The praise for Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s delivery of her speech has been nothing short of amazing – even MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann admitted that Palin “clearly gives a great speech.” Even the content drew praise from Democrats to the extent that they saw how it galvanized the GOP audience in St. Paul. The praise is due in part to the fact that Palin had no experience speaking on the national scene and to such a large audience, so people were caught off guard.

Still, looking at it objectively, there’s no doubt that Palin’s delivery was almost equal to that of Barack Obama, who has long been recognized for his oratorical skills when delivering prepared speeches.

The Delivery

Palin was poised, confident, had a good clear voice, made pretty effective use of her body language, and she connected very well with the audience. That’s why I’ve given her an A- on her overall delivery in my report card.

Her only real difficulty with delivery was that she was far too measured – in her pitch, her pacing, and her emphasis. Now the pitch range problem is due partly to the venue – people tend to forget to let the microphone do the work for them in a large (in this case very large) room. And there’s also the nature of the occasion – when you’re trying to rally people, it seems like every word has to be dramatic and powerful.

Problem is, you lose all contrast – everything gets spoken in the same way: loud and in a relatively high monotone. If Palin (and virtually all other politicians) can let herself relax, and go soft and low at the appropriate places, then the dramatic, powerful moments will feel that much more dramatic and powerful.

Pacing is another side of the same coin. Palin was far too measured in her pacing and the big danger there is that the meaning of passages is not as clear. Here’s an example:

Among politicians, there is the idealism of high-flown speechmaking, in which crowds are stirringly summoned to support great things.

And then there is the idealism of those leaders, like John McCain, who actually do great things.

All of these lines were delivered at exactly the same pace. But changes in pace help us to see differences, and that’s what you want to do in this contrast between two idealisms. So, you move faster through “in which crowds are stirringly summoned to support great things” and then you draw out the phrase “who actually do great things.” The difference in pace helps draw attention to what you think is important.

Staying with this example and continuing the problem of delivery being too measured, there was also no emphasis from Palin; each word received the same force. Yet, what we need here is punctuating of words like “and THEN there is the idealism” and “who actually DO great things.” It’s not that we the audience won’t get the contrast, it’s that you want to be certain we get it, that we know you the speaker gets it, and changes in emphasis makes the getting of it more interesting and keeps our attention.

The Writing

Let me emphasize that these report cards are never about the content of the presentation; they’re about the technical aspects of delivery and writing. So whatever you thought of Palin’s content – accuracy of facts, choice of approach, etc. – that’s not my concern here.

I want to ask whether the writing made points clearly, efficiently, and elegantly. My overall answer to that would be no. Where I do think the writing was quite good was at the level of clear and efficient wording. It got to the point quickly and in plain language, while still coming up with some memorable, elegant lines, like:

In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers.

And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.

BTW, I think part of the reason this line didn’t get more coverage was because of the weak delivery I spoke of earlier regarding pacing and emphasis.

Where I think the writing fell short was in its overall structure – a confusion about the structure which made clear statements come across in an unclear way. Put another way, the language itself was quite clear, but the order in which things got presented diminished that clarity. Here are just a couple of examples (the items in square brackets are what was actually said compared to the prepared text):

To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message [for you]: For years, you[‘ve] sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters.

I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House. Todd is a story all by himself.

or this:

We need American [sources of resources. We need American energy] energy resources, brought to you by American ingenuity, and produced by American workers. I’ve noticed a pattern with our opponent.

Maybe you have, too.

Notice how those two highlighted sentences are completely separate thoughts – in fact, they’re the introductory thoughts to the next section of the speech and yet they come at the end of a paragraph. Some might say this is just a matter of how the text was laid out on the page (BTW, I checked my copy against four other postings of her speech and they all had the same lay out), and how it appeared on the teleprompter may have been different.

