If you would like to dig a little deeper into one of our panelists stories, ms. Ryan has a book which like to say a few words about the book give a little synopsis . You will be able to buy a copy for 70 later on for 17 bucks later on. The presidency in blackandwhite. Three president s and race in america. Bill clinton, barack obama, powell the list goes on. Talking about issues of race in this country and what they thought for. You dont hear a lot of people going on the record about certain issues, and that means they are trying to talk about race. That is the issue in our country, a nation that is running. Take it up and let us know what you think. Just a little piece of housekeeping remain seated. He will continue our conversation here, but we will take a minute to allow our speakers to get up and leave the room. We will continue that conversation in one moment, and how about a round of applause . [applause] on the next washington journal, free speech on college campuses. Looking at student protests and marches. Washington journal, live every morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. You can join the conversation with your calls and comments a on facebook and twitter. Tonight, the history of the congressional gold medal americas highest honor. We hear from a graphic designer, then the ceremony for the world war ii monument. That is at 8 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan. Next, a conversation with six former president ial speechwriters from president nixon to president obama. They spoke about writing speeches in moments of crisis, including the vietnam war, this they settled challenger, the columbine shootings, and the death of Osama Bin Laden. The professional speech Writers Association and Georgetown University host of this event. It is an hour and a half. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is felicia sams. Im not a speechwriter, definitely not a white house speechwriter, but i am making a film about them, which is how i came to be here today. I made a film in 2006 about the obama campaign, and one of my favorite parts of the film was getting some time with a speechwriter. When i met dig goodck goodwin his stories were so rich and so powerful that i thought this would be a good subject for a documentary. My friend told me about roberts messenger, who i will now introduce, because he wrote a really fabulous book called white house ghosts, about telling all the stories that we now together are working to put into film. He is the sorry he really knows the ins and outs of speechwriting. He knows all these guys really well and he knows where all the bodies are buried. I would like to introduce robert schlesinger. Schlesinger i want to thank david murray in the professional speechWriters Association. I want to thank georgetown for hosting us. I want to thank cspan for preserving for posterity this great wisdom from this panel. The Space Shuttle has blown up. There has been a terrorist attack. The nation turns its lonely eyes to the president. The president has not only been the key mandarin chief but it is the comforter in chief. The Job Description now includes expressing our National Outrage and our national grief, and also our national joy at good moments. The nation turns to the president and to whom does the president turn . There is not yet an app for that. George washington was thinking about stepping down and he asked James Madison to help them write a farewell address. He dusted off that madison draft and sl outside hamilton to look at it and make suggestions. That gives George Washington the greatest speechwriting team ever. Until the truck administration. Trump administration. It wasnt until the rise of mass medications that speechwriters became part of the president ial orbit. The first president who had a fulltime speechwriter was warren harding. Was also the first radio president. As we have gone from media to social media the role of president ial speechwriters has changed. We have been able to pull together a terrific panel. We have representatives from six administrations. If we got into more people on the stage this would qualified as a republican president ial debate. I will ask for everyone to speak for no more than five minutes. To speak about how their president handled moments of national attention. The first person is lee heebner who was Deputy Director of the Nixon White House staff. Heebner thank you very much. It used to be a group that was very quiet and anonymous. Students are flocking to courses on speechwriting. I just came for my speechwriting class. They regard this as an exciting professional prospect for them. They dont know quite how to make it work. Theres no obvious career ladder. It is a lot of fun. A lot of of the students rendered at speechwriting on the west wing tv show. Delay all look like rob low . Heebner i am not a good fit for this panel as i didnt work directly on big crisis speeches except that i would sometimes edit review what others have produced. Sometimes rescuing comments that might have gotten the wrong direction. Sometimes adding my own touch. Sometimes it helps and sometimes it didnt. In 1972, i had worked hard on the president s address to a joint session of the canadian parliament. A lot of people took that speech very seriously. It was a state occasion. The president seemed to disappear. I got no reaction back from him. Often you would leave the policy points a little bit open waiting for the right decider to make a commitment. Peggy noonan once wrote that speeches were where policy got made. I got a sudden message saying and this to the draft. It was a short paragraph about vietnam. It was worded in bureaucracy kind of language. I changed the wording. I got a call back saying that the president was really unhappy with how the wording had been changed. Nixon was deciding whether or not to mine the harbors in vietnam, a huge increase in the military effort. Is about to go to moscow and had just been to china. The First Nuclear arms treaty was about to be signed. Kissinger felt that nixon should do anything to upset the russians. Is making this decision and he decided to go ahead and do it against kissingers