Once upon a time a young, handsome and somewhat naive speechwriter asked a superior what information needed to be put in an upcoming speech. “I dunno. Just blow some smoke up their ass.” was the response. Considering that the person delivering the speech didn’t like the group he would be addressing and that the feeling was mutual, since smoke was requested, smoke was delivered.
The response to said smoke was amazing. The event made the evening news and the speaker later told me that members of the group were impressed enough to ask for copies of the speech for inclusion in their newsletter.
If you’ve ever felt completely captivated by a political speech but later felt deceived or better yet remained impressed by the politician for a very long time, that was the smoke. Will you get by tricked again? Definitely.
Avoid the smoke and get a real grasp of the issues. First, what’s in the smoke.
Here are the elements
A good political speech or campaign will have the following:
1. Truth
2. Lies
3. Truthiness
4. Self-deception
(I know there are more but let’s stick with the basics for now.)
If you live anywhere in the world that has elections, you’ll recognize these elements in your own country but for illustrative purposes I’ll use an example that everyone from Australia to Norway will be tired of familiar with, the U.S Presidential elections.
Truth
What is truth? A question debated by both philosophers and fools throughout
President Obama
the ages. Here is an analogy that I like to use; the truth is what you look like first thing in the morning, just after you get out of bed. You then try to spend the next two hours trying to avoid looking like that.
Is it still you that walks out of your house to go to work? Sure, but an enhanced and better version than what crawled out of bed.
Are President Obama, VP Biden, Candidates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan telling the truth? Yes, sometimes the pure and unadulterated truth.
Unfortunately, Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men’ was right, “You can’t handle the truth!” So, sometimes the pure and unadulterated truth gets a makeover and becomes an enhanced version of the truth.
If the truth gets too ‘enhanced’ too much it becomes
Lies
Obfuscation, Deviation, Disambiguation, no problem, but a lie needs to be a tool of last resort.
Generally, a speech writer/campaign manager tries to avoid having his candidate say outright lies. They are too easily uncovered by the opposition or reporters.
See: Congressman Anthony Weiner
Secondly, a pattern of inexcusable and unwarranted lies makes a politician seem disconnected from reality.
See: Michelle Bachmann
Disconnected from reality = Political doom
Notice, inexcusable and unwarranted. There are times when a lie just has to be told. For instance, a lie can cover a gaffe. Mitt Romney’s comments about America’s 47% that were secretly recorded is a gaffe. The major problem is that he’d been videotaped making similar comments before. This type of gaffe is termed a Kinsley gaffe . Any explanation that a politician offers for these types of gaffes will tend to be lies.
President Barack Obama’s, open mike moment with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, “After my election I have more flexibility” falls into the same category. A moment of real honesty (gaffe) explained away with a lie.
What else could fill the speech writing/campaigning script?
Truthiness
Quick question, “More women are victims of domestic violence on Super Bowl Sunday than on any other day of the year” True or False. Keep in mind the fact that American Football is a violent game and Super Bowl Sunday is the apex of the sport celebrated with plenty of alcohol. Men supporting the winning team will likely be more drunk and aggressive while men who are fans of the losing team will be drunk and angry.
The answer is: False
Notice all of the elements that would make you think it was true. A sport that has physical violence at its centre (unlike chess) lots of alcohol consumption, bitter losers, etc, everything that ‘feels’ like it should be true, except it ain’t.
Have you been a victim of truthiness. Yup! If it’s any consolation, so have I and probably more than you.
Truthiness is closer to lying but harder to avoid in speech writing. As the domestic violence on Super Bowl Sunday meme shows, truthiness is very easy to get started and once injected into any media stream it spreads. Truthiness, is rampant in medical studies. Eggs are deadly in one study then another study shows they are beneficial. Juice is the only way to get all the nutrients needed from a fruit, then raw food is the only way to get the same nutrients, and so on and so on.
Investing, Education, Health and Energy are rife with contradictory studies all claiming to be the truth. Many of these ‘studies’ are funded by groups that intend to benefit from the public’s reaction to the truthiness of the study.
Pity the poor writer who needs to include some ‘facts’ in a speech. The question not only becomes how to keep up with all of the pertinent information but also how to verify which study has used a valid methodology. It can’t be done without a small army of fact-checkers working at light speed.
Sometimes, a politician is lying to you because someone else is lying to him.
Yes, dear reader, they are victims just like you.
In the next post, I’ll reveal how your capacity for self-deception makes my job easier/harder. Also, if you are tired of the deceit, one simple step you can take to cut through the noise and find the truth (if you can handle it).
Confessions of a Speech Writer Part 2
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Resources:
Check the facts
http://factcheck.org/2012/10/factchecking-the-hofstra-debate/
I totally agree with this article:http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-hype-became-bigger-than-the-presidential-election-20121009
This is what we know, politicians do not admit (unless its a gaffe) and speech writers/spin doctors make their living off of. Though I must confess that the truth in clothing can be more palatable in public than the naked truth. And then there’s truthiness – like the ‘serpent strategy’ in the Garden of Eden, casting doubt – and one of its other synonymns, statistics.
Now I’m going to review key points from the third Presidential debate to assess how well I’ve learned the lesson in this post.
The third debate must have been frustrating to President Obama. His ‘opponent’ turned out to be his biggest supporter. The President should have asked Romney for his endorsement since he agreed with him on almost everything.