The Speechwriter Quotes

“Why do we trust men who have sought and attained high office by innumerable acts of vanity and self-will? When a work colleague makes a habit of insisting on his own competence and virtue, we may tolerate him, we may even admire his work, but his vanity is not an inducement to trust him. Why, then, do we trust the men who make careers of persuading us of their goodness and greatness, and who compete for our votes? Catherine Zuckert makes this point powerfully in an essay on Tom Sawyer. Tom, remember, is brave and clever and has a firm sense of the right thing to do, but he is animated mainly by a hunger for glory. He is, in short, the essence of an able politician. “People like Tom Sawyer serve others not for the sake of the others,” writes Zuckert. “They serve because they glory in receiving glory. . . . We should reward such people with the fame they so desire—if and when they perform real public services. But we should not trust them.”II I feel the force of that last sentence now: we go badly wrong when we trust them. Indeed much of the hand-wringing commentary about the loss of trust in government resulting from Vietnam and Watergate is simply, I now think, a failure to appreciate the simple truth that politicians should never have been trusted in the first place. They may be lauded when they’re right and venerated when they’re dead, but they should never be trusted.”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“The people involved in each of these events would have made the understandable but often mistaken assumption that the governor had a clear idea of who they were and what it was they were doing. That’s why high-level politicians need speechwriters: not because they’re so dense they need someone to tell them what to say but because no normal person can be expected to say something interesting that many times a day, on that many subjects, to that many separate groups. Talking points explain what the event is, who will be present, the event’s agenda if there is one, some relevant background, and what we—the speechwriters—believe will be appropriate or interesting for the governor to say. For the unimportant events or the ones he didn’t care much about, he would wait until three or four minutes before the event began to look at the talking points. If the event was in the office or if you were with him on the road, he preferred that you tell him what the event was and what he should say.”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“Many people take this as evidence of duplicity or cynicism. But they don’t know what it’s like to be expected to make comments, almost every working day, on things of which they have little or no reliable knowledge or about which they just don’t care. They don’t appreciate the sheer number of things on which a politician is expected to have a position. Issues on which the governor had no strong opinions, events over which he had no control, situations on which it served no useful purpose for him to comment—all required some kind of remark from our office. On a typical day Aaron might be asked to comment on the indictment of a local school board chairman, the ongoing drought in the Upstate, a dispute between a power company and the state’s environmental regulatory agency, and a study concluding that some supposedly crucial state agency had been underfunded for a decade. Then there were the things the governor actually cared about: a senate committee’s passage of a bill on land use, a decision by the state supreme court on legislation applying to only one county, a public university’s decision to raise tuition by 12 percent. Commenting on that many things is unnatural, and sometimes it was impossible to sound sincere. There was no way around it, though. Journalists would ask our office about anything having remotely to do with the governor’s sphere of authority, and you could give only so many minimalist responses before you began to sound disengaged or ignorant or dishonest. And the necessity of having to manufacture so many views on so many subjects, day after day, fosters a sense that you don’t have to believe your own words. You get comfortable with insincerity. It affected all of us, not just the boss. Sometimes I felt no more attachment to the words I was writing than a dog has to its vomit.”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“It’s impossible to attain much success in politics if you’re the sort of person who can’t abide disingenuousness. This isn’t to say politics is full of lies and liars; it has no more liars than other fields do. Actually one hears very few proper lies in politics. Using vague, slippery, or just meaningless language is not the same as lying: it’s not intended to deceive so much as to preserve options, buy time, distance oneself from others, or just to sound like you’re saying something instead of nothing.”