advice. This led to the end of american involvement in vietnam. It was a crisis moment. He didnt have time to think about the canadian parliament. I had good camp david. Nixon asked me if i was having a good time and if i was comfortable. He asked if i wanted to go bowling. He was sitting in the dark by himself pondering this. Years later, at the National Archives the director was showing me the nixon papers. I looked up my name. Up came haldemans account of that moment. Haldeman said nixon blew up into a tirade about how speechwriters dont understand the nuances of Foreign Policy. We need to Bring International sophistication. Haldeman said, typical nixon tantrum. The language of been changed in some way. Thats why the president was so nice when i went to camp david. The tension at those moments can be terrific. Nixon called brezhnevs bluff. Is reelected and then some other stuff happened that wasnt so happy. I was never asked to work on anything related to watergate. Writers were given a little discretion on what they worked on. With a diversified staff pat buchanan never wrote about Foreign Policy. But he wrote a lot of tough political speeches. Ray price wrote about grand themes. Bill safire was a senior writer. I was a junior writer. I didnt get involved in that kind of speech but i experience the atmosphere out of which such speeches came. With nexen the more important the speech the more important the more likely it was for him to write it himself. Schlesinger he founded the white house writers group. Judge his book is a great book. I read the reagan chapter today. In your introduction, you mentioned the challenger disaster. That was written by peggy noonan. She realized something was coming up that he would have to give a speech on television that night. She was the obvious person for that. She did largely ceremonial speeches. She made jokes about being the one who wrote for the funerals. One of the senior staffers came in and had some notes from the president. The president had talked about the need to speak to children and to talk to people about the future. That adventure required a willingness to accept danger. If you read the speech, you see that pain coming up right away. It was written very fast. The next section was about sir francis drake. I think one of the researchers came in with a list of things that have happened on that day. You had to our great has to fit the man. The speech is known for its final line. To slip the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of god. That was written by canadian pilot in the first world war. You never have the time to work things out perfectly. The truly memorable things are the few times when you write something with humor and it. Mostly there is a sense that comes to you. This is where the artistry of the writing comes in. Speechwriting is not about flowery words. It is not about ornate phrases. Reagan had crossed out every fifth or sixth word. He had written, well, this is a fine speech, i just cut a little of the fat out of it. Now you are supposed to applaud. [applause] what he was saying was the style was very lean. It is not flowery. Keep that in mind. What she did with that was to capture it. Ending with a quote is extremely powerful. That is the kind of thing you are facing a moment of crisis. Some of it is direction. Some of it is research. Some of it is inspiration. Schlesinger not everyone is obligated to do impressions of their former boss. She still writes speeches. She is a country being editor and u. S. News world report. Kerry i started writing for president bush when i was three years out of college. I was by far the youngest speechwriter in the office. I wasnt assigned big crisis speeches. I got the spelling bee winners and the girl scout of the year awards. The turkey day got pardoned. George bush 41 was the first president to pardon a turkey. It was a kinder in general or administration. That was the evil empire in reagans day. By january of 1992, i have worked my way up. I was on the trip where the president went to the state dinner in japan where he barked on the japanese Prime Minister bar on the japanese Prime Minister. Fed. Once we got the word that something of happened, this is not politically correct thing to say. It was like a godzilla movie. Their lips are moving in and looks coming out. We could not understand what happened. There were no subtitles. It looks like the president was dead. We all thought holy cow, i think the president is either dead or about to die tonight. Everybody was saying dont move stay where you are. Dont talk to anyone outside. About midnight, i got a call from the secretary of the treasury. I understand you wrote the speech for tomorrow. Im supposed to deliver it. Can you meet with me right now . Brady is a good friend of the president. He thinks that the president might be dead. I said i think you should deliver the speech. You want to do it in the first person, but you want me to switch to the third person . We could switch every sentence. Brady said i dont know. What you think . Is genuinely emotional about the situation. I was looking at the clock. I said to myself, i really dont want to have to rewrite this whole speech. So i said it would be absolutely brilliant if you just deliver the speech as it is. He goes to the legislature and i watching on closedcircuit television. He says i am delivering the speech as if george bush were here. Every single time the man stopped to take a breath, the japanese legislators clapped like crazy. There were trying to applaud george bush back into good health. Nick brady said that was the greatest speech. It is race week that he was so excited. Very sweet that he was so excited. It was not about nick brady or the speech. It was about the gracious hospitality of the japanese people who were mortified that this had happened to george bush. It was an act of love for the president. People were just trying to applaud in every way. To show the president that he was missed. If some sort of misfortune happens, just keep the speech the way it is. It is less work and allows people to clap. Schlesinger the next speaker is jeff shesol, who was a speechwriter for president clinton. Shesol