Do politicians write their own speeches?  That question, in one form or another, always comes up during presidential elections in the US.  People often credit a particularly good speech by saying, “he/she must have written that him/her self.”   And yet at the same time there is a general suspicion of ‘mere words’; somehow, for many voters, too strong an oratorical ability makes a politician suspect. 

Having been a gubernatorial speechwriter I can tell you first of all that politicians both do and do not write their own speeches.  Depending on the lead time involved and the importance attached to the speech, a politician will pay more or less attention to the speech. He or she may tinker with phrases, or edit or even write whole sections, or cut out paragraphs, or send entire speeches back to be re-written.

The first political speech I ever wrote got sent back to me 11 times for revisions.  I didn’t get the tone the Governor wanted until draft 12.  Who wrote that speech?  In some sense I did, and yet the speech thoroughly reflected the Governor’s thinking on the subject, precisely because it took me so long to figure out what that was. 

More than that, plenty of other people weighed in on that speech, and on many of the others I wrote during my time in politics.  Speechwriting, like policy-making, or just about anything else that goes on in politics, is a group process. 

President Reagan deliberately hired passionate, right-wing, firebrand speechwriters, so that they would come up with the ideas and phrases that he would then send by his more moderate, centrist political advisors for testing and ultimately for cutting back and toning down.  He would then often further simplify the rhetoric to make it flow more easily off the tongue.  The process served him well, in part because the speechwriters had so many years of Reagan’s speeches to draw upon, and such a consistency of message.  Everyone knew where Reagan stood on the issues. 

So who wrote his speeches?  It’s really the wrong question.  The leader is responsible for the words that he or she utters.  Don’t worry about who wrote the words.  Parse the words themselves to see where the politician stands.  And judge accordingly.