The Speechwriter Read online

  7

  * * *

  TALKING POINTS

  The presidential election was now a little less than a year away, and the news was full of speculation about the primaries. At that stage there were still seven or eight candidates running in both parties’ primaries; you read and heard endless commentary about how this candidate’s message was “resonating” with voters, about how that candidate had broken fund-raising records, about how another had switched his view on illegal immigration or cutting the corporate income tax in order to shore up his credibility with some constituency or other, or just with his base. You had the feeling that these appraisals were mostly irrelevant, like some worthless currency stockpiled in the deluded belief that its value would soon rise. But it all seemed important at the time.

  Around January a few journalists began mentioning the governor as a possible vice presidential candidate. It was always just a mention, usually, though not always, alongside other names. It was absurd to suggest vice presidential picks so long before the nominee, who would do the picking, had even been named.

  A producer from one of the networks called Aaron about an interview. That a network wanted to interview the governor wasn’t uncommon; in this instance, though, the subject was presidential politics. They were doing a segment on “where the party is headed,” and they wanted the views of a few of the party’s leaders. The governor was one. The producer told Aaron they’d be asking general questions about the direction the party would and should take over the next four years. Their camera crew would come to the State House in a week.

  Over the two or three days before the interview, Nat and I worked hectically on preparing the governor. We put together a document neatly delineating possible lines of questioning, common observations made about the party and its candidates in the news media, the candidates’ views, and the latest poll numbers.

  We did this in the full knowledge that the governor would say he hated what we produced. When we presented it to him in his office, he looked at it for a few seconds and said, “This doesn’t tell me anything.”

  Silence.

  “Again,” he said, still looking at it.

  “Governor, you’ve barely looked at it,” Nat said.

  “I mean, why do I need to know”—he drew a tiny circle on one of the pages, and next to it a question mark—“why do I need to know that McCain thinks we should put tighter economic sanctions on Iran? What good’s that to me?”

  “It’s something you should know?” Nat said in a sarcastic interrogative tone.

  “There’s no way they’re going to ask me about Iran.”

  This was untrue, and I was sure the governor knew it was untrue. He didn’t like to accept a document without first dismissing it as worthless. Provoking a fight with the staffers who’d written it was his way of figuring out whether or not it was what he wanted.

  “Okay,” Nat said, “what do you want us to find?”

  Nat often tried to sidestep the governor’s criticisms, which he didn’t like. He wanted to cajole, reprove, instruct.

  “Again,” he said.

  Nat and I waited.

  The governor gestured at the document. “Again.”

  Usually at this point he said something about “digging deeper.” “You’ve got to dig deeper,” he said. “Don’t just tell me stuff any college flunky could tell me.”

  “Like what? What would you like us to put together for you that some college flunky couldn’t?”

  “You tell me,” the governor said.

  “We should tell you?”

  “Yeah.” The governor looked irritated. I just sat there like a mannequin.

  “We should tell you something beyond”—Nat held out his arm—“what some college flunky could tell you?”

  “Yeah. Think about it.”

  “Actually, Governor, what we think you need to know is written right there.”

  “What, like McCain wants to bomb Iran?”

  “Governor, why do you do this? You’re being completely unreasonable.”

  “Okay, here’s what I want. I want—.”

  “Wait,” Nat said. “You’re admitting that you’re being unreasonable.”

  “What I want—.”

  “You’re admitting it.”

  “What I want—.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “Whatever. I want all the candidates’ positions on taxes—corporate, personal, everything.”

  “That’s in what we just gave you.”

  “Then I want—.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “I want all the significant votes of every candidate on spending issues: the farm bill, the budgets, whatever appropriations bills, whatever.”

  He listed a few more things and they were all sensible things to ask for. Nat and I set about finding them. What was the turnout for both parties in the previous primary election? What were some significant demographic trends? How many times had the state voted for the candidate who’d gone on to win the presidency?

  We worked all day on these sorts of questions. Around six or seven o’clock we brought the result to the mansion and went over the whole document with the governor in his study. He seemed agitated about the interview, scheduled for early the next morning. Nat began to fire questions at him, the sort of questions a typical DC journalist would ask: You say such and such, Governor, but actually isn’t the opposite true? The governor enjoyed that.

  I had been inside the mansion before, but never upstairs to the family’s living quarters. His study was cluttered with stacks of books and piles of papers. There were pictures of his sons everywhere, and on the wall were their drawings of football players and soldiers. One of them was a strikingly lifelike representation of a soldier.

  “Your boy’s a good artist,” I said.

  The governor’s face had looked tired, his eyes red, but suddenly his expression softened as he looked at the drawing. “Yeah. He’s talented, isn’t he?”