i want to add a different perspective to that. I was in college when that happened. College students are pretty creative with coming up ways of describing it. There was a moment that follow this incident when the term was campus was greeting miyazawa. Brian totally greeted miyazawa last night. We were very publicly focus. Politically focused. You talked about the president as comforter in chief. President clinton said i feel your pain. It wasnt president clinton who originated that phrase. It was actually president carter who first said that. Clinton is probably just better at it than some other president s have been. It was a particular strength. Easy to have fun with. I will talk briefly about one incident. It feels very fresh. The School Shooting at Columbine High School in colorado. That happened in april 1999. It wasnt just about a School Shooting. It had been meticulously planned. There had been a wave of School Shootings. Beginning in 1997. Springfield oregon. Across the country. Shocking and horrifying. Theres a very active process of soulsearching going on. In the same way that we have right now. Then there was columbine. At you know you column at the time peggy noonan wrote a column about the culture of death. I work with president clinton on a number of speeches on this. It resulted in a process, in a discussion. All of our stop stuff is now online. I went back into my own files to take a look at this. What struck me as interesting is that just as there are phases of grief there are phases of discussion like this. It begins with reaction. The president gets to the podium as quickly as he can. Were still trying to sort out the facts. Theres not very much else to say. It is a swirl of confusion. An immediate reaction. You moved to reflection. If there is a Funeral Service and in this case Vice President gore attended the funeral with the families. Gore gave the eulogy at the funeral. Very focused on scripture. An entirely different kind of speech than the one that preceded it. As this begins to receive, the discussion moves on to action. What are we going to do about this . After about 10 days, president clinton went to the rose garden to talk about what the government could do. He called for a white house strategy session on children and violence. Violence in video games. He and the democrats in the senate initiated a series of reforms on gun legislation. To close the gun show loophole. That debate began. It was a fruitless debate in the end and nothing was done in that regard. Moving a little further along hopefully there is a time for healing. One month after the shootings i went to colorado for him to deliver a speech to the students moved to a different high school. He met with the families. I witnessed this from the very edge of the room. Not wanting to intrude on the moment. Just how important it is for these communities to understand that the nation is focused on their grief. Through the president , it makes clear that this is not just an isolated local incident. It is a National Tragedy with national consequences. Hopefully some concrete action can come out of that. The president has got to not only comfort the communities we have seen this in recent days all too often. Schlesinger up next is John Mcconnell who works for george w. Bush. Mcconnell i want to point out that our moderator is the son of a president ial speechwriter, arthur schlesinger, who wrote for president kennedy. We all admired him and liked him very much. I was asked to talk about crisis in the bush years but there were no crises in the bush years. [laughter] i will talk about the quickest turnaround we ever had. He was at camp david. It was kind of of a misty foggy day. They couldnt take him as would be the helicopter. Had to be taken by car and motorcade from the mountains out of maryland took quite a while. We didnt see him for some time. We asked for another hour. That was refused. I said my motto is where there is no alternative, there is no problem. Also its the case that you had three writers working on this. You didnt have that intense pressure of being one person in the room under extreme conditions time wise. Happen to get it on your own. We put our heads together. Obviously, we didnt have a lot of space and time. The final speech ended up 375 words and one great contribution came from karen hughes who was president bushs Senior Advisor and communication. That was a verse from the old testament, from isaiah talking about the creator calls him by name. Which led into a nice line for the president. That the same creator who named all the stars and named the seven souls, we know them today. We also learned in writing this, something that all speech writers have experienced is the pressure doesnt just concentrate your mind. It really clears away the clutter in the writing. You can do something in two hours in a situation like that. Its not going to be of any less quality. Theres just something about those kinds of conditions where you dont have to strain for meaning. You dont have to find a way to introduce drama into what it is youre talking about. Its all there. Weve been working for george w. For a while. At this point all of us were in our fourth year of writing for president bush. There was something we knew and that was that this speech to the nation which did not meditate on the tragedy but announced the deaths of the astronauts. This speech wasnt about him. This speech did not use the personal pronoun not once. President bush like to convey his thought. He like to convey his feelings. He like to do so with words ned of founds instead of announcing his frame of mind. He like to convey actual feelings with his words. Thats an example. Its an instinct he put into it. Of course, we met with him briefly, everything was so compressed before we went live. Went into the speech, it was four minutes. It was all over very fast. Then as always the case with george w. Bush, that was over, we reconvened in the oval office momentarily. He said thanks guys. Thanks. Finally, adam frankel speech writer for president obama. Hes currently Vice President of internal affairs. I was assistant on his memoirs which is probably the most impressive