John,
I look forward to spending the week with you virtually (and, on occasion, literally at various convention events). So far this week, I have learned that “online journalism” really means queuing for credentials and buses. I am also trying hard, very hard, to soak up Los Angeles. So far I have been to a beach party in Malibu, where it was rumored that the young girl who was the inspiration for Barbie, now fully grown, was actually in attendance. (When I reported this to my 5-year-old daughter, I could tell she was thinking: But Daddy, Malibu Barbie is just a doll). And I had dinner at Spago, where the pizza was markedly superior to the frozen version.
I, too, was struck by the apparent fact that Gore is writing at least a good deal of the speech himself. I believe it. I think it could be a very good thing for him. Apart from its PR value, it could lead to a more forceful and personally felt speech.
Rick Hertzberg, who was Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter, once noted that all Great Men–or people who aspire to Greatness–are delighted to have a chief of staff. (It implies you have a staff.) Ditto a press secretary. A speechwriter, well … if you’re so smart, why do you need one? But there’s no shame in it. Presidents have always had help. Washington’s farewell address was drafted by Alexander Hamilton. Even Lincoln, revolutionary stylist that he was, rewrote the peroration of his first inaugural from a suggestion by William Seward. FDR copied out his first inaugural by hand from a typed draft by Raymond Moley. We’ve only had one president who was a professional speechwriter: Dwight Eisenhower wrote for Douglas MacArthur. (MacArthur on Ike: “Best clerk I ever had.”)
Having said all that, I do think it’s a good thing if the candidate writes his own speeches, or works on them so intently that they become his own. My views have been colored by writing for Clinton. We always went back to his early speeches as a candidate, especially the one at the DLC in 1991, which he essentially ad-libbed. He loved to write, rewrite, and extemporize. He’s a good pen-to-paper writer, but often is better dictating passages and revising in rehearsal. Gore, I gather, tends to sit down at the keyboard, whether working solo or with others. His eulogy for his father, which he obviously wrote himself, was very well done. He has two gifted writers–our mutual friend Eli Attie, and Bob Shrum, who wrote great convention addresses for McGovern in 1972 and Kennedy in 1980. I hope he makes good use of them.
In the meantime, I’m looking forward a great deal to Clinton’s speech tonight. He won’t take on his usual goal of announcing bushels of new policies, and can be a bit more partisan and biting than he often is. It will be interesting, too, to see the different reactions–the crowd (usually rapturous); the press (usually scornful); the public (usually, as measured by polls at least, positive–at which point the press decides that Clinton gave a good speech after all). It should be fun.