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“He didn’t speak exclusively on the stimulus bill at all these engagements, but the topic of that bill, and of government spending generally, was never far away at any of them. Why was he so deeply opposed to it? The idea behind the stimulus was to pump large amounts of cash into the economy in order to ignite consumer spending and, in turn, growth. The governor thought that idea was foolish for many reasons, but the two that led him to oppose the policy with all his energy were these: the cash was borrowed, and most of it would pass from the federal government to state governments. He understood the culture and habits of government well enough to know that that federal money wouldn’t be used to spur economic growth but to balance state budgets. Maybe it was a good idea to help states shore up their budgets and maybe it wasn’t, but that wasn’t the justification given for the stimulus, and in any case it would have no effect on economic growth. And he understood that, when the stimulus failed to achieve its purpose, people would remember that it was he who had inveighed against it with greater fervor than anybody else.”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“The trick was to use the maximum number of words with the maximum number of legitimate interpretations. Put that way, it sounds terrible, but there’s no other way to do it. If a constituent writes to ask the governor the best way to get into politics, and you (in the governor’s voice) write back using words like “I think you should run” or “Go for it,” you may soon hear about some nitwit running for county council claiming he’s been endorsed by the governor. Or take the “Won’t you please run for president?” letters, of which there were many around this time. In case the letter was made public, you couldn’t have the governor responding in a way that could be construed as an admission of an intent to run or of an interest in running, or as an admission of anything. At the same time, though, you wouldn’t want to deny an intention to run for president because that would have been obviously dishonest and, as I thought, soon disprovable. In both these cases you’d want to give the letter writers at least two full paragraphs in response; otherwise it looked cold and dismissive. So you would elongate every sentence with superfluous phrases. “I believe” would become “I have every reason to believe,” and platitudinous observations would be prefaced by “What I’d say—and I am absolutely certain about this—is that . . .” The phrase “going forward” was very useful, as was “from where I stand.”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“Sometimes, for instance, there would be a matter the governor didn’t want to discuss in public, but we knew he’d be asked about it at his next public appearance, or in any case Aaron would be asked about it. Let’s say the head of a cabinet agency had been accused by a state senator of running a cockfighting ring. His behavior would fall within executive purview, but since he had not been indicted or even legally accused, he couldn’t be fired or forced to resign. Aaron knew the governor would be asked about it at a press conference, so our office would issue a statement to any member of the press who asked about it. “[The senator’s] remarks have raised some troubling questions,” the statement might say, “and we’re looking closely at the situation in an effort to determine whether it merits further investigation by state or local law enforcement. At the same time, we want to avoid rushing to judgment, and we hope all concerned will likewise avoid making accusations in the absence of evidence.” This is the kind of statement Aaron would need: one that said something without saying anything. It would get the governor on record without committing him to any course of action. Hence the rhetorical dead weight: “state or local law enforcement” instead of just “law enforcement”; all that about “rushing to judgment” and “making accusations in the absence of evidence,” as if anybody needed to be told that. If a reporter asked the governor about it, he could avoid talking about it without having to use that self-incriminating phrase “No comment.” “I’d go back to what we’ve already said on this,” he might say, and repeat the gaseous phrases of the statement.”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“don’t think we can handle another apology,” Stewart went on, throwing down the magazine. “Because let me tell you, I know what an apology from this governor sounds like, and it ain’t really an apology. It’s more like—.” He paused. Someone said, “More like what?” “I’ll just put it this way. His apologies tend to have an unapologetic tone.” Another minute passed, and then the governor walked in. All went silent. He sat in the only remaining chair and made jokes with one of the interns. A week before, he had been openly talked about by influential commentators in New York and Washington as a presidential candidate. In national media reports, his name had been routinely used in conjunction with the terms “principled stand,” “courageous,” “crazy,”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“Let me ask that question in a more pointed way: Why do we trust men who have sought and attained high office by innumerable acts of vanity and self-will? When a work colleague makes a habit of insisting on his own competence and virtue, we may tolerate him, we may even admire his work, but his vanity is not an inducement to trust him. Why, then, do we trust the men who make careers of persuading us of their goodness and greatness, and who compete for our votes? Catherine”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“Everybody complains that politics separates words from their meanings, and this is part of the reason why. Words are useful, but often their meanings are not. Sometimes what you want is feeling rather than meaning, warmth rather than content. And that takes verbiage. The”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“One of the melancholy facts of political life is that your convictions tend to align with your paycheck.”