For this particular speech, I begged him not to say, “What do we have to lose?” or to refer to the participants as “you people” as he had during the campaign’s ministers’ meeting. “You people is pejorative,” I explained to him. He looked puzzled. I said, “It’s bad. Just don’t say it. Ever.” When he practiced the opener, he spoke only in fragments, not complete sentences. When I tried to correct him, he became frustrated and more irritable.