  The interview happened at eight o’clock the following morning, evidently to the governor’s satisfaction. I wasn’t in the room for it; only Aaron was. He said nothing about it afterward, which meant he’d been pleased by it.

  A week or so later the producer called Aaron to let him know the program would run at seven o’clock on a certain weeknight. Nat, Aaron, and I gathered around the press office’s television.

  Stewart came in, agitated. One of the cabinet officials, the head of the Department of Corrections, I think, had been carrying on an open feud with a senator. Stewart had been trying to adjudicate the matter, with no success. He came in cursing the senator with all his powers of invective. When he saw us gathered around the television, he asked, “What are you guys doing?”

  “It’s the big interview.”

  “Oh right, the Party Leaders of Tomorrow thing.”

  “Party Leaders of Today, bitch!” That was Aaron.

  “Oh, I get it. It’s the first round of the quadrennial Pick Me as Veep Competition.”

  The program started. Ten or twelve staffers were now in the room. One official after another was interviewed, in almost every case substantively. The governor of one state talked about income taxes, to which the interviewer responded aggressively. A congressman from another state talked about the dangers of political correctness and “inside the Beltway” mentalities; he too was questioned and answered skillfully. They even interviewed the mayor of some midwestern city who had interesting things to say about federal crime policy and road privatization. Then, as the voice-over mentioned something about Ronald Reagan, the camera showed our governor, sitting in his office.

  “The party’s looking for the next Reagan,” he said. “Whether we find him remains to be seen.”

  And that was it. The narration went on to another subject, and the governor’s face wasn’t seen again. Somebody turned
off the television once it became clear that that was all. Nobody said anything for a few seconds, and then Stewart began laughing, quietly at first, then loudly and uncontrollably, roaring, almost falling backward in his chair.

  Nat cracked open a soda can. “Well, boys,” he said, “we’re looking for the next Reagan. And whether we find him—.”

  Stewart went silent. Aaron said, “Remains to be seen,” and Stewart bellowed again.

  “That was insightful,” he said, his frame convulsing. “And here I was thinking we’d already found the next Reagan. But in fact that question”—he paused and looked around the room—“remains to be seen. Who knew?” He howled again, covering his mouth and saying, “We’re—still—looking.”

  “That’s it for me,” Aaron said, walking out. “I’m glad you guys worked so hard on that interview.”

  * * *

  Writing talking points was the most important part of my job, and the worst. Talking points are written products used for speaking engagements. They were as necessary for the governor as they are for any other politician.

  Politicians are expected to speak far too much—we all feel that. David Gergen, who wrote speeches for Nixon and Ford, points out in his memoir that whereas Nixon made only a handful of public speeches in his six years as president, by the late 1990s presidents were expected to speak all the time and about everything. In 1997 alone, Gergen writes, President Clinton made 545 public speeches, more than Reagan and George H. W. Bush combined.I For the vast majority of these presidential speeches, it doesn’t much matter what the president says, so long as he doesn’t say anything vulgar or ridiculous. The governor of course didn’t speak with that kind of frequency, but there were always enough speaking engagements on his schedule to make it impossible for him to know all the requisite details about each engagement.

  On a full day he might speak briefly to a group of schoolteachers from Spartanburg on the occasion of some awards ceremony, then to a group from Jasper County about a bill to raise the sales tax by 1 percent. Then two groups would come to the office for proclamation signings and photographs, one to commemorate National Career Development Month and one to mark National Square Dancing Month (the latter distinguishable by their attire). Later in the day he’d be driven to some part of the state where a corporation was announcing a $6 million expansion and the creation of 150 jobs. Then, before going home, he’d drop by the Charleston County legislative reception. The people involved in each of these events would have made the understandable but often mistaken assumption that the governor had a clear idea of who they were and what it was they were doing. That’s why high-level politicians need speechwriters: not because they’re so dense they need someone to tell them what to say but because no normal person can be expected to say something interesting that many times a day, on that many subjects, to that many separate groups. Talking points explain what the event is, who will be present, the event’s agenda if there is one, some relevant background, and what we—the speechwriters—believe will be appropriate or interesting for the governor to say.

  For the unimportant events or the ones he didn’t care much about, he would wait until three or four minutes before the event began to look at the talking points. If the event was in the office or if you were with him on the road, he preferred that you tell him what the event was and what he should say.

  “So what are we doing here?”

  “This is the Mother of the Year Award ceremony.”

  “Who’s getting the award?”

  “Macel Dargan, from Florence.”

  “Why’s she Mother of the Year?”

  “She volunteered at McLeod Hospital for almost thirty years. She’s gone on medical mission trips to Haiti and other places and taken her four children with her on many of those trips.”

  “How many children?”

  “Four: three boys and a girl.”

  “What are their names?”

  This is when you knew he was probing for a point of ignorance. There was no conceivable circumstance in which he would be expected to know the names of the woman’s children. I would glance down at my notes and tell him the names.

  “How old?”

  “They’re all grown.”

  “How long do I talk?”

  The true answer to that question was It doesn’t matter. You’re the governor. He knew that to be the case, but you couldn’t tell him it didn’t matter how long he spoke or he’d lecture you about how everything matters. The best thing to do was to make up an answer and sound confident when you gave it. “Very short. Five minutes max.”

  “Okay. Wwwwwhat do I say?” Up until now he’d been looking down at the talking points or some miscellaneous papers. This was the really unpleasant part.

  “I’d say—.”

  “Don’t pause,” he would say in an aggressive tone. “When I start talking, I can’t pause.”

  Which was false. He paused all the time, and at awkward moments.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Don’t say ‘Okay,’ just tell me what I’m gonna say.”

  “You should say—.”

  “Don’t tell me ‘You should say.’ When I stand in front of those people, I can’t say, ‘Here’s what I’m gonna say.’ Just say what I’m supposed to say. Go.”

  “I’d say—.”

  “No, just say it. Go. I don’t have time here.”

  All this happened in full view of other staffers. So I turned to them and pretended I was the speaker.

  “There was an article in the Wall Street Journal recently,” I said, putting on an absurd air of relaxed self-confidence, “about a famous musician, a pianist. A few years ago he started to practice a new piece, and as soon as he played a few bars, he thought, ‘I know this piece. I’ve played this piece before.’ But here’s the weird thing: he hadn’t played it before. He’d never played it in his life, or even heard it. But he had heard it before—somehow he knew it. It turns out that his mother played it over and over when she was pregnant with him.”

  “What’s that got to do with this?”

  “I mention that story,” I continued, “because I think it’s a powerful illustration of the influence our mothers have over our lives. Even before we come into the world—.”

  “Boring. Total downer. Again—you have to remember the audience. This isn’t some anti-abortion group. You’ve got to dig deeper. Remember who you’re talking to.”

  “Governor, I can guarantee you these people are anti-­abortion.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  I did know that, and so did he. “They’re celebrating traditional motherhood, they’re independent Baptists, and they’re from Florence.”

  Now it would become an argument about something else. He’d get impatient and say, “Never mind, I’ll think of something,” and walk into the event.

  It didn’t matter what he said. At the Mother of the Year ceremony, middle-aged women cackled and cooed at anything the governor wanted to say. I waited outside and eavesdropped on the event.

  “I read an interesting article the other day in the Wall Street Journal, about a musician . . .”

  If the event was away from the office, and you weren’t with the governor, these conversations would happen over the phone. Sometimes they were brutal. He would discover the unsatisfactory nature of the talking points four minutes before he arrived at the event. After a year or so working for him, though, these calls became so routine that they lost their sting. At four minutes before an event was to begin, you’d wait for the phone to ring. When it rang, you’d prepare to answer his questions as best you could. Maybe you had written “coat and tie” as the appropriate attire, and he’d arrive to find everyone dressed casually. Maybe you had neglected to indicate whether or not he was speaking first. It mattered: if he spoke first, what he said should be more important; if third or fourth, less so. Maybe he
wanted to know some vital fact about the group he was about to address—whether they’d supported his tax plan the year before, or whether they were mostly middle-class activist types or wealthy donor types—and that fact wasn’t properly denoted in the talking points.

  If he called you directly, it was bad. But I got better at handling him. Once, he was about to walk into an event announcing a large investment by the Heinz Company. I’d given him four or five possibilities (“narratives,” he called them), but he hated them all. “Tell me something interesting!” He was almost shouting into the phone, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say about the making of ketchup. Then, as if by inspiration, I remembered a joke I used to tell in school. “Okay,” I said, “how about this. A few statistics for you. Did you know that, according to two major studies conducted at Yale and Oxford Universities, over half of all cases of heart disease could have been prevented by the simple expedient of consuming one tomato a week?”

  “That’s not true,” he said. “You’ve got that wrong. But go on.”

  “Did you know, furthermore, that a modest increase in one’s consumption of tomato phosphate, an ingredient found in Heinz ketchup and steak sauce, can cut your risk of colon cancer by sixty percent?”

  “That’s stupid,” he said. “Where are you getting this?”

  “And did you know, finally, that approximately ninety-­one percent of statistics are made up on the spot?”

  There was a long pause. “That’s good. I like that.”

  “It should get some laughs,” I said. “By the way, I made up ‘tomato phosphate.’ I don’t even know what that is.” But he had hung up.

  * * *

  That summer the governor became even more cantankerous about talking points than he was ordinarily. That was the summer when veep speculation was at its not very considerable height. Reporters from national media would show up at otherwise insignificant events to file reports on one of the politicians on everybody’s list of attractive running mates.