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“Successful politicians are people who know how to make us think well of them without our realizing that that’s what they’re doing; they know how to make us admire and trust them.”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“That winter remains in my mind as one great blizzard of verbiage. It started with the insolvency of the Employment and Workforce Commission. The Commission had been running through funds budgeted for unemployment benefits at an alarming rate, and nobody had noticed that it was about to run out completely. The Commission blamed the legislature, the legislature blamed the Commission, and the governor blamed the legislature and the Commission, but especially the Commission. The Commission, it turned out, would have to apply for federal money to avoid a shortfall, and for the application to be legal the governor would have to sign it. It was a perfect set-up for him. He refused to sign the application unless the Commission agreed to his demands, one of which was an independent audit. The Commission delayed. The deadline approached; if it were to pass, the Commission would be unable to issue unemployment checks. There was great outrage from the people known for great outrage. Everybody (well, everybody in the state’s media—but it felt like everybody everywhere) was talking about “playing chicken.” The governor was “playing chicken” with the Employment and Workforce Commission; there was a “game of chicken” going on between the state’s chief executive and its workforce agency. The governor was also said to be “holding the unemployed hostage” in his vainglorious attempt to get what he wanted from a government agency; sometimes he was said to be “holding the unemployed hostage to his libertarian ideology” or “holding a state agency hostage for political gain.” The State actually combined these two images in one of its editorials: “You do not play chicken with the lives of 77,000 laid-off citizens, holding them hostage for your own political purposes.” No, I supposed, you do not.”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“Writing surrogate letters wasn’t quite so easily justified; there was something slightly but definitely dishonest about it. To get one placed, you had to sound like the real thing, but not so much that you discredited your own position or insulted the intelligence of the supporter whose name you were hoping to attach to it. You had to start the letter off with some sassy stock phrase or rhetorical question: “Representative So-and-so just doesn’t get it” or “Which constitution is Senator So-and-so reading?” Then you’d make your case without sounding like you knew too much about the topic. That’s where surrogate letters sometimes went wrong. They would refer to specific revenue numbers or to the names of subcommittees or explain the difference between house and senate versions of bills. Average people didn’t know these things, and if a surrogate letter used them, it sounded like what it was, and editors wouldn’t run them. I spent a day writing these wretched things. It wasn’t worth it unless you produced ten or fifteen; newspapers likely wouldn’t print a letter taking a certain view if they got only one, but if they got a handful they’d feel bound to run one or two. It was a mind-numbing exercise: each one had to sound clumsy but not stupid; each had to approach the question from a different angle; and none could use the same vocabulary. We sent them out to the ostensible authors, and over the next two weeks or so I would see my little creations pop up in a variety of newspapers. Sometimes a few words had been changed by the surrogates, but by and large they slapped their names on the letters and forwarded them to their hometown newspapers. I felt the whole exercise was pointless, but perhaps the letters did contribute in a small way to the sense that Knotts’s allegations had been grossly unfair and that the governor had acted properly. Had he? I thought so at the time, but enough time has passed that I can admit I don’t know. One of the melancholy facts of political life is that your convictions tend to align with your paycheck.”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“He’s the victim of his last conversation,” Aaron would say about him; he meant that Clarke took as fact whatever he’d been told by the person he’d spoken to before you.”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“For a variety of reasons, most of them negative (he didn’t have the liability of so-and-so; as a state rather than a federal officeholder he had no record on such-and-such), he was among those thought to be attractive vice presidential candidates. “Are you interested in the vice presidency, Governor?” a reporter would ask, knowing he couldn’t answer yes or no. Over the next several months he went through a series of responses. On this occasion he was experimenting with the unhappy analogy of being struck by lightning. “That’s very flattering, but it’s all just surreal,” he would say. “It’s so unlikely. But if lightning does strike, I’d be lying if I said I’d hang up the phone.” Saying yes or no to a lightning strike didn’t sound right. But at first he couldn’t even get the lightning line right. “If that lightning bolt strikes,” he would say, or “If that lightning bolt falls in my direction,” or “If that ball of lightning ever does come my way.”