“A Thinking Man’s Speech”
Again, a very thoughtful piece by Reagan’s former speechwriter Peggy Noonan in her WSJ column Declarations this week. Talking about the much talked about Obama speech on race in America, she notes that the speech wasn’t the standard politician speech of news-ready sound-bites and valence issues.
“Mr. Obama subverted this in his speech. He didn’t have applause lines. He didn’t give you eight seconds of a line followed by clapping. He spoke in full and longish paragraphs that didn’t summon applause. This left TV producers having to use longer-than-usual soundbites in order to capture his meaning. And so the cuts of the speech you heard on the news were more substantial and interesting than usual, which made the coverage of the speech better. People who didn’t hear it but only saw parts on the news got a real sense of what he’d said.
If Hillary or John McCain said something interesting, they’d get more than an eight-second cut too. But it works only if you don’t write an applause-line speech. It works only if you write a thinking speech.
They should try it.”
From The Wall Street Journal: March 21, 2008
I don’t always (or even frequently) agree with Noonan, but I am beginning to look forward to reading what she has to say every week. She also publishes her columns on her own site as well. They are definitely worth a look, regardless of your politics.