The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

The author of The Speechwriter does not dwell on the series of unfortunate events that led to the downfall of the governor of South Carolina. For those who need to validate the details, it’s all in Wikipedia.In the end, it was all part of the rich tapestry of American political life: a moralizing public figure is betrayed by peccadillos that would not be worthy of comment in many countries. However, the public delights in destroying, if only temporarily, the careers of its leaders. Sanford survives to live out his term, leaving the speechwriter to edit his form letters and remove references to ‘family’, ‘integrity’, ‘honesty’ and, of course, ‘Argentina’.This speechwriter’s lot was not a happy one. Swaim captures the arc of his career in excruciating detail. From initial enthusiasm and surprise that he was to become the chief wordsmith to a sitting governor where ‘the idea of turning phrases for a living seemed irresistible’, to despair at his lot and envy of the janitorial staff in the government buildings who were happy just checking lightbulbs for a living. He dreaded going into the office and the strain of the job was almost unbearable.What went wrong?The Speechwriter After an all-to-brief honeymoon period, Swaim discovered the ‘stark difference’ between the charming public persona of the governor and the realities of dealing with the man in private. His boss has a unique relationship with the English language that deeply offends the writer with the PhD in English. He copes by creating a list of stock phrases that mimic the ‘voice’ of the man he’s writing for. He uses phrases such as ‘in large measure’ and ‘frankly’ to pad speeches, op-eds, letters and other written communications that are endless demand on his time. As is typical, he’s responsible for much more than speeches. He regularly produces four or five options of each speech for the governor to review, and learns to keep one in reserve for the times all his written drafts are thrown back at him.The governor berates him with requests to re-do speeches ‘again’ and returns drafts with terse demands that they ‘need work’. Despite his best efforts, he’s often the butt of withering scorn.However, Swaim has the insight that none of this is meant personally. He highlights the sheer volume of communication a politician must generate, and points out that people "…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."The need for the governor to heap abuse on the speechwriter had nothing to do with being hurtful: "For him to try to hurt you would have required him to acknowledge your significance. If you were on his staff, he had no knowledge of your personhood … he was giving vent to his own anxieties, whatever they were. It was as if you were one of those pieces of cork placed in the mouth of wounded soldiers during an amputation. The soldier didn’t chew the work because he hated it but because it was therapeutic to bite hard. Often I felt like that piece of cork."My one beef with the book is that it lives up to its subtitle as ‘A Brief Education in Politics’ and is too short. Mark Sanford has since gone on to be re-elected to Congress for South Carolina’s 1st District. Just as much of the intrigue of The Good Wife happens after the initial fall, so I can’t help but wonder what sort of a book the current speechwriter to Congressman Sanford might write. A sequel surely awaits.

Who would need someone else to write speeches for them? The answer is probably people with power but no time. Who would want to write speeches for others? That would probably be bright and articulate people who need a job. Barton Swaim’s book illuminates the psyche of the two – the speaker and the speechwriter. It is illuminating in the general sense as a study of speakers and speechwriters generally, and it is also illuminating of the author personally, as a speechwriter to the speaker whose speeches he wrote.Although he did not name his boss, the world knows that Barton Swaim was a speechwriter for Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina whose claim to fame is proportionately due to his tragic-comic adultery, his incoherence when speaking on his own without a speechwriter, and the fact that in spite of the first two, he is still the Congressional representative for South Carolina.Kurt Vonnegut once told his writing class that only a nut would want to be the president of the United States – ‘but he gave me a job’ (as a speechwriter for $1,800). Somewhere in the relationship between a speaker and his speechwriter, honesty and sincerity are given makeovers, from the mild to the extreme. A speaker like Sanford probably does not understand the drift, let alone the nuances, that his speechwriter has etched out for him. A speechwriter, on the other hand, carves ideals and promises for his principal knowing that they are not going to happen.Swaim knows this for he writes: “It’s impossible to attain much success in politics if you’re the sort of person who can’t abide by disingenuousness. This isn’t to say that 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.’Oh dear, Mr Swaim, using ‘vague, slippery, or just meaningless language’ with intent to avoid the truth and thus misleading the listener is no better than lying (what Swaim refers to as ‘proper lies’). In the combined act the speaker and the speechwriter are pretending to be somebody he is not, and pretending to say something from his conscience when he is not. Remember Vonnegut? He has this advice: 'We are what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful about what we pretend to be.’ Are the Swaims of the literary world listening?

Not a fan of politics, but love good writing. What a pleasure to read this book and benefit from Swaim's understanding of the system, expressed without affectation or guile. I learned a lot and laughed even more.

authentic

This is an entertaining insight into the practices of communication in politics. The book gives readers interested in the process of politics insights into the working lives of the drudges who write the letters, speeches and opinion pieces for elected officials, struggling to be vacuous in the "voice" of their boss. The book is also of value to readers interested in the practice of strategic communication, describing how the comms team dealt with the governor disappearing to Buenos Aires to hike the Appalachian trail. This episode gives the book its focus and is well used to highlight how post-crisis certain words became unusable, including "honesty", "integrity" and "Argentina", and the conflict between disenchantment with the governor and a reflexive defence of the governor from attacks by his enemies. Swaim writes beautifully, with a near perfect balance between capturing his subjective reactions and a description of the objective circumstances.

One of the most tedious and mean spirited books I have read in a long while. The author has an unkind word for everyone. He thinks of himself as a great 'speechwriter' but seems to spend most of his time answering correspondence and complaining about the faults of his colleagues.

This is a memoir for anyone who loves words, is fascinated by politics, enjoys the soap opera of offices or seeks insight into human nature. The author was. a speechwriter for a star governor who could not express himself.or understand his own motivations.. Funny, cynical yet poignant.