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How To Write A (Good) Political Speech

Dr. Jim Anderson — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 04:01:59 +0000

Often It's A Good Political Speech That Gets The Vote Out

Political speeches, for the most part, are forgettable. Except when they aren’t. If you’ve spent any time listening to the types of speeches that politicians are giving these days, they are basically junk (the Phil Davison, GOP Candidate, Delivers Stark County Treasurer Speech on YouTube is a classic bad political speech). The question is whose fault is this: the speech writers or the speech givers? I’m willing to bet that the art of writing a good political speech has been forgotten by far too many speechwriters. I’m going to solve that problem right now…

What Is Rhetoric?

Political speeches are a specialized form of speech. According to Wikipedia, rhetoric is the art of using language to communicate effectively and persuasively. What this means for us is that when we use rhetoric to create a political speech, we want the speech to accomplish a goal – convince an audience to vote our way.

If you want to dive in deeper to rhetoric, you can explore the three audience appeals: logos (reason), pathos (emotions), and ethos (knowledge). For our purposes here we’ll stick with the understanding that a good political speech needs to win over an audience no matter how you go about doing it.

What’s Wrong With Political Speeches Today?

Most speeches given by politicians today suffer from the same fatal flaw: they are completely forgettable. Exactly who’s fault this is has not been resolved: is it the speechwriter’s fault or the speech givers? No matter, both are probably partially to blame.

Where did things go wrong? Jeff Shesol who is a political speech writer believes that one of the reasons that political speeches have lost their punch is because of how speech writers are writing them.

He points out that it’s all too easy for political speech writers to focus on the sound bites that they hope will be captured out of a speech. In order to make this happen, they over use such tools as alliteration (repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of a series of words and/or phrases: “economy, employment, empowerment”) and cliches (an expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect: “there’s no place like home”).

Even worse, too many speech writers / speakers believe that if they keep saying the same thing over and over again it will eventually become true. The reality is that the audience tunes out the speaker and the speech ends up being quickly forgotten.

What Does It Take To Write A Good Political Speech?

All of this negativity talking about political speeches might make you feel as though there is no hope – maybe it’s not possible to create a political speech that has an impact. The good news is that history shows us that this is not true. Churchill, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, etc. have shown us that political speeches can still change the world. They just have to be created the right way.

The first thing that you need to realize when you are sitting down to write a political speech is that the speech needs to have a point. What is the main goal: do you want the audience to take some action, vote a particular way, etc.? A political speech without a point is just a waste of everyone’s time.

Next, you had better take the time to organize your speech in a way that your audience will be able to follow what you are saying. Sure, you might believe that what you are asking them to do is the right thing, but if you don’t lay out your reasoning in a way that they can follow then they won’t come along for the ride.

Finally, and this may be the most important point of all, every single word in your speech must matter. This means that there can’t be any phrases that are in there just for filler or just to transition from one thought to another. Instead, ruthless editing is involved and every word that is not contributing to reaching the final goal needs to be chopped out and removed. Shesol points out that an excellent example of this is the speech that Bill Gates gave at the Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum in which he introduced “Creative Capitalism”.

What All Of This Means For You

At some time we are all called on to write a political speech. We may not be running for president, but perhaps we’re trying to get elected to the local school board. No matter, there are too many bad political speeches out there – we don’t want to contribute to this mess.

Instead, we want to write a good political speech. To do this we need to make sure that our speech has a very clear point to it. The speech will need to be well organized and every word in it will need to have a purpose for being there.

