There are many differences between what’s actually in the Bible, and common perceptions of what most people think is in the Bible. For example, the Moses of the Exodus story is described as timid, disfigured, and not exactly Charlton Heston. When asked by God to lead, Moses responds by saying he’s the wrong man because he’s “heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue,” which is usually interpreted as some form of speech impediment or stutter. There’s an inherent belief in the story that the rightness of Moses’ message, as well as having an omnipotent being on his side, will carry the day.
Ever since television became commonplace in American homes, the imagery surrounding both running for president and being one has led to debates over whether the Hollywood stagecraft of it all leads to public opinion valuing image over substance. For the cynical among us, there really isn’t any difference between making a bag of potato chips look like a good choice and selling a presidential candidate’s views via advertising. Did Richard Nixon lose enough votes to swing the 1960 election because he looked pale and pasty with a five o’clock shadow in the first televised presidential debate, compared to the more vibrant appearance of John F. Kennedy? Maybe, but who knows?
All of this is predicated on the idea of using mass communication to connect with people on some level, whether it be getting their support for a policy or issue or on a superficial “cares about me" feeling. In fact, the president being able to marshal morale and command attention is usually considered one of the preeminent powers of the office. However, there are more than a few recent examples as well as research that argues the idea that a president’s “bully pulpit” can change minds is severely overstated. Given the multitude of ways people see and hear about the news, whether watching live or through reading snide tweets reacting to something out of context, the ability to focus Americans’ attention is not what it once was. The resulting analysis is as much about appearances and how something is said as it is about what was said. And given the polarization of politics, we live in a country where the major ideologies can’t seem to agree the sky is blue or water is wet, so both sides live and believe in their own versions of reality that dictate reactions to “facts.”
So, with President Obama’s address to the nation last night and some of the usual hyperventilating in the press about the future of presidential speech-making, I thought it might be interesting to figure out what does and does not work in presidential speeches. What are the best and worst examples of a president attempting to move America or convey a message in the modern era? Which ones were successful? Which ones were spectacular debacles?
“I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have sense enough to do without my persuading them … That’s all the powers of the president amount to.”
— President Obama, in an interview with Bill Simmons.
The speeches below are in no way meant to be a definitive list. But they were some of the first that came to mind when thinking about this topic.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt — Infamy — December 8, 1941
Within an hour of Roosevelt’s speech to Congress, the United States had declared war on Japan.
From Dan Lamothe at the Washington Post:
The “infamy” line almost didn’t appear in Roosevelt’s initial draft of the speech, however. It was edited in by the president after he dictated a first version to assistant Grace Tully three hours after the attack, according to a piece published … by Paul Sparrow, the director of the FDR Library.
Comparing them more closely, here’s the first version’s opening lines:
“Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in world history, the United States of America was simultaneously and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
And here’s the improved version:
“Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
The changes of that opening sentence are in bold. The speech — now widely known as the “Infamy Speech” or the “Day of Infamy Speech” — was delivered to a joint address to Congress that led to a declaration of war against Japan.
President Lyndon Johnson — “We Shall Overcome” — March 15, 1965
This civil rights speech to Congress introducing the Voting Rights Act was given by Johnson eight days after Alabama troopers attacked voting rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.
From Robert Caro in the New York Times:
When Johnson stepped to the lectern on Capitol Hill that night, he adopted the great anthem of the civil rights movement as his own.
"Even if we pass this bill," he said, "the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life."
And, Lyndon Johnson said, "Their cause must be our cause, too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice."
He paused, and then he said, "And we shall overcome."
Martin Luther King was watching the speech at the home of a family in Selma with some of his aides, none of whom had ever, during all the hard years, seen King cry. But Lyndon Johnson said, "We shall overcome" - and they saw him cry then.
President John F. Kennedy — Inaugural Address — January 20, 1961
Generally considered the gold standard for inaugural addresses, it’s the beginning of “Camelot" and best remembered for a call to service with the line: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
From Mike Vuolo at Slate:
In Kennedy's case, the gift of rhetoric was owed largely to his longtime counsel and legislative aide, Ted Sorensen, who later became his principal speechwriter after the two developed a simpatico understanding of oratory. In his 1965 biography Kennedy, Sorensen wrote:
As the years went on, and I came to know what he thought on each subject as well as how he wished to say it, our style and standard became increasingly one. When the volume of both his speaking and my duties increased in the years before 1960, we tried repeatedly but unsuccessfully to find other wordsmiths who could write for him in the style to which he was accustomed. The style of those whom we tried may have been very good. It may have been superior. But it was not his.
