from the political world. Last week, we talked about how a president who is a successful speech deliver and writer craft broader narratives, were you able to do that relatively early in your time with the ford presidency and the bush presidency, or is that something that evolved over time . Mr. Smith i think it evolved over time. One of the things you try to work out is what is the delivery style that works best as you are crafting this narrative of where they are going . The statement for robert ford just after he was sworn in, that the long dark nightmare for america is over. That was a wonderful moment. That established the narrative. We are going to make a comeback. Were going to bounce off watergate. Were going to bounce off the anon and bring america off vietnam, and bring america back. The bicentennial was a wonderful chance to do that. In terms of style, barack obama focuses on the periodic style. This is the march of paragraphs across the page. Lincoln had it. Barack obama was very compatible with that because of the black pulpits he had in his lifetime. Bill clinton had a very different style. You were in his living room. Ronald reagan had the same style. Finding that style for your candidate, your client is very different for each of them. With ford, it was very plainspoken. With bush, hw bush, when i started working with him, i realized it was a very kind man, a very gentle man. That was part of the narrative. He was sophisticated, very witty. In 1980, i wrote a speech for him that he delivered in philadelphia during the president ial primary, and it was called a different kind of president. In there, there was a line about how he wanted to create a kinder, gentler nation. The speech got ruined because his press secretary snuck a line into the speech that reagan economics was voodoo economics. When you are a speechwriter, it is very frustrating when people do that to your speeches. That was the attention. When we got to 1988, and he was accepting the nomination, i got that line back in, the kinder, gentler nation. That was one of the lines that was remembered. The other line was read my lips, no new taxes. You have the top guy and the kinder, gentler bush. If you look at the speeches, you can see they have more than one writer and more than one tone. That should not happen. They should be consistent. Ms. Coleman second to last, what did being a president ial speechwriter teach you about the presidency . Mr. Smith it is a collaborative effort. It is a team effort. You are only as good as the staff around you. The president has to make a call at some point. The president has to say im going with this advice, and that then redounds on the president. That is why the president is responsible for the speech the speechwriters write because he has these choices he has to make. God help us if we ever have a president who does not surround himself with good people. [laughter] god help us if we ever have a president who fires the good people and keeps the bad people. That is something i learned a long time ago. Ms. Coleman looking back, you wrote for the bicentennial. We are coming up on our semiquincentinial, 250 year anniversary. Any themes you would want to hit on . Mr. Smith one of the things that was so successful for the six bicentennial speeches is the president said i want them to all be integrated. I think that worked very well. We were each given a little book at the end of the bicentennial, and one of the sweetest moments i had in the white house was at the end of the bicentennial speeches, the president gave us the president ial yacht for the night. We sailed down the potomac. This was a famous yacht. Nixon retreated to the yacht when he wanted to get away from everybody. It stops at mount vernon, and it swings around, and they play the national anthem. It brings tears to your eyes. You have dinner as they come back up and dock by the washington monument. That was just incredible. I hope whoever is in charge when we do the 250 years has that kind of attitude, that this is a celebration of american values, and we look at these values and display the values we talk about, we not only refer to them but display the values we talk about. Ms. Coleman thank you. Questions from the audience. A student will come to you. Weve got one up here, olivia. When president ford asked you to make them sound might be common man, did that cause you to write his speeches as if you were the one that was speaking it . Did you consider yourself representative of the common man . Mr. Smith there is a lot of me that i think identifies with the common man. I came out of the lower middle class. My father was a navy man. He started as a sailor. He was blown off the ship at pearl harbor and swam to shore and survived. Ford had served. H. W. Had served. He was the youngest pilot in world war ii. Speaking the language of the common man, i think, is something i could resonate with, but let me tell you something, i think Franklin Roosevelt spoke the language of the common man. That means youre not using highfalutin words. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. How simple can you get . It is the rhythm and alliteration that makes that memorable. We should never negotiate in to negotiate. John kennedy. All small words. You can speak the language of the common man and at the same time be memorable and actually heroic and probably more sublime than if you try to be eloquent and use big words that turn people off. Ms. Coleman other questions . Here in the back. Just kind of curious in the fraternity of president ial speechwriters, do you have a rational or any kind of have professional or any kind of contact with the persons that right speeches for donald trump . If you do, im interested to hear their challenges, their reactions to his rogue style and is that exciting for them or a frustrating experience as a speechwriter . Mr. Smith thank you for the question. Im not in contact with them, but i follow them. Steve miller is the chief speechwriter. Steve miller is a talented speechwriter. If you look at the speech that donald trump gave at the republican convention, it was 75 minutes long, which was probably tony five minutes too 25 minutes too much. It was a very clever speech. Every day had a different theme on the make America Great again theme. Everything was unified. Trump got up to close the convention with his acceptance speech, and the last four lines of his speech were the same as those four themes. I thought that worked very well in terms of effectiveness. The problem you would have if you were a speechwriter for trump is that very often he does not stick to the text and does not have one. At his rallies, which are kind of populist, in the old paranoid style, that is just trump spouting off and doing what he does that some of his audiences like. The inaugural address is very dark, and miller wrote it that because they wanted to say these are dark times, now we are going to make America Great again. His speeches from then on are trying to build this up. If you look at the state of the union addresses, the strategy is really interesting. In 1988, Ronald Reagan gave his last state of the union address. Right before it, a plane had taken off in january, the icing had not come off the wings. It crashed into the potomac river. The young man jumped into the river and started pulling people out. When reagan got up to give his state of the union address, he invented recognizing people in the galley. From that point on, every president recognized someone in the galley. Trump has 10 or 15 people in the galley. What does it do . It distracts from the policy stuff. If you are a democrat, and you are caught on camera not applauding, you are in trouble. That is the strategy. It is clever. I am talking about the rhetorical effectiveness. I think they have a hard job writing for trump. I think it would be mindboggling trying to keep him on track. When he is on the teleprompter, they are effective speeches. When he is on his own, he says things that are unverifiable, a nice way to put it. [laughter] ms. Coleman other questions . Up here. I have two possibly. The first one relates to your comment about president ford. You had shared that he mentioned to you that if he won, he would move you to his political group, and of course that did not happen. My question there is have you had a moment in your career where you felt you were really able to shoehorn in and maybe get a little bit of your politics inserted into the message . Mr. Smith one of the things i was in favor of was using our agricultural surpluses instead of burning them or dumping them in the ocean was to creat a foo create a foodbank and take those things to africa or asia or wherever they are needed. The president said we would do that right after the election, which was nice. If you get to a credible point with a president , with your client, you can influence policy. I have worked for many other people. The shortest president ial campaign ever was the wilson, governor of california, i was the only writer there. That is the difference between the campaign and the president. The president has five speechwriters. Elizabeth warren probably only has one. George h. W. Bush during the campaign, he only had one or two. If you get the trust and have a good idea, you get input into policy. That is a wonderful benefit of the job when it works out. Did you have a second question . Ms. Coleman we will come back. Olivia. Just curious, if you were writing speeches today, social media being a tool, use it, not use it . Mr. Smith you have got to use it. Hopefully you can use it for good. I think social media, there is a lot of problems with it. We all know what they are. If you consider it like chemistry, that it can be used for good or evil, you need to get in that mix and figure out how to do it. Barack obama was very effective with social media. The president is very effective with tweets. He gets past the media. People that believe in him and just want to be affirmed just look at his tweets and not anybody else. That is one of the problems we have with all the media and cable, if i believe something crazy, i can find somebody else out there that is also saying the same thing somewhere and affirm myself. That is the problem we have with social media. It is much harder now to break through as a speechwriter, to get your candidate to break through all the social media and all the affirmation that is going on. If people are watching these democratic debates, and it looks like