Kerry Needs a New Speech Writer

Thought this had some interesting points so I'm passing it along.  

-chuck

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March 12, 2004
Please Distribute Widely

Dear Colleague,

Former Ronald Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan is overrated.
We all know (those of us who follow such minutiae) that Reagan's best
speeches were written by, gasp, Pat Buchanan.

But, still, I'm inclined to agree with Noonan's Wall Street Journal
opinion column of yesterday, in which she says Kerry needs a new
speechwriter (link via Kaus)...

"...he needs a new speechwriter. Bob Shrum's work sounds too old, of
another era--all that phony baloney And so a new generation stakes its
claim on greatness stuff, the faux populist I look like a Brahmin but I'm
really Tom Joad. It's tired. It's like Teddy Kennedy outtakes from 1980.
Mr. Kerry sounds like an Al Gore knockoff. No, worse, he sounds like every
Democratic politician of the past quarter century. And no wonder, since
Bob Shrum has been the voice of every Democratic politician of the past
quarter century.

"Shake it up, make it new. Mr. Kerry needs a young speechwriter for whom
it's all still moving and big. Someone who's excited to be there and who
speaks the language of America as it is now, a language that is awake,
concrete, sometimes awkward. People around a candidate are always beating
what he's going to say into smoothness, but it is that very
smoothness--affordable health care for hardworking Americans--that makes
us all want to tear our faces off and run from the room, though perhaps I
understate.

"A new Kerry speechwriter should be someone whose first impulse in talking
about heavy industry jobs going overseas is not to type, 'Once I built a
railroad, now it's done / Brother, can you spare a dime?' It wouldn't hurt
if the new speechwriter ever had to sell anything for a living, even for a
few months. And it would be nice if America weren't one big abstraction to
him, but someplace real where he's actually lived."

Okay, Noonan is being overly snarky (if only she could write lyrics like
the once-blacklisted Yip Harburg!), and what does she know from her Ivy
League tower about having "actually lived" in America? Still, I tend to
agree with the overall thrust of her point. I've said this before, Kerry's
stump speech is not refreshed often enough (he's still using some of the
same one-liners he used in Iowa... oh, please, how many times must we
"bring it on!").

In recent weeks, when Kerry has veered off the stump script (or pretended
he didn't know the microphone was on) he's been downright inspiring... on
Haiti, on the election fraud of Florida 2000, on the liars and crooks who
are in charge now... I think these themes have to be deepened and expanded
upon by him.

Twenty years ago (full disclosure) I wrote some speeches for John Kerry,
and it was a huge pleasure to see someone deliver them as few are capable
of doing... when he's "on," he's really on... We've seen some of those
moments already in this campaign.

But, alas, a Narco News publisher's work is never done, and I don't have
time for that right now. (Ever sit down to write a J-School application?
That can make your head hurt, even though it's great fun.) And it occurs
to me that so many very articulate BigLeftOutside readers and commenters
could do a splendid job writing speech material for Kerry.

So, therefore, I am:

...Announcing the John Kerry Speechwriting Tournament!

Serious entries only, please (parodies or insincere entries will be
screened out)... What do you think John Kerry should be saying on the
stump, on TV, in his ads, to the people?

You can attempt an entire speech or just a few paragraphs.

I am not offering any material prize; only this: If I think your
submission should be part of Kerry's stump speech (or the whole thing) I
will personally see to it that Kerry himself gets a copy of it... So your
ultimate prize could be that one day you turn on the TV and hear your
words spoken by the presumptive Democratic nominee.

Wouldn't it be a great blogosphere moment when the people start directly
becoming the speechwriters?

Isn't that what democracy ought to be about?

Go for it! Write your draft John Kerry stump speech, or any part of it, in
the comments section here.

Words sometimes really do matter.

The country you save may be your own.

Submit your speechwriting entries at this link:

http://www.bigleftoutside.com/comments/20/

- Al

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