credential in this crowd. Ted has a story about the missile crisis. When he was asked to produce two speeches depending on how the missile crisises unfolded, one in the event of invasion of cuba the other if one was blockade. He couldnt the write about the invasion. He would tell that story how the decisionmaking process unfold. That played itself out many years later. As i was thinking about stories to share today when raid on bin laden happened. I remember i was actually at home on my couch and got an alert on my blackberry and the president was about to deliver some remarks. I was like, i didnt know about any remarks. I emailed all the speech writers. Anybody know anything about this. We were in the dark. Ben has a story about not being able to make that speech in advance. He had sat down to write it in advance, started writing tonight, Osama Bin Laden was killed. He said i cant write this. After the raid was successful he started grab the president saying we got to talk about this speech. You know, thats one kind of challenge. Picking up on what jeff was saying, i think its a mark of sort of tragic string of gun violence the country faced. This president had to speak on that topic. I went to write for president obama in 2007, i remember going working on a speech then that he delivered in a church on the south side about gun violence. The speeches have a for anybody who speaks about this topic and writers, sort of a numbing familiarity. You write these speeches and its heart breaking every time. You try to make them as unique and distinct as possible. Tell the story about the individuals whos lives were lost. Theyre so tragically familiar. I remember when i was working on a number of the speeches, these speeches, when people were killed or another tragedy, i think about trying to people who were suffering were in the room. How would i tunnel u talk to how would i talk to them. How would i want a president talk to them. One story along those lines that was probably the earliest sign was how talented a writer, president obama is. Was early on in the campaign in 2008 he went to speak 15th anniversary of l. A. Riots. He didnt want a peach. He speech but he wanted some notes. Saw a story in the l. A. Times about a pregnant woman who had been shot in the belly. She was rushed to the emergency room. It turned out the bullet lodged itself in the flushing part of her babys arm. The baby was fine. This was the story. Extraordinary story. I share this story with president obama. Not knowing at all what he would do with this. Im listening to we had a link up, i was listening. No video. I got audio from the event. He weaved this into a tap into american experience. He weaved this beautiful metaphor for america and american society. He raised the standard for me and all the other speech writers when i saw when i heard that. As a student of all the other speech writers, one of the things thats fun and rewarding as a writer to work with president obama, he would check in not just on moments of national importance, parts of tragedies. He would get very involved in speeches. He just cared a lot about. It might not have been something that was a tragedy. It might not have been something of great political importance, issues of faith and civil rights. He would just dive in and work with you on. It was a rewarding experience. Thank you. Have a discussion. Well open up to questions. Since were in a room full of professional speech writers what advice would you give to speech writers who may encounter in their life, whether its working for a politician or working for a private business person might encounter where where you got three hours or you got three days but this is a huge high level moment. What advice would you give . Well, one of the better pieces of advice i got while i was i worked for Vice President bush for 2 1 2 years before president reagan, i wrote for 2 1 2 years. In the course of that i i was talking to someone who had been who was writing for a governor. He said, what we do, we keep files. We keep files on all the big issues. Part of this is keeping up. When youre working for a political executive, youre working on you want to know where the edge of debate is and where the edge of discussion is. Whether its on Economic Policy or the press or the opposition and where your people. Where its Public Opinion and where is the edge. What are the arents out arguments out there. You want to have it. Of course with the president you have quite a few issues. I made a point of doing than i have stories. I collect stories. When were talking here about emergencies in a sense when youre in the white house everything is an emergency. Theres never enough time. If youre well prepared, when i was thinking about this, i was thinking, well, you know, we pretty much had control of the agenda. We always knew very rarely, Something Like challenge, or Something Else would come up. There wasnt much. We were driving the agenda and there was a back and a forth. Somebody would make a political run at us. We were always prepared. We always knew it was part an ongoing discussion. It was part of the ongoing debate in washington. By the way, i wouldnt say that when you it feels like nothing comes of it when it doesnt go your way. The whole point of the debate is that some place or another, it setted oh it sells down to some decision. Its not fruitless. Its not fruitless. Many of them, you plan for all major areas which youre engaged in. Where youre in part of the debate. Then when surprises come, you have much less distance to cover to deal with them. I agree with that. I think that in these moments of crisis of various kinds, whether were talking about the shuttle disaster or shooting or any of number kinds of crisis or disasters, what it is that the audience and in this case, the National Audience or if youre a ceo running a large enterprise, thats a substantial audience as well. There maybe a public element or a global company. A global audience of employees and investors and so forth. Theres confusion in these moments. There is confusion at first what happened. I talked about that a moment ago. In a larger sense, i think what people are looking for