You may be familiar with Matt Latimer’s book Speech*Less about his career as a speechwriter in Washington during the Bush administration.

Apparently, President Bush had learned at Yale that all speeches should have an introduction, three points, a peroration, and a conclusion.

(What’s a peroration?  It’s the wrap-up, in which you remind the audience, in new words, what has been proven and what you urge them to do.)

Matt the speechwriter found this template lacking in creativity.  “To hell with Yale,” says Matt on page 188 of his book.  “I’d gone to the University of Michigan, where we learned that speeches should be fun.”

I agree.  A speech without the spirit of humor, or joy, or playfulness is about as exciting as a mashed-potato sandwich.

To stimulate your creativity as a speechwriter or presentation developer, I give you Mr. Tom Waits.

Tom Waits is a good model for creativity, because on National Public Radio, Tom  interviewed himself (itself a creative act,) asks himself some creative questions, and comes up with creative answers.

For instance, he asks himself what’s the most curious record in his collection.

His answer?  “In the seventies a record company in LA issued a record called ‘The best of Marcel Marceau.’ It had forty minutes of silence followed by applause and it sold really well. I like to put it on for company. It really bothers me, though, when people talk through it.”

Then he asks himself what’s wrong with the world. 

“We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge.

Quantity is being confused with abundance, and wealth with happiness.

Leona Helmsley’s dog made $12 million last year… and Dean McLaine, a farmer in Ohio, made $30,000.

It’s just a gigantic version of the madness that grows in every one of our brains. We are monkeys with money and guns.”

Click on the link and read the rest of it.  It’s playful and will invite your creativity to e-merge with your business savvy.

Sims Wyeth is an executive speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

The Bush Doctrine on Speech Writing

In his entertaining memoir Speech*Less, speech writer Matt Latimer reveals something about the speeches developed for President G.W. Bush.  By the way, he was one of the speech writers.

‘I quickly discovered the answer to a question I’d been asked by people since I’d arrived at the White House:  why did the President’s speeches always seem to be so bad?  It turned out it was intentional.  On my very first day, Bill McGurn and Marc Thiessen both told me that the president was “okay” with a flat speech.  All he cared about was logic and organization, not eloquence.  As a student at Yale, the President had learned that all speeches should have an introduction, three points, a peroration, and a conclusion.  I didn’t even know what a peroration was.  The president wasn’t as insanely rigid about this approach, though, as Bill and the other writers thought he was. I’d read many of his finer speeches in his first term, and they rarely followed this pattern.  But pushing the President to like a speech that was written differently was too risky.  The writers all lived in fear that he’d blow up at them, which on occasion he’d been known to do.  So in the quest for rigid logic—point A to point B to point C to conclusion—language that satisfied the President in one speech would be cut and pasted into the next speech and then the next.’

Matt decides that, since he didn’t go to Yale but rather attended the University of Michigan, he was not obliged to follow the routine.

The Bush Doctrine of speech writing sounds suspiciously like the models I’ve seen being peddled to the business community.

Having a model is good, because it saves time and helps you think about structure.  But slavish devotion to models creates M&M: monotony and mediocrity.

Look for a way to use your model as a spring board to create an EXPERIENCE for your listeners.

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.