they are, that is a way to break through. You can have a good debate like Amy Klobuchar did in the last one. You can have a good town hall meeting like Pete Buttigieg did early on, and suddenly you are there. If i were advising a campaign, i would have a Strategy Group on social media and how to use them. If you dont, you are excluding a whole audience that you could be reaching in some way. Hi. Um, you alluded briefly to writing for women. If you were writing for a female president , would you approach that any differently from the way you did with previous male president s . Mr. Smith i think you have to because of the binary that women face, and you have to be sensitive to it. You will notice, for example, you have not seen a female immigrant candidate, correct me if i am wrong, wear a dress in any of these debates. They are all in pants suits, and that is to make them more manly, more president ial. I once advised senator Paula Hawkins from florida on what to wear, and it was a black pants suit, and she did very well in her debate. One of the things that are treated to women that you want to avoid, emotionalism. Lets have a very factbased, policy oriented, highly documented approach. I think that is what they told elizabeth warren. She has done well on that on occasion. Unfortunately, she has contradicted herself on medicare for all, and that got her in trouble. That is where she was going. Amy klobuchar, when she has been successful, she contradicts my role a little bit, but it was heartfelt and seemed authentic when she stated i see you and identified with her audience. That was effective. It was a risk, but it worked. There are things that you want to go through, if i were writing for a woman, it would be factbased, argument based, very organized. Because you are not supposed to be able to read a map. [laughter] which is nonsense. It would be along those lines. Ms. Coleman we have time for two more here. I know when i am writing, i have moments when i cannot put a word on a page. As a writer yourself, especially with these issues that are so important, how do you go about having Writers Block and handling that pressure . Mr. Smith it is an excellent question. I am one of those strange people who have never had Writers Block. I dont know what it is. The advice i give is the advice Ernest Hemingway gave. Ernest hemingway had Writers Block for a long time. He said that what he did was to write one important true sentence and then write back to it. There is a novel that his wife published after his wishes after he was dead, the garden of eden, based on a short story. That is the first chapter. The last line of the first chapter is, and then he never could love her again. The whole chapter leads up to that. When you read that line, it hits you like someone slap to in the face. If you get Writers Block, i would recommend the hemingway method, write one true, important sentence and everything will flow from that. Ms. Coleman right here. Mr. Smith if you could write if you could write one more president ial speech, what would it be . And why . Mr. Smith since i never was able to do it, i would like to write an inaugural address. I would like to call people to the values i believe in. I think calling people to those values and then displaying those values, living by those values, practicing what you preach, setting the tone for the whole four years of that presidency would be a wonderful thing to do, and i would certainly use the lincoln inaugurals as my model. Ms. Coleman excellent question. That is a great way to end our conversation. Thank you, dr. Smith, for being with us. [applause] before you leave tonight, pick up a copy of dr. Smiths book, confessions of a president ial speechwriter. There might be a holiday coming up where you want to buy a significant other a book, here is your answer. Join us next tuesday. We will have another discussion. We will welcome back dr. Robert roland and talk about comparing president s Ronald Reagan and barack obama. Thank you all for coming. Look forward to seeing you next week. [applause] the fans washington journal, coming up thursday, we will talk about the state of the stopacturing industry and all of the Alliance American manufacturing and then, live and the National Museum discussed the 75th anniversary of the battle of your jima to andh live Tuesday Morning be sure to watch all this week. Wednesday morning, we will caret he smithsonian smithsonian. That is 12 30 p. M. On cspan. And, a discussion on the future of venezuela and juan guaido. At 4 00 p. M. , the u. S. Institute of peace hosts former government officials including Stephen Hanley on the situation in afghanistan and cspan2, u. S. Health policy including the demographice opioid epidemic. P. M. , Bernie Sanders is at a rally in las vegas. Tuesday, a debate between senator ed markey and two of his challengers in the massachusetts democratic primary. Watch live at 7 00 p. M. Eastern andspan, online cspan. Org the free cspan radio app. The a panel on human rights and democracy with Victoria Nuland and other foreign parleys for policy analysts. This was a discussion on the. Tate of the world it is just over one hour. Gathered ato those the state of the world conference. I salute your efforts to address t