if they cant necessarily articulate that is meaning. Its understanding. The president or the ceo or anyone else in a substantial position like this, is an authority figure. We dont always regard them that way. They absolutely are. I think that we look to these Authority Figures to help us understand to help us connect so we can each other our achieve our own understanding. Certainly the president will not stand in the moment of tragedy and say to you this is what this means. Lot of the speeches that i reviewed when i was thinking about this discussion, acknowledge the meaning is elusive. President clinton in these moments quoted st. Paul and seeing through a glass darkly and acknowledging that we will probably never really understand what drives human beings to do these acts and commit these acts of violence. We should hold on to our faith regardless. I think that what youre looking for here to the best you can manage it while recognizing there are limits on this is a clarifying moment. At least clarify the issues. Clarify the fundamentals. I think thats where we are all grappling with in these kinds of speeches. To touch that and acknowledge in and give some direction to the way people themselves as they search their own souls. To connect them to whats really at stake. One thing i would say, adding to that speech writers, its important that you dont over write. As i mentioned, so much of what the speech writer does especially in the political world, try to give drama and force and special meaning. Whether its the speech on federal education policy or the latest announcement about whats going to happen at hud. You try to make it you try to give it some extra meaning or make it part of a larger story. Thats really your job. In these moments of crisis these big dramatic tragic moments, speech will not fail unless its been over written. The moment requires plain english. Not over writing but also not saying the wrong thing. I hear this discussion, kent state, which is worst part in the early moment of the nixon administration, student was killed and nixon give given this speech about cambodia incursion. Thats the only Foreign Policy speech pat buchanan did write. Instruction from the president was dont show it to henry. He said he would have calmed it down. To make it worse, statement came over the white house after the students were killed, speech writer staff sworn they never seen it. Usually the rule is we would see all the words before it went out as a final check. I dont know where the statement came from. Somebody if the press office. It got out. Then a sentence out of context can become inflammatory. And the phrase was something that went out. Dissent turns to violence. It invites tragedy. That sounds okay except it seem to be blaming the victims. It wasnt accompanied by other expressions of sympathy or regret. It had a terrible effect on the nations campuses. [indiscernible]. I dont think it does. What happened the next day nixon went to the pentagon and a womans husband was in vietnam. And tried to say to her, hurt husband is such a great hero. We had bombs around the campuses blowing things up. That got played up. The wrong word at the wrong time can have a terrible effect. The father at kent state said my daughter was not a bomb. Polarized everything. It was a long time it was a real turning point. Wrong words at the wrong time. Its not just on tragedies where one has to be careful about over writing. Not every speech is supposed to be the gettiesburg address. I remember early on writing a speech, labor audience, had got into this. It was red meat. I remember getting a call from axelrod, it was very clear immediately that he just gotten a call from the president. Said ax begins by telling a story about reporter in chicago. There was a lesson about to come. I wrote this piece. I thought it was the most beautiful piece that one can read and write about the opening of an airport. I talked about planes and all of this stuff. Editor describes him saying, when did it open and what airlines will be flying out and what are the routes. I got the message. It was great advice. Ax himself a great writer. That was an early lesson for me. You got to write for the occasion. If you dont, youre going to miss the mark. Mary kate when you were talking about your experience being in japan and not knowing what was going on, it struck me if Something Like that happened today, it will be information overload. People will be reporters will be tweeting about it who were there. You wouldnt have to watch the japanese plane. How has the social media transformation change how president s communicate with the public in moments of great moment like this . I will give one response here, which is one of the things that i really admire about president obama and one of the reasons i was drawn to him initially, he sort of resist that temptation to play into a lot of this. The 30 second sound bites and all of this stuff. I really respected that. As a writer, that was the kind offer. I wanted to work for. Somebody who is more concerned about telling the whole story making the complete argument and less concerned about the other approach which to quote the aid to a governor who will not name, who i once helped, he said well our view of speech writer is bringing sound bites together. I told that story who liked so much he included it in his book as an example of what not to do. I think there is one to be mindful. Now everybody is mindful of how the speech will be conveyed in a certain media environment and the speech writers is think being that. I do think its important for a speech writer to think about the integrity of the speech. When you start thinking swinging sound bites together and writing nuggets and sort of compiling them into a speech, you lose something. The speech of the integto integ integrity gets lost. I have somewhat similar view. I think too many speeches are just the speaker. I remember at one time seeing a senator give a talk. Afterwards, i went up to the podium and it was a list of sound bites. It was given by his staff. He said you got to weave them into whatever he says. I dont think of that. I agree with you totally on that. Let me Say Something about the changing medium environment and technology environment. This big difference between what you have been doing and what we did, about 1988 the new rehub had a cover story about the change sound bites. It turned out they had timing, somebody had done it. Somebody was sitting there timing the quote from speeches and president ial speeches during political campaigns. I believe this was 1968. The typical clip of the speech that went on the evening news was 52 seconds. By the time we were this is now 1988 we were playing, it was down to seven seconds. We have three networks to get through. If they didnt cover our stuff or the New York Times or the washington post, might as well not have been said. If you look at speeches, they are a coherent actors arguments about the character of the country. We also knew that we had to get through that seven seconds for different audience. Everyone here will know, maybe you will too. When youre writing speeches, i had layers of audiences in mind. I cared about what the audience in front of the president was saying. I care about that line of reporters back was thinking. I cared about what the editors were thinking. I cared about what the American People were thinking. I cared about what audiences around the world were thinking and all of them had to be collapsed into this one document. Very familiar. Let me just finish. I knew that the line in the back of the room were up for debate. They were also not particularly friendly. It mattered that we understood what kinds of things they like to quote. What kind of language and what kind of sentence structure. All of these things that are in the tv business called good sound and in the news business, are called a good quote. We made sure that we had one or two in. You do not want ten of them in because you want to control the story. We were under particular pressure to come up with one or two of those. We werent going to get the 52 seconds. It is like now. Your man was the leader on this. One of few times i will say good thing about president obama. Thats a joke. [laughter] come on. If you look at the 2008 campaign and his dual with hillary clinton, battle of the primaries, week after week. This is the age of cable. What does that mean . When they come out, a good chunk of the speech, 10 to 15 minutes will be covered. Then theyll cut off and give the same amount of time to the other side. She would come out and do what politicians had been doing. Recognizing everybody in the audience. That was about the time they cut away because they were allowing 15 minutes. He would come out and right into his message each time and at the time, he was through with his 15 minutes. He had got everything he needed to say to the country out. We thought of that. You were a generation ahead of them. Now this is the last point ill make your dad got up once and said, why are there more memorable phrases . The answer to that was, people in the positions we had no longer have we are Television Coverage entire speeches regularly. Up know you got a Million People watching or at least several hundred thousand every time you get up. Theres much less pressure to come up with that seven seconds. You got much time as you want. Very quickly to sort of bridge the generations. Clark, as you put it. The Clinton White house, we were presmartphone and pretwitter. We had cell phones, nobody put them together. At the same time, we were dealing very actively with and struggling with the fragmentation of the media environment and the acceleration of the news cycle. This was very much topic of conversation internally in the white house. This was a period of the advents of msnbc and fox news and the networks didnt control the conversation to the extent that they did. The major newspapers didnt control the conversations to the fent that they did. Other newspapers were disappearing online was rising. How do you deal with this . One of the thing that was noted at the time was that president clinton gave a lot of speeches. Bewrote our own internal analysis. We found that i have the numbers a little bit off. A similar point in their presidency, nonelection year late in the presidency, harry truman gave 88 speeches. President reagan gave 300. President clinton gave 550. Statistics like that will wheel it to justice that president clinton was disciplined and love to get in front of a microphone. Its absolutely the case. Anybody has watched bill clinton, he love to give a speech. He was good at it with no help from any of us. But at the same time, this was an acknowledgement of the demands on a modern president. He is expected to be out there everyday and during period of time when the president has not been actively trying to drive the conversation, hes come in for a lot of criticism. Adam will remember this because you were there. During that summer when the debate was heating up over the Affordable Care act, and president obama went relatively quiet because a lot of the negotiations were happening behind the scenes. He was not looking to complicate things by giving a lot of speeches that would inflame the other side. The other side jumped into the breach. This was tea party summer. When the president finally came out there, it was in september of 2010, right after the Summer Vacation to give a big speech to take control. This was seen as a great acknowledgement that hes been too quiet for too long. President s are expected to be seen and heard all the time. All the more so in a time of twitter and so forth. It creates on a part not only a president but a ceo and University President s and heads of foundation. Theres feeling of that if youre not tweeting once an hour. It is harder today than ever before to control the conversation. There are too many livers out there. You got to keep trying. After this, i wanted to go to questions from the audience. We have microphones on either side. Please pick up the microphone and well get to you quickly. President nixon had advice that would have applied to people in this room. He asked us, before we sent the speech to us he called us in and said i want you to do this. He said underline the red the paragraph that you think that will be the lead in tomorrows paper. What quote would they use . The thing was, we would do that and we couldnt find it. We couldnt one that summed up the message. We started to write them in. That was just sound bites but as good summaries, i think thats wonderful advice to writers. Crystalize everything and do a few words. Thats before you start writing. Im with the brighten client. What sentence do you want your audience to go away with. When i say this to young people, eisenhower used to say you should be able to sit it on the back of a match book. This isnt grade school where people are thinking youre uncool. Here we are. Probably shesoh interested in knowing president clinton referred to his 1988 convention speech. One of the great failures of speeches he made and one of the most remarkable turn arounds to become the president four years later. Any comments on that . You did refer to it from time to time. I think he has a different perspective on it. Not that the speech was a great success, hes never argued that. He had a set of obligations and that contributed to the length. That was the fact that he wanted us to understand. This is summer of 1988. Clinton is the third term. I was in law school between years and i was at me house in northern wisconsin watching that convention. One of my pals i group with was across town. He called up during the clinton speech. He said are you watching the future president . I said i i sure am. We both thought he was president ial material. Good afternoon, thank you all for when i was that Age Community service was something that the juvenile Justice System imposed on people as an punishment. There has been a complete sea change in the idea of Community Service and solitary Movement Across this country has spread overseas. I think there are a lot of reasons for that. Do i think george bush deserves credit for that. I think he threw his rhetoric over the years caused a cultural change in the way people view volunteers. Its been a great thing for our country. In 1988, Vice President bush was quite a bit behind in the polls coming out of the Democratic Convention. Several weeks before, i written a speech. I do not talk about speeches. I written a peach in which at the beginning of the Democratic Convention, about a week before it. About maybe two weeks. This is during the platform process. Ted sorenson said were going to have to be short and bland about the platform. I wrote a speech for the president which had a line this it. The democrats put on their political treachery coat and sun glasses, wrapped their platform and never whisper the l word again. If you remember that campaign later, the lword became a note. But it didnt in that peach. An event in iran on the day it was delivered the night before we shot down an airbus by accident. No president ial speech was going to get coverage that day. It came to the Democratic Convention and we went dark all through the convention. We did not i dont think you all did or Vice President did. Its something youll never get away with now. We really had teams at the Democratic Convention. I get the assignment to write the president ial weekly address on saturday conventions end on thursdays. I decided we had lost but this was the right moment. You talked about moments. Might as well never been said. It never appeared in the New York Times. We started driving the lword as a term. By the time the convention came, the Vice President wasnt campaigning because he was out of money between the two conventions. We were there all the time and we broke the l word and we were back even with them with dukakis. Afterwards we drove and drove and finally dukakis got so frustrated with it, he said hes been dodging whether he was a liberal. He said well i am a liberal in the style of harry truman. Nobody heard the rest. That is that. Thats how you can turn around something. Its the right phrase but its also the right moment and then keeping at it. Were bumping up against time time. Question for the whole panel. The poet Richard Wilber once gave a graduation address called the speech and ceremony he said it was to enable people to respond to great events in their lives by feeling appropriate motion. Will you say thats the duty of the president of the great events on National Life . Yes. Thank you. My question is, whats your advice on how you approach using humor when matters of diplomacy and decor rum have to be factored in. So you come up thats funny despite that it is appropriate. I got pulled into a lot of humor speeches. One rule i would say across the board its very tricky to use humor in a situation where there will be people in the audience where the remarks are translated. You tend not to do humor at an international toast overseas. Theres so in pitfalls in the translation. Thats one rule. Just keep it straight when youre in a language situation. Second, the white house we had a guy, which im sure theres plenty of guys floating around, who was freelance writer. He lived on malibu beach in california with a fax machine. He would fax in these jokes. I saved these fax. Its a joke fall. Theyre all formula jokes. He would just change the name. In fact those back in the 1980s were about donald trump. Dont be afraid to take formula jokes and just change the words and change the name to the current crowd. Second at the white house, you cant just feel from carson and leno and letterman now, you cant just take stuff off tv and steal it. The essence of of a joke is two ideas being put together that have nothing to do with each other. That is the surprise that causes the laughter. We would do for the big white house Correspondents Dinners and gridiron, wed have the researchers come up with lists of all the current stuff. Top motive movies top songs. We would call in all of these funny people. Whether they were professionally associated with us or not. Put a big bottle of scotch in the middle of the table. Something with Michael Jackson and speaker of the house. You come up with these funny things. 