If we can craft a political speech that has these characteristics, then we will have created a very powerful communication tool. With tools like this, elections can be won and from there, the world can be changed.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: How long do you think a good political speech should be?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

So don’t get me wrong, I love Toastmasters. It’s a great organization and I’ve been a member since forever. However, it’s not perfect. They’ll do a great job of teaching you HOW to give a speech, but they won’t help you to do a better job at WHAT you say. That is where tag lines come in…

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It’s Amazing What A Speaker Can Learn By Watching YouTube

Dr. Jim Anderson — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 04:01:39 +0000

Image Credit

YouTube Has More Speakers Than The Largest Motivational Workshop

Just how does one become a better public speaker? I mean let’s be serious here, you do want to get better, don’t you? Pretty much any book that you read on the subject or class that you attend in order to build up your skills will tell you the same time — if you really want to get better, then you’ve got to take the time to watch the pros at work. Great, just where do you find such pros and how can you get admitted to their speeches to watch them at work? Good news — I’m going to tell you how (and it’s free!) …

Welcome To The 21st Century

In the olden days (like about 5 years ago), if you wanted to become a better speaker then yes, you would have to pick yourself up and go to where a good speaker was giving a speech and plop yourself down and start taking notes. Thanks goodness we now live in the modern 21st Century and we no longer have to make such an effort in order to improve ourselves.

Carmine Gallo is a communications coach who faced this very problem a few years back. After doing some searching on the Internet, Carmine discovered that the free video service YouTube was a treasure trove of recorded examples of excellent speakers. Who knew?

Who Should I Watch?

So now you’ve found the Library of Congress of online videos. The problem is that there is almost too much information here. If you start searching for “speakers”, you’re going to get blown away. How about if we take a few moments and come up with a list to get you started:

Tony Robbins: people seem to be split on what they think of Tony and his motivational message; however, from a public speaking point-of-view we don’t really care — he’s one heck of a speaker. His workshops cost thousands of dollars to attend, but on YouTube he’s there for you to study for free.

Steve Jobs: Steve is not only a great speaker, but he also has a very good understanding of how to use multimedia to support what he’s saying. His presentations at Apple user conferences are legendary for their style and impact. Sure we don’t have an army of graphic artists working for us; however, we can learn something from Steve and he’s living proof that if you practice, practice, practice you will do a good job.

Suze Orman: we all know Suze Orman as a no-nonsense provider of financial advice; however, she’s also a fantastic speaker. One of her best qualities is that she handles questions very well — there’s no good way to practice for them. Watch and learn!

Looking Beyond YouTube

You might think that once you’ve found YouTube, that’s all that you’ll ever need. However, the Internet is a big place and you might be interested in watching more formal speeches than you’ll be able to find on YouTube. Gallo has done some research and here are some other sites that you should be sure to check out:

Charlierose.com: Charlie Rose is a PBS interviewer who seems to be able to gain access to just about every important person out there. This is the place to go if you want to learn how to master the one-on-one interview.

Cisco: John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco has overcome personal difficulties in order to become a master speaker. His speeches do a fantastic job of making the complicated seem understandable. His trademark move is the trip into the audience in order to connect with people. Watch and learn how a master does it.

Businessweek.com: sure you know about the magazine, but did you know about the web site and its videos? This is where you’ll see all of the “big” business leaders being interviewed and you can watch to see how they communicate. Hint: not all of them do a good job of it.

What All Of This Means For You

In the end, we can read all of the books, take all of the courses, and even attend all of the Toastmasters meetings that we can fit into our already busy lives, but in the end it always comes back to one thing: we’ve got to study and learn from the folks who know how to deliver a good speech.

In the old days it required a great deal of effort to seek out who the best speakers were and then to track them down when they were speaking close to where we’d be. However, in today’s electronic age, this is no longer necessary — now we can bring the speakers to us via the Internet.

In order to make the most of this powerful tool, we need to do our homework. We need to watch each speaker carefully and take good notes on what we think that they do well and where we think that they could do better. These are the notes that we’ll then be able to use to improve our own speeches. Now go out there and watch some YouTube!

Who do you think is the best speaker that people can watch on YouTube in order to become better speakers?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Who do you think is the greatest communicator of all time? If I had to pick the best communicator out there right now, I believe that President Obama would win. Now the question for you, independent of your political beliefs, is how can you learn to speak more like him…?

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