Kennedy believed his inaugural address should "set a tone for the era about to begin," an era in which he imagined foreign policy and global issues—not least the specter of nuclear annihilation—would be his chief concern. But while Sorensen may have been the only person who could reliably give voice to Kennedy's ideas, the coming speech was too historic to entrust to merely one man.
President Ronald Reagan — Challenger Disaster — January 28, 1986
This is probably the most horrific and memorable national tragedy of my childhood. What made it especially gruesome was the image of Christa McAuliffe’s parents watching the whole event happen on live television, and it’s still seared into my memory the looks on their faces as the worst happened.
One of the duties of the president is being “Consoler-in-Chief.” The president is the steady hand that is supposed to reassure when things go wrong. Whatever the man’s failings as a president, this is usually considered one of Reagan’s finest moments, and one of the best speeches of his presidency. It occurred the evening after the destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger.
From George Bennett at the Palm Beach Post:
President Ronald Reagan, scheduled to give the State of the Union address that night, postponed that speech and instead delivered a brief statement remembering the astronauts and vowing that the shuttle program would go on.
“We’ll continue our quest in space…Nothing ends here. Our hopes and our journeys continue,” Reagan said.
His closing line was among the most memorable of his presidency:
“We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God.”
President Bill Clinton — Oklahoma City Bombing — April 23, 1995
If you can point to a moment where the first term of the Clinton presidency seemed to start turning around, it was President Clinton’s performance after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, which killed 149 workers and 19 children. Before the bombing, there was nascent anti-government sentiment, characterized by growing militia movements and tinfoil-hat idiots worried about black helicopters, with the Republicans riding those right-wing elements to power during the 1994 midterm elections. After the bombing, the public began to reassess that sentiment and where it might lead. It was the first point where the public mood began to shift, with the tide eventually fully turning against the Republicans after the 1995 government shutdown.
President Clinton’s greatest gift as a politician is his ability to empathize, which was on full display during the memorial service honoring the fallen. Similar to Reagan after the Challenger disaster, Clinton was a leader that assured everyone that it was going to be okay.
From Peter Keating in New York magazine:
Republican members of Congress soon made fools of themselves defending militias. And Clinton found his voice. At a Michigan State commencement address shortly afterward, he told graduates, "There is nothing patriotic about hating your country, or pretending that you can love your country but despise your government."
In his memoirs, Clinton ... wrote: "The haters and extremists didn't go away, but they were on the defensive, and, for the rest of my term, would never quite regain the position they had enjoyed after Timothy McVeigh took the demonization of government beyond the limits of humanity." Indeed, Oklahoma City gave Clinton the chance to pull his presidency together by advancing a positive agenda of triangulated social issues. And that strategy reached full flower in his 1996 State of the Union speech, where Clinton introduced a man named Richard Dean, a Vietnam vet who had worked in the Oklahoma City Federal Building and who re-entered the building four times to rescue people after it blew up. As everyone, including Republicans, stood to applaud, Clinton went on:
But Richard Dean's story doesn't end there. This last November, he was forced out of his office when the government shut down. And the second time the government shut down, he continued helping Social Security recipients, but he was working without pay … I challenge all of you in this chamber: Never, ever shut the federal government down again.
President Jimmy Carter — “Malaise” — July 15, 1979
Contrary to popular belief, the “crisis of confidence” speech, or “malaise” speech as it would come to be known, received a positive reception immediately after it was given. Sensing the American people had tuned him out, Carter spent a week bringing prominent Americans to Camp David to discuss how to fix the United States. After listening to “members of Congress, governors, labor leaders, academics and clergy,” Carter put together an address which questioned the very nature of the American outlook on life, and implied the problems with the United States went far beyond the circumstances of an energy crisis or an economic crisis. However, when Carter attempted to fire members of his cabinet in the wake of the speech, public feelings turned decidedly negative towards the speech. The speech “boomeranged” back to Carter, with Op-Eds appearing in newspapers defending the American way of life, and pointing to him as the problem.
From Liane Hansen at NPR:
The reception to Carter's speech was overwhelmingly positive: Approving phone calls poured into the White House — more calls than when President Richard Nixon had announced the invasion of Cambodia — along with many letters of support. But the goodwill was short lived. Within days of the speech, Carter fired several members of his cabinet, closing what Mattson calls "a window of opportunity."
"It's from then on that Carter had a really difficult time at bouncing back and being seen on the part of the American people as a strong and significant leader — especially a leader that could take America through solving the energy crisis," Mattson says.
"Carter goes out there and he essentially condemns the American way of life," he says. "He says our consumerism, our materialism have really gotten in the way of this problem."
Mattson says the fact that Americans responded positively to a speech that berated their way of life suggests that they don't mind having their values called into question. In that way, he says, the malaise speech had the potential to effect a significant cultural change.
