Senator Clinton’s health care speech yesterday was a classic example of what happens when the policy wonks and the needs of rhetoric collide.  Her analysis was like the answer you get when you ask your grandmother how she’s feeling — too much information about diseases you’d rather not think about. 

More importantly, the speech illustrated beautifully what a speech can do well, and what it can’t.

A speech can lead an audience through a decision-making process.  Decision-making is both emotional and intellectual.  We don’t want to change our minds on the whole — that takes mental effort.  So we cling to opinions, ideas, and beliefs long after reality has passed them by.  We need strong reasons to change — and that means stories like the one Senator Clinton told about Judy and John Rose who suffered a series of catastrophic health events and so lost their life savings despite having insurance.  This story nicely taps into the insecurities people with insurance have. 

On the intellectual side, Clinton details a number of statistics that push us to consider the idea that something is wrong with American health care: 

We are the richest country in the world and we spend right now, more on health care than anyone else in the world. Two trillion dollars a year. But we’re ranked 31st in life expectancy and 40th in child mortality. Each year, 18,000 people die in America because they don’t have health care. Let me repeat that. Here in America, people are dying because they couldn’t get the care they needed when they were sick.

Once we’ve heard the stories and the fact, we’re more ready to hear Clinton’s solution, basically a system of credits and mandates that will ensure that everyone buys some kind of private health insurance. 

So, in the main, a speech that respects the audience’s need to decide on both intellectual and emotional terms, and leads that audience through the process correctly.  Good job.  What’s wrong with it?

A speech is not a good means for elaborating the detail of a new proposal.  The speech is 6,000 words long, or roughly 45-48 minutes delivered.  Lots of studies of what people remember from speeches shows that they don’t remember much — something like 10 -30 percent.  (One study that suggested Power Point helped people retain more was funded by guess who?  Microsoft.  Don’t believe it.)  A good rule of thumb for a speech is that it should only make one point, and every detail you include should support that point only.  This call for health care change is a filibuster. 

Clinton’s speech is filled with her various proposals and good works on behalf of many constituencies and health care issues.  By the time we’re half way through, the clarity of her proposal is lost in the endless detail and history.  What could have been a great speech and a powerful call to action instead becomes defensive and meandering. 

Her speechwriters need a good editor.  You can’t say it all effectively in a speech.  You have to have a relentless focus on what you want the audience to do differently as a result of the rhetoric.  Less is most certainly more.  This example is a good first draft, but it needs heaving editing to have real power.