The Voice behind the podium

One can’t have been watching the events south of the border over the past few weeks without noting the power of words; words in the hands of a skilled speechwriter.

After being caught up in the drama of the Democratic National Convention (a telling contrast in tone to the relative sobriety of the Republican event unfolding now), I was curious about how Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama went about the writing process. He does have speechwriters, yet for his big convention closer it appears he did much of the drafting himself.
And, guess what? Oratory matters. Thinking matters more.

According to Time magazine:

“The toughest aspect of writing a speech isn’t so much the rhetoric, it’s the ideas—which take time to incubate and develop, says Andrei Cherny, editor of the journal Democracy and a former White House speechwriter under Clinton.”

Even if purely from the perspective of a craftsperson, it’s interesting to read how getting the ideas is done in the big world of U.S. politics. A January Newsweek article, quoted Obama’s chief speechwriter Jon Favreau – sometimes given the wunderkind epithet – on how he works with his boss to put words in his mouth:

“’What I do is to sit with him for half an hour,’ Favreau explains. ‘He talks and I type everything he says. I reshape it, I write. He writes, he reshapes it. That’s how we get a finished product. It’s a great way to write speeches.’”

It’s a great way to write anything that reflects the voice it is meant to represent. An authentic voice isn’t applied externally like makeup; it comes from the inside out. Capturing what your client would say, as they would say it, can be, and should be, a matter of theft: taking their ideas, in their vernacular, and giving them the polish they need for the job they need to do.

We’ll be watching Sarah Palin’s speech tonight. Following a weekend when the revelations about this VP candidate were almost as astonishing as the false rumours, many American undecided voters wll be hanging on her words. How will she manage? Curious copywriters want to know.