"[Carter] did blow the opportunity," Mattson says. "But I think the original success that the speech had symbolizes the fact that Americans will listen when they're being criticized and when they're being called out to their better selves."
President George W. Bush — “Mission Accomplished” — May 1, 2003
What I remember the most about this publicity stunt was how much the media Heathers fawned over it. Chris Matthews was practically orgasmic watching Bush land and come out in his flight suit. The speech declaring combat operations in Iraq over, and the “mission accomplished” banner which accompanied it, are now seen as exhibit A of the hubris and incompetence of the Bush administration.
From Jesse Rifkin at Huffington Post:
The truth is that the American role in Iraq was far from finished, with the overwhelming majority of deaths occurring and most of the money spent since that speech 12 years ago today.
In the years since "Mission Accomplished," some 149,053 civilians have been killed, compared to about 7,412 prior to the speech, according to the website Iraq Body Count. Since the speech, 4,637 military members in the Iraq War coalition led by the U.S. have lost their lives, versus 172 prior, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. As of September 2014, total U.S. expenditures on the war in Iraq totaled $815.8 billion, about 93 percent of which was spent after 2003. That cost is more than 16 times the Bush administration's original projection.
President Barack Obama declared America's combat mission in Iraq over in August 2010, fulfilling one of the central promises of his first presidential campaign. During Obama's tenure in office, annual U.S. expenditures on Operation Iraqi Freedom and coalition deaths have consistently decreased. A post-invasion low of $3.2 billion was spent by the U.S. last year, compared to $142.1 billion during the peak year of expenditures, 2008 -- Bush's final year in office. Coalition deaths totaled three last year, compared to 961 for the deadliest year, 2007.
President George H. W. Bush — The War On Drugs — September 5, 1989
The “War on Drugs” wasn’t started by the first President Bush. However, he did escalate during his time in the presidency. During a 1989 speech, Bush pledged billions towards building “more prisons, more jails, more courts, more prosecutors,” as well as militarizing the drug war as part of a National Drug Control Strategy. The policy led to millions being incarcerated, a zero tolerance approach that valued statistics over reason, and sentencing disparities that led to racial disparities.
The most memorable moment of the speech was Bush holding up a bag of crack cocaine on national television and claiming it had been obtained by undercover agents in Lafayette Park across from the White House, with it being an example of how far the threat of drugs had extended. It was later discovered the DEA had manipulated a drug dealer to come to the park just to set up the line for Bush’s speech.
From Maureen Dowd in the New York Times:
William McMullan, a special agent in charge of the drug agency's Washington field office, was quoted as saying that it was not easy to get the dealer to come to Lafeyette Park because he did not even know where the White House was. 'Anything Around White House?'
The Post said Richard Weatherbee, a special assistant to Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, called James Millford, executive assistant to the D.E.A. Administrator, Jack Lawn. In turn Mr. Millford called Mr. McMullan, who quoted him as saying, ''Do you have anything going on around the White House?''
Mr. McMullan said that when he reported that there were deals being played out several blocks away, Mr. Millford asked if he could move one down to the White House because ''the President wants to show it could be bought anywhere.''
Asked today if he had requested a bag of crack for his speech, the President replied that he had. ''I said I'd like to have something from that vicinity to show that it can happen anywhere,'' he said. ''Absolutely. And that's what they gave me, and they told me where they caught this guy.''
President Richard Nixon — Farewell Address — August 9, 1974
The resignation speech the night before is more historically significant, but I’ve always found the farewell speech Nixon gave to his staff before leaving the White House one of the most interesting public moments for any president. It is probably Nixon at his most emotionally honest, or at least as honest as he was capable of being. There are elements of self-pity within it, but it’s also a time where a flawed man realized that it was over and admitted that on some level that he “destroyed” himself. In this moment, Nixon was so human, and the look of anguish on Pat Nixon’s face, as well as Nixon’s children, as the speech goes on is vividly real.
From Peter Grier at the Christian Science Monitor:
Nixon had prepared these remarks that morning, drawing on a number of sources, including the personal papers of one of his tough political heroes, Theodore Roosevelt. Unpolished by staff, the speech was rambling, raw, and emotional – perhaps too emotional.
It was a performance “so wrenching to watch that even some arch-enemies admitted a pang of sympathy for a humiliated fellow human struggling to keep from unraveling,” writes Mr. DeFrank.
Nixon saluted his parents – his father was a “great man," the soon-to-be-ex-president said, and his mother was “a saint." He said he had made mistakes, but never for personal gain. He talked about the White House itself – a house with a “great heart,” though not the biggest or finest residence in the world for a head of state.
His words wandered thereafter. Near the end he rallied, focused, and said this: “Always give your best. Never get discouraged, never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”