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“Eventually I began to compile a list of his favorite words and phrases. Here is one version of the list I still have with me: PHRASES Given the fact that toward that end in which you operate the level of both . . . and frankly goes well beyond the way you live your life in this regard (in this regard it’s worth . . .) in many ways none other than this larger (this larger notion/idea) for that reason in large measure as a consequence more than anything in my direction nonetheless (small but nonetheless significant sign) over the weeks and months ahead speaks volumes NOUNS range (a range of) host (a host of, whole host of) admiration (usu. profound admiration) pearls (of wisdom) ADJECTIVES, ADVERBS remarkable incredible (working incredibly hard) inevitably frankly awfully larger disturbingly so, especially so amazingly considerable (very considerable) fabulous dire VERBS present impress (impressed me) admire (admire the fact that) highlight underscore OTHER inasmuch whereby This collection summarizes the governor’s character as well as any biography could, though I reckon only I can see that. Its terms are plain and practical, but they’re boring, and most of them are slightly awkward. Some are lazy: the only reason to say something “speaks volumes”—“The fact that you refused to give up speaks volumes about your character”—is because you want the credit for making a large claim without bothering to find words to make it.”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“He wrote so many letters that occasionally he would forget the name of the person he was writing to. “This is a letter to what’s-his-name,” he’d begin. “Jeane will know his name, ask Jeane.” Jeane was our senate liaison and someone who knew nearly everyone. “Dear whoever,” he would continue, “I just wanted to let you know how sorry I was to hear about your dad. I remember losing my dad when I was seventeen, and all I can say is it wasn’t easy. Please know you’ll be in our prayers over the coming weeks and months.” I wondered if the governor would pray for somebody whose name he couldn’t remember. Would he tell God to ask Jeane?”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“What drives him is the thirst for glory; the public good, as he understands it, is a means to that end. So when a great statesman accomplishes a laudable goal by sagacity and bravery, we’re right to give him the praise he craves. But when we’re surprised and disgusted because the man we lauded has humiliated himself and disgraced his office, we haven’t just misjudged a man—we’ve misjudged the nature of modern politics.”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“I say all this confidently now, but it wasn’t that long ago that I thought the answer to all our social and political problems was to elect the right people—good people with the right ideas and the courage to act on them. Before I went to work for the governor, I thought he was one of the right people. And he was. He did what he said he was going to do, he took his duties seriously, he behaved himself in public with charm and decorum, he did not fear criticism, and he had realistic views of what government could and couldn’t accomplish. He was everything a politician should be—a politician in the best sense of that word, if it has a best sense. After two or three weeks of working for him, though, I knew something was wrong. It wasn’t that I thought he should have been the same thoughtful political leader in private that he was in public; the difference between public persona and reality is a valuable and inevitable one. Rather, I found it unnerving to discover such a stark difference between the personality he presented to the public and the one to which he subjected his staff. I remarked on this difference many times to my wife during that first year. We often laughed about it, but I think we both knew it signified something terrible—not just about the governor but about the world, or at least about democratic cultures in which political leaders often function as celebrities and even heroes. What that something was came to me much later, when I glimpsed the depth of his self-absorption. Here was a man who shattered his ambitions and humiliated his family and friends by pursuing his own petty, myopic desires. And yet in his ruin he could not find more than the paltriest shred of genuine self-criticism. I believe he wanted to feel a deeper remorse, but he looked inside and it wasn’t there. All he found was more of himself.”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

“Boring. Total downer. Again—you have to remember the audience. This isn’t some anti-abortion group. You’ve got to dig deeper. Remember who you’re talking to.” “Governor, I can guarantee you these people are anti-abortion.” “You don’t know that.” I did know that, and so did he. “They’re celebrating traditional motherhood, they’re independent Baptists, and they’re from Florence.” Now it would become an argument about something else. He’d get impatient and say, “Never mind, I’ll think of something,” and walk into the event. It didn’t matter what he said. At the Mother of the Year ceremony, middle-aged women cackled and cooed at anything the governor”
― Barton Swaim, The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics