"The Library of Congress has always believed in free speech and today you're getting five of them!"
So said Ted Sorensen, former speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy, one of five former presidential speechwriters who gathered at the National Press Club for a discussion of their experiences at the White House.
The event, held in September, was organized by the Library of Congress to mark the release of 3 recordings of historic presidential speeches from the Library's collections. The boxed set of six CD/cassettes is a joint project of the Library and Rhino Records.
Every president from Taft through Clinton is represented. Most of the speeches were chosen by the Library, except when the president or someone from his family or staff could be contacted. Many of the speeches have never been published before.
At the National Press Club, the other speechwriters joining Mr. Sorensen were Mary Kate Cary (Bush), William Ewald (Eisenhower), Anthony Dolan (Reagan) and Hendrik Hertzberg (Carter). Mr. Hertzberg, now executive editor of The New Yorker, began the discussion and served as moderator.
"I must say, it's a fantasy come true to be promoting a record," he said, noting that a group of former speechwriters had formed their own society "because we thought, 'If we don't honor ourselves, who's going to?'"
Mr. Hertzberg's comment touched upon the paradoxical role of the speechwriter, a role he called "something of an embarrassment to a politician. After all, if a politician is not the words he says, then what is he? And if somebody else is writing the words, then is he really there?"
As the speechwriters swapped stories for the benefit of the lunchtime audience, the answer to this question was apparent: Yes, the politician was really there. Very much so. And these speechwriters considered themselves fortunate to have had such close associations with some of the most powerful men of our time.
Saying he thought he would proceed in "archaeological" order, Mr. Hertzberg invited Mary Kate Cary to talk first. Ms. Cary served President Bush from 1989 to 199. She told the audience that the president had given his speechwriters three rules when he first came into office. The first was that he didn't like the word "I." "He didn't want to say, 'I want a crime bill that's going to stop crime,'" Ms. Cary said, "because he thought that was disrespectful to the police who actually had to put their lives on the line."
The second rule was not to write a speech that was too good. "He said that we were not to write him a speech that was a '10'," she said. "He said, 'If you give me a 10, I'm going to send it back and say, 'Give me an 8,' and you'll be lucky if I deliver it like a 6.'"
The third rule, according to Ms. Cary, was to use a lot of Yogi Berra quotes. The president liked Yogi Berra quotes, along with those of Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower. According to Ms. Cary, this made speechwriting easier because "you can make up a lot of good Yogi Berra because everybody always thinks Yogi Berra said something."
Anthony Dolan spoke next. As President Reagan's chief speechwriter, he is credited with coining the term "the evil empire." He is finishing a manuscript for a book called Undoing the Evil Empire: How Reagan Won the Cold War.
Mr. Dolan focused on President Reagan's foresight in predicting the fall of communism. According to Dolan, the president frequently resisted expert advice and followed his own instincts.
"We understood better than most that he was always the author of his own success and that he always made the staff look good, not the other way around," he said.
Mr. Dolan reminded the audience that Reagan had been involved in a political movement (the Screen Actors' Guild) for 30 years before he became president. This qualified the president, according to Mr. Dolan, as living "a life of the mind."
Unlike most of what he called "this city's opinion league" Mr. Dolan asserted that Ronald Reagan wasn't just an immensely attractive media property. He was "a cerebral president."
As evidence, Mr. Dolan pointed to the speech Reagan selected for the Rhino disk, "Remarks to the Students and Faculty at Moscow State University" (1988). Here Reagan made the case for the creative and moral force of freedom triumphing over communism. Earlier, during the first month of his presidency, he had called communism "just an episode in history that's dying."
Then Rick Hertzberg discussed President Carter's own selection for the anthology, the so-called "Malaise Speech." Officially it is called the "Energy and National Goals Address to the Nation." It was an odd choice for Carter to make. Many say this speech was the undoing of his presidency. However, Hertzberg noted, after the president subjected himself to this "extraordinary self- laceration," his popularity shot up 11 points.
"It wasn't the speech that was his undoing, really, it was the Cabinet shakeup that happened two or three days later," according to Mr. Hertzberg.
Ted Sorensen followed, discussing the Kennedy years. He called Kennedy "a great extemporizer." He said Kennedy made the decision to give one of his greatest speeches only about two hours before it was scheduled to air on nationwide television. It was delivered on the day George Wallace stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama to block integration.
"It was the first speech in history in which a president of the United States declared that thereafter, there was to be no moral or legal justification why anyone should be the subject of discrimination or segregation on the basis of race or color," he said.
Sorensen also related one incident in which he and the only copy of a speech the president was to deliver got stuck in traffic. He described how he was forced to listen on the car radio, panic stricken, as the president was introduced. "Thank God it turned out he knew something about TVA!" he said to general laughter.
But it was the speech selected for the Rhino anthology that Mr. Sorensen said he regarded as the president's most important. The speech was given as the commencement address at American University on June 10, 1963.
Mr. Sorensen said, "It was the first time in all of those postwar years that a president of the United States had asked the American people to take a different look at the Cold War and to take a different look at the process of peace and to take a different look at the Soviet Union itself. I would have to say that it was as opposite from the 'evil empire' speech that Tony Dolan talked about as two speeches could possibly be, 5 years apart. And that's one of the sad aspects of President Kennedy's death. I firmly believe that had he not been killed later in 1963, that the Cold War might not have stretched on for another 5 or more years, at a terrible cost to our fortune and manpower."
Then, President Eisenhower's speechwriter, William Ewald Jr., discussed what he said was the question on everybody's lips that day, namely, "Is Colin Powell another Eisenhower?" Mr. Ewald saw a strong resemblance in substance, if not in style. He said that Eisenhower liked to work one-on-one. He reported the president saying, "I used to work for MacArthur, and one thing I know, and that is that once you get more than five people or even two people in a room, if the speech has any character in it, all the character goes out of it."
Mr. Ewald contrasted this style with that of Colin Powell in assembling a large group to help him produce his recent book, My American Journey. "You've got a writer, you've got a research team and then you've got about 30 people who contribute to research. What they all did, I don't know," he said.
However different Eisenhower and Mr. Powell were in style, Mr. Ewald saw similarities in substance. The two men delivered the same message on a number of issues.
"I find very, very little difference between Colin Powell on the one hand, and Dwight Eisenhower on the other," he said. "It's just one thing after another: no executive wars, no getting into war without the support of the American people; [Powell writes] 'I'm a fiscal conservative with heart,' or 'I'm a fiscal conservative with a conscience,' and Eisenhower said exactly the same thing in the same words.
"'Take your job seriously, never yourself' -- that's an Eisenhower maxim and it's in Colin Powell's book. Time and again, if you're really trying to look for a dime's worth of difference on principle and on belief, I find very little difference between the two."
After a few questions from the audience, some of whom were themselves former presidential speechwriters, Mr. Hertzberg closed the discussion, adding, "and don't forget to buy the record!"
"The Library of Congress Presents: Historic Presidential Speeches (1908-1993)" is available at audio retail outlets and selected bookstores or by mail from Rhino Mail Order at (800) 43- 000. The suggested list price is $79.98 CDs/$59.98 cassettes. The set includes a 56 page illustrated brochure with an introduction by the Librarian of Congress, a political timeline and essays by Samuel Brylawski and Cooper Graham of the Library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, who produced the set, and Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, presidential scholar and dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania.