95 of it completely unusable by the president of the united states. We were con trained because george w. Bush did not like humor that belittled other people or insulted people or any way made fun especially of his political opponents. That was a great credit to him and the reason why he got so much done in a bipartisan way. He did not stoop to insulting his political opponents. We were left with jokes about broccoli, the dog. You cant make new jersey jokes West Virginia jokes. The list gets smaller and smaller and the pile on the floor gets bigger and bigger. It was great fun and it really makes you appreciate the people who have to stay up and do comedy monologue. We would come up with stuff. Original comedy is really fun but really difficult. I gathered, we got one people that want to ask questions. Im an undergrad here. We have a speech writing advisory group. I think this is a more general speech writing question. Are there any crutches that you see used a lot in speech writing specific to president ial administrations . Do you guys have any pet peeves . Lets get the other question. My question is if youre in a position that has so much pressure all the time, you guys spoke about earlier, when you make a mistake and the American Public takes something you wrote in the direction that you not intended. How will you deal with the disappointment. Is there any way for a strategy to pop back up and get back into it after youve been beaten down . The questions that annoy you and the times you need a crutch . I can answer. You just get used to some of this stuff. I wrote a speech on education got up next day, it was a speech about nothing. There are plenty of other speeches where you write this thing, you deliver it and you get hammered on the news. It comes with the territory. Disappointment is sort of the deal. A way to avoid awful things like that happening are that the president was going to the drug summit in columbia. Very dangerous. First half of the speech was on reducing supply. Second half was on reducing demand. The guy who wrote it had this habit, which was a great habit of walking the hall and reading the speech out loud in order to catch tongue twisters. We walked down the halls and they will listen to my peach. Get through the supply part. Segway sentence between the two was, and big bust are not enough. Wait back up. I dont think thats a good sentence there. If he hospital read it out loud, he never would have caught it. I think you got to do stuff like that to avoid pitfalls. Second to your question about pet peeves the one that i think is adding to the divisiveness. They mischaracter the other side. It would be more honest and more informative to actually correctly summarize the other side. So that your arcs against arguments against it are stronger. Thats my pet peeve. There are those who say. There are those who say theirry kate was wrong. I will say there are degrees to this thing. Probably the worst thank this can happen when youre writing these speeches when you work really hard on something and it gets ignored. Its either up ended by events or its not interesting enough for anybody to bother covering it. A lot of things the president say escapes the notice of the nation. Youre mostly happy to get attention. Were a little bit envious of one another when we do. One of the jokes i wrote for the white house Correspondents Dinner early in 1988 i listed a very angry maureen dowd column. She took Public Defense at a joke i written in. History not wounded but actually delighted. Im being honest. Sometimes this need for your speeches to get noticed, reach a kind of extreme that might be a little unfortunate. After president bush delivered his axis of evil line and elicited a stronger reaction if iran and my joke was in the maureen dowd column, one of my colleagues called me up, he said, you know, nothing you ever wrote got Million People out on the street of tehran. You can hope. I just want to more seriously say this briefly. Circle back to a larger point that adam was touching on about the power of these speeches. This is a response to your question about power of the speeches to change. We all recognize that a speech is not a work of iloka mee. There are landmark speeches that become a pivot point in history or in campaign. I think back to the reverend wright speech, so the called speech that then senator obama gave in the campaign. That was the defining moment. Certainly a single speech can make a tremendous difference in all kinds of ways. For the most part theres a whole school of thought actually, maybe some of you are familiar with. Theres a growing school of thought that speeches dont matter at all. If they matter, its in the wrong way. When president speak, they can only polarized. They can only deliver counterproductive speeches. Theres a political scientists, i wont name him because im not going to give him publicity here on who produced number of works said the great number of speeches didnt make a difference at all. I think the way to think about speeches in terms of impact is not sort of an instantaneous work of ailky mi but an argument. It transforms discussions that are not immediate in a given pole. But president s are in a truly unique position to help steer the National Discussion in a certain direction. Does not always go the direction that they want. They have enormous influence even today. Once in a while hate speech can really move a needle. Nixon saved his career with that speech. Half hour Public Opinion turned upside down. He told about his pet peeve about president nixon. Nixon had this device he would use in the speeches. He said my staff told me to take the easy way. Im not going to do that. Sometimes bill would walk by the door at the oval office, he would say take the easy way mr. President. Thank you all for taking the easy way and listening to this great panel. Most of all, thank you all for this wonderful panel. [applause] on the next washington journal, well look at free speech on campuses. Looking at student protest and marchs. Washington journal live every morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. You can join the conversation with your calls and comments on facebook and twitter. Next, authors peggy noonan talking about politics. The founding fathers, and the 2016 president ial race. The First Capital of the united states. This is one hour