Speech Writing Is Good Writing

Last night Bill Clinton spoke at the Democratic National Convention.  Regardless of political orientation, one has to admire the writing and the time that goes into creating such a speech.

Now, at the time of Bill's speech, I was teaching a teleclass on the 5 Tips to Start Writing That Book Today.  Afterwards, knowing the power and breadth of the Internet, I was fully prepared to find video of the speech.  (If you were following me on Twitter, then you know I was pretty annoyed that I couldn't find it immediately.  If you know me at all, then you also know that I am not the most patient of people, especially when it comes to inefficiency.)

Eventually, I found it here, at the Huffington Post, the Internet newspaper.  A few notes:

• Under the first video is this caption:  "Bill Clinton was greeted by an extended round of applause as he walked on stage to deliver his speech that lasted nearly three minutes."  His speech was only three minutes?  Those of us who have been alive in the last sixteen years know that Bill never spoke for under ten minutes.  :)  It was the round of applause that lasted three minutes.  It was such a good example of a misplaced modifier that I immediately added it as an example in the Writing Essentials Program (see why writing well is important?).
• At about fifteen and half minutes into the speech came this sentence:  "...to be fair to all the Americans who aren't as hard-core Democrats as we, it's a philosophy the American people never had a chance to see in action fully..." Hard-core Democrats as we.  Yay!!!!!  A speech writer who knows his stuff, and a man who isn't afraid to say it correctly.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!
• The speech did what it was supposed to do:  cover the objections against Obama and get everyone riled up against the Republicans.  There were times that the speech felt it was following an agenda.  Hit bullet point #1, then bullet point #2, and so on.  I didn't think there was a lot of life in the first third.
• For me, the speech turned around at this point:  "He will choose diplomacy first and military force as a last resort. But in a world troubled by terror; by trafficking in weapons, drugs and people; by human rights abuses; by other threats to our security, our interests, and our values, when he cannot convert adversaries into partners, he will stand up to them."  I just liked the parallel structure ("first" paired with "last"), interesting choice of words ("convert adversaries into partners"), and some alliteration ("troubled by terror").

I've been disappointed, from a writer's perspective, that our leaders' language has been dumbed down.  I miss the days when speeches were intelligent, vocabulary words from a higher-than-eighth-grade-level were used, and Robert Frost and Maya Angelou were our inaugural poets.