Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (2 page)

A Curator at the National Archives in Washington called one day and invited me over to take a look at a new exhibit before it opened. The archivist said there was an item in its “American Originals” presentation that would surely intrigue me.

So I went. There in the rotunda was the usual stuff: an early copy of the Magna Carta and one of the few copies of the Emancipation Proclamation in Lincoln’s handwriting. Over on the side were some interesting curiosities: the canceled check for $7.2 million that purchased Alaska from Russia, along with John Wayne’s World War II application to go to work for the OSS, our nascent spy agency.

But what grabbed my attention was a two-page typescript displayed in a glass case next to Lincoln’s work. It was a memo from me when I was a White House speechwriter, dated July 18, 1969, when everyone was excited about our incipient landing on the moon. The subject line read “In the Event of Moon Disaster.” It included a draft of a short speech that President Nixon would have made if the astronauts of
Apollo XI
were stranded on the moon and had to “close down communication” lest the peoples of the world would have to agonize with them as they starved to death. The somber speech was never delivered, of course—the moon shot initiated in the Kennedy era was a triumph for the United States and “all mankind”—but it had been filed away, forgotten for three decades until a reporter found it while digging around in the archives. The document has become one of the odd artifacts of that historic day, a sobering reminder of the risk the crew ran (and tragedy did strike a space shuttle crew years later). I include it at the end of the updated edition of this anthology in a new section of “undelivered speeches,” along with quite different addresses drafted by or for Presidents Kennedy and Clinton that they did not use.

What struck me, peering down through the unbreakable glass into the case containing my treasured curiosity, was this question: When did a speech become a speech—when it was drafted or when it was given? The answer came just as quickly: Words on a page do not a speech make. Nor is a script a play, nor a screenplay a movie. What makes a draft speech a real speech is the speaking of it; but without that articulation, without
the strong presence of the deliverer, without the audience to be aroused or moved, all you have is a polemic on a page. A speech is an event.

I looked to my right, at the larger glass case with the guard standing next to it. The document in it was no speech, either, and was not even much of an inspirational piece of writing; one eminent historian said its words had “all the moral fervor of a bill of lading.” Lincoln, the greatest presidential speechwriter of all, chose to put his proclamation in sere, legalistic language because no fanfare was needed for such a monumental change of national direction. The stunning extension of human freedom, not to mention the largest seizure of property in history, was thunderbolt enough.

What if there had been television and streaming media and the Internet back in 1863? The wartime president could not have avoided presenting his unprecedented executive act of emancipation in a speech to the divided nation. If you are interested in speechwriting as an art form or in speech viewing as an actively involved member of an audience, take a crack at drafting such a speech. Your purpose is to rally your war-weary North to a greater cause than Union, which is wearing thin, and to stop antislavery Europe from trading with the South; at the same time, you do not want to trigger a bloody slave rebellion or lose border states or preclude peace negotiations with Confederate leaders. Your policy decision, after much private agonizing, had been made: to free the slaves in all states in rebellion, but not to free those in the slaveholding border states that did not secede. Now explain that in a speech to the nation in a way that advances all your morale-building, military, diplomatic, and moral goals.

Standing in that rotunda with its incongruous juxtaposition of writings on display, and turning that imaginary assignment over in my mind, this recovered speechwriter confronted the larger question, one of special interest to the reader hefting this volume: What is the single most important element in turning a speech into a memorable event? Is a “great” speech created by the dramatic occasion, or the persuasive style of the orator, or the eloquence of the words themselves?

Here’s the answer:

The astute reader will note that the previous declarative sentence ends with a colon. The purpose of a colon is to signal a dramatic pause and point to what’s coming next. And yet, nothing but this interruption follows “Here’s the answer:” (it is not because I do not have an answer).

The even more astute reader will readily grasp the writerly manipulation under way. This is the preface to the third edition of an anthology of great speeches. Its primary purpose, like that of the book it introduces, is
to instruct and inspire, largely by example, those interested in speechmaking, speechwriting, and speech listening. (A secondary purpose is to provide a doorstop-sized reference for students of history and politics who want to examine primary sources beyond quotation-book snippets, which is probably why it has a wider readership than any of my language books or novels.)

The best way to begin an informal speech that does not deal with a crisis or tragedy is to tell a little story. If the anecdote is amusing, fine—that wakes up or relaxes an audience, whichever is required—but most attempts at humor from the lectern by noncomedians lay an egg. More reliable is a story about something poignant or instructive that has happened to you—neither funny nor tragic—and that connects to the theme of your speech. It gets personal without “getting personal.”

In these introductory words, the visit to the Archives about the moon-shot draft speech was such an opening. They led quickly to the point about a speech being an event rather than a script and set up the imaginary Lincoln speech proclaiming emancipation. From there it was an easy transition to internal dialogue asking about the relative importance of occasion, presentation, and content. If this were a speech (and it’s not—I used that device in the intro to the first edition, which follows this preface) we would be six or seven minutes along the way, and you’d want the answer to the relative-importance question.

Now here’s my answer: “Great” speeches are made on occasions of emotional turmoil. The occasion can be a political victory or concession speech, a eulogy of a beloved figure, a summation at a murder trial or political show trial; it can be a prime minister’s rallying a nation threatened by invasion or a president’s consoling a nation after a disaster.

The next most important element in the formation of a speech deemed great is the forum. This can be a joint session of Congress or a national convention, an academic ceremony or a testimonial dinner, a battlefield or a deck of an aircraft carrier, a pulpit or a gallows or a grave. Such moments and such places cry out for momentous addresses and imbue efforts toward them with solemnity or at least seriousness. The newsworthy setting adds respect for the words just as the tradition-filled hall’s dramatic echoes lend gravitas to the speaker’s message.

Of course, content and its phrasing take advantage of occasion and forum to put a speech over the top in the making of history or the creation of a reputation. There is a caveat: Such a spotlight and its demanding audience call all the more attention to a weak speech or a bumbling speaker. New York Mayor John Lindsay strode on the national scene in a speech to Washington’s Gridiron Club, where the tradition is for gentle,
often self-mocking humor, followed by a short, serious conclusion; he told a series of off-color jokes and was no longer taken seriously on the national scene. Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton gave a tedious speech to bored Democratic conventioneers in 1988 and the only applause came when he said, “And in conclusion.” (He was later taken seriously; his uplifting speech to Memphis ministers is collected here.)

But the moment and the milieu sharply focus the mind. Winston Churchill’s speech after the military disaster that led to the evacuation of the British Army from Europe at Dunkirk—which he skillfully characterized as “a miracle of deliverance” even as he had to acknowledge a military disaster—is a great speech because it combined the elements of occasion, forum, and delivery of content. Not only was it an elegantly phrased explanation of the defeat culminating in a ringing “we shall fight on the beaches” peroration, not only was the prime minister’s deep-throated delivery forcefully defiant in a hushed Parliament, and broadcast to the world, but the overriding reason was the historic occasion: at that moment tyranny was on the verge of victory, and democracy’s main weapon was Churchill’s rallying voice.

I will return to that tripod theme. But first let me tell you some of what I’ve discovered about speechifying during the years of gathering up and analyzing these addresses, ancient and modern.

Let me come clean about the possibility of textual error. When it comes to the accuracy of the report of some great speeches, it ain’t necessarily so. Did Patrick Henry really deliver the speech in 1775 as you see it here? No written text exists; the inflammatory speech may have been wholly ad-libbed with no notes. Without a contemporaneous newspaper report at hand, we must rely on a biographer’s account written forty years afterward. The only evidence that the inflammatory patriot’s most famous exhortation is genuine comes from a motto on a flag of the Virginia militia that served under him: “Liberty or Death.” I know not what course other anthologists may take, but as for me, I’ll take whatever recollected text we have with a grain of salt.

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