While that may be true, Palin delivered her speech in a way that matched this layout – she ran two separate ideas together and didn’t give them the kind of verbal separation needed. This has serious consequences both for the flow of the speech and for the clarity of meaning.

Great speechwriting anticipates places for audience reaction (clapping and so forth), and these should be at the end of sections/major points. If you’re running two ideas together, as these examples do, then you end up with a strange cadence to your speech and people aren’t sure about when to applaud. We saw this a number of times in Palin’s speech, as in this example:

As for my running mate, you can be certain that wherever he goes, and whoever is listening, John McCain is the same man. [Big clap] [Well,] I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment.

That highlighted line – which begins a new point – got trampled in the applause which you had to know would follow the end of the last thought “John McCain is the same man.” The rhythm got broken because the ideas in the speech were not clearly broken up (either on paper or in Palin’s mind).

One of the most talked about lines in her speech was the off-the-cuff joke she made about hockey moms and the only difference between them and pitbulls being – lipstick. From a delivery standpoint, by the way, it was interesting to see her slip into personal mode from speech mode to deliver the joke; if speakers can keep the personal mode for the entire speech…

Anyway, my hat goes off to her for making the joke when she realized how potent her line about being a hockey mom was; she had started into her next line when she noticed the audience reacting to the line, so she stopped and made use of it.

My only comment would be: she and the speechwriters should have known at the last moment that there would be a reaction to that line (the posters in the crowd were plain enough) and there should have been a planned pause there. On the other hand, pulling off a planned joke or comment as if extemporaneous is not easy.

Conclusion

Let me re-emphasize that I was extremely impressed with Sarah Palin’s delivery, particularly in light of her relative inexperience. The things I talk about in these report cards are about details, about the high polish, which I hope are helpful to others in developing their own delivery and writing styles.

the language and content overall were remarkably unsophisticated for such an auspicious evening. This was of a piece with a serious language problem.

And he had an example that I’m sad to say I missed in my Report Card on the speech:

For instance, the misuse of the word “more,” appearing for the first time during a long list of incomplete comparisons, including “more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less.” More than what? More than when? This is a kind of base-stealing in political speeches, and assumes the audience shares the speaker’s viewpoint (safe among fellow Democrats at Invesco Field, but not for the millions watching on TV).

And I think Long was also right to praise Obama’s ability to deliver a message:

Obama is a passionate, confident speaker. He has a resonant voice, free of any distracting accent. He dwells on key words and pauses to underline important points. He avoids extemporizing—a wise move on his part, since he is significantly smoother reading than off-the-cuff.

Did you see Obama on Anderson Cooper explaining why he didn’t go to New Orleans during the height of Gustav? It was a simple message, but he had a great deal of trouble being “off the cuff”.

There’s been a lot of praise for Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic Convention, with commentators like Andrew Sullivan calling it “a deeply substantive speech,” and celebrities like Oprah describing the night as “something that was transcendent.”

UPDATE: Gallup Poll of Aug. 30: “Fifty-eight percent of Americans give Barack Obama’s speech a positive review, including 35% who describe it as ‘excellent.’ Both marks surpass those given to the 2000 and 2004 presidential candidates, with the excellent ratings for Obama’s speech 10 percentage points higher than any other recent candidate has received”.

My concern here is not with the content of the speech or its political impact, but with the technical aspects of the writing and the delivery.

As you can see from the report card, I think Obama is an excellent speaker. He connects well with the audience, he has a good speaking voice, makes judicious use of his hand movements, and he has a fairly good tonal range.

From a delivery standpoint, the area I would work on the most is an aspect of his pacing: he could speed up more in the details of a phrase so we get to the punchline faster. But, in some cases, I think it’s the writing that could have been tighter, making for much shorter phrases that wouldn’t require the same breaking up through pacing.

In terms of the writing, let me start with a couple of clarity issues. The first concerns the focus on the “promise of America.” Now this may be more of an actual content issue – an uncertainty about the message itself – but it’s not clear to me what the promise of America was meant to be. Not that there has to be a single element to that promise, but simply that we’re never given a clear outline of the promise that we could hold on to throughout the speech.

