How Speechwriters Can Save the World (Part 1)

Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner begins with the mariner stopping a wedding guest on route for the ceremony.

With a ‘glittering eye’ he is compelled to tell his story.

In the pantheon of the professions, speechwriters are small fry, but we can make a big contribution to society by telling our story.

Anyone who wants to be a useful citizen and make constructive contributions to public life should know what we know.

1) Rhetoric

Advanced speechwriters study rhetoric. These are the rules of public discourse that have governed the courts and politics since ancient times. You’d hope they’d say that you must always use facts and tell the truth. But they don’t say that.

The rule of public discourse is honesty is the best policy, but not the only policy. The only thing that matters is that you should win your case.

2) Integrity

‘Diplomacy is war with words’ one speechwriter working in Vienna told me regretfully this year.

As Governments and institutions feel less certain of their power and status, they use words to inflate their power and status.

This in turn leads us to lose faith in their power and status.

The rules of public discourse have a caveat. You can, in extreme circumstances, use falsehood to make your case, but only if you’re a good person working in the service of truth.

3) Facts

In rhetoric we learn how to construct arguments. The bitterest arguments come under the category of forensic rhetoric: speeches made in court about what crimes somebody committed in the past.

But think back to a high-stakes argument with another family member you’ve had about the past. What do you notice? It was bitter. Why? Because human beings will never agree on facts about the past.

Here’s what a negotiator in the Irish Troubles had to say:

“Facts only confuse the issue. Each side has its own set of facts, mostly accurate, but selected to prove its own case. Each ignores the real fact, which is what the other side feels.”

4) Rationality

The job of the speechwriter is to find the most persuasive arguments in the moment that will convince you to do the thing our client wants you to do. These are almost always emotional arguments.

All societies have ‘sacred’ topics. Things that everyone is supposed to have reverence for and doesn’t feel comfortable about examining critically.

So as speechwriters, we’ll link our arguments to science, the future of the healthcare system or national security because they’re short cuts to consent: you feel uncomfortable challenging ‘sacred’ things.

To be rational is to see beyond your own self-interest. We’re taught to appeal to your self-interest, not your rationality.

5) See Differently

There is a basic principle in the construction of a persuasive case. Always try to see things from both sides of a question.

This is simple in theory but it’s highly disempowering and difficult in practice.

If you want to experience how really hard this is, put yourself in a situation where you could be mistaken for a member of a tribe you don’t feel comfortable with.

If you’re an atheist, go to a Jehovah’s Witness service.

If you enjoy a drink, go along to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

If you’ve not got much money, go and test drive a Porsche.

You’re highly unlikely to come to any harm.

You may discover something rather troubling – other tribes that think differently are worthy of respect.

But these things tend to go viscerally against all our notions of purity and integrity as individuals.

As speechwriters, in free societies, it’s our job to be ‘harmonisers of opposites.’

How else can you motivate people to act collectively?

You can’t do that by seeing everything from your own point of view.

Perhaps it also accounts for why people don’t like the idea of professional speechwriters very much.

The European Speechwriter Network hosts its 24th conference in Exeter College, Oxford from 26-28 March 2025.

See in the comments for more details...