The second clarity issue concerns the drawing of contrasts when we’re not always sure what is being contrasted:

You see, we Democrats have a very different measure of what constitutes progress in this country.

To talk about “a very different measure” assumes we have been told the Republican measure of progress. There is a hint about that measure in the preceding paragraph, when Obama says the trickle-down economics of the Republicans has failed. I think the writers meant for us to take from that paragraph something like ‘the measure of success for Republicans is how much money we allow people at the top to keep.’ Well, say that! Use the word “measure” and tell us clearly what that measure is. Then you can follow it with the contrast “we Democrats have a very different measure.”

Moving on to other aspects of the writing, it was a speech that came close to great writing but never got there because of some very simple wording problems. Here’s an example:

For eighteen long months, you have stood up, one by one, and said enough to the politics of the past. You understand that in this election, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result. You have shown what history teaches us – that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. Change happens because the American people demand it – because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.

America, this is one of those moments.

The catch-phrase “the change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington.” should have come at the conclusion – the clear, memorable summary of Obama’s point about change coming from the people. By ending with “America, this is one of those moments” you don’t reference the actual point of the paragraph – plus you’ve already made the point that this is the moment in the middle of the paragraph.

Also, you have to know the “change comes to washington” line is the one people are going to clap for – or at least it’s the one you want them to clap for – which means it needs to be at the end of a thought. And don’t clutter it with “You have shown what history teaches us – that at defining moments like this one.” Here’s one simple re-arrangement:

For eighteen long months, you have stood up, one by one, and said enough to the politics of the past. You understand that in this election, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result. You have shown what history teaches us: that, at defining moments like this one, change happens because the American people demand it; because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.

The change we need doesn’t come from Washington – change comes to Washington.

I have to give Obama points for some last minute or on-the-spot changes he made to improve the writing of the speech. Take this example from the prepared text:

John McCain likes to say that he’ll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell – but he won’t even go to the cave where he lives.

In his delivery, Obama said “he won’t even follow him to the cave where he lives,” making this sentence the parallelism it should have been from the very beginning.

Here’s another example – Obama’s changes are in brackets:

In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is – you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck [You're on your own]. No health care? The market will fix it. [You're on your own] Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps – even if you don’t have boots. You’re on your own.

The phrase “you’re on your own” is a powerful one and he rightly added it to each point. I think it would have packed even more punch if he’d simply replaced “Tough luck” and “The market will fix it,” but at least he got the phrase in there.

All of this goes to show that even a speech which, by all accounts, was highly successful in accomplishing its goals can always benefit from more polishing and I hope the examples I’ve given are useful in polishing your speech-writing.

For additional comments on Obama’s speech, see my post about his use of storytelling.

Because in the faces of those young veterans who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan, I see my grandfather, who signed up after Pearl Harbor, marched in Patton’s Army, and was rewarded by a grateful nation with the chance to go to college on the GI Bill.

In the face of that young student who sleeps just three hours before working the night shift, I think about my mom, who raised my sister and me on her own while she worked and earned her degree; who once turned to food stamps but was still able to send us to the best schools in the country with the help of student loans and scholarships…

And when I hear a woman talk about the difficulties of starting her own business, I think about my grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle-management, despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman. She’s the one who taught me about hard work. She’s the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me. And although she can no longer travel, I know that she’s watching tonight, and that tonight is her night as well.

By tying in the lives of others with those of people close to him, Obama gives us better reason to think he can empathize with their stories.

This focus on story-telling has been a big part of Obama’s campaign and it goes way back to his address to the 2004 Democratic Convention:

I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.

People around the world have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.

It’s simple, easy to remember, and nicely encapsulates what Clinton wanted to convey. It’s also very elegant. Something to emulate in your own speechwriting.