Say it

like you
mean it
A good speech can make or break a political
career. And Kevin Rudd’s inability to communicate
effectively should be a warning to all aspiring
politicians explains Dennis Glover.

A
midst the torrent of explanations devoted to the him to peer beyond the lectern to
downfall of Kevin Rudd, one issue cannot be the glazed looks in the audience
escaped: if he had been a better orator he’d most and to do something about it.
likely still be prime minister. But Rudd ploughed on until
Having become Labor leader and then prime minister there was no one left listening-which
by pitching himself beyond the Labor caucus to the true was a shame, because he actually had a
believers on the Australian Left, Rudd not only failed to keep lot left to say.
his followers inspired, he seemed to go out of his way to And there lies an irony, because Kevin
deflate them, starting with his plea on the very night of his Rudd will be remembered mainly for a great
victory for us all to calm down and have a cup of tea and an speech: his uplifting apology to the stolen generations.
Iced Vo-Vo. It made him loved as few prime ministers before him. With
I wasn’t the only one to find it depressing and dispirit- more consistency of effort and style he may have held on to
ing. There were alternatives. For instance, having achieved his followers and still be living in the Lodge.
the goal he’d set himself-of climbing from Everest base This makes Kevin Rudd’s tragic demise Exhibit One in
camp to government in under a year-he could have told my defence of oratory. I believe that to rescue our democracy
the watching millions that Labor had just planted the flag from the slow strangulation of boredom we need better
of progress on the top of the very highest summit. Imagine political speech-making. The era of politics dominated by
the roar it would have received, and the energy it would have managerialism-in which timid politicians bore us with
generated. endless discussion of ‘process’-cannot go on.
Time after time, Rudd was warned by senior com- Here are Exhibits Two, Three and Four: Barack Obama,
mentators and his own supporters to drop his long-winded, Sarah Palin and David Cameron.
technocratic speaking style. The low point came when an Just a little over six years ago Obama was a little-
editorial in The Australian gave him ‘nought out of ten for known member of the Illinois state legislature. Then a
delivery’ for an address to the National Press Club and told dramatic speech which electrified the 2004 Democratic
Convention brought him to the attention of the world.
Against his inspiring oratory, the calculated triangulation
Dennis Glover is a freelance speechwriter and has worked for
of the establishment’s preferred candidate, Hilary Rodham-
several federal Labor leaders. His book The Art of Great Speech-
Clinton, seemed enervating and cynical. The rest, as they say,
es and Why We Remember Them is published by Cambridge
is history-making.
University Press, RRP $39.95.
To counter Obama’s oratory, and fire-up its own base,
14 IPA Review | December 2010 www.ipa.org.au
www.ipa.org.au IPA Review | December 2010 15
© Newspix
 “But Rudd
ploughed on
Meanwhile in the United
Kingdom in 2005, having repeatedly
failed to find someone charismatic
enough to take on the charming
else: they are the masters and
mistresses of technique. Their speeches
are packed with rhetorical devices
in the form of schemes and tropes
until there Tony Blair, the Conservative Party that the Roman orator Cicero also

was no one
was meeting to elect its new leader. used and that his Greek predecessors
An unknown outsider, considered categorized for us: speaking in threes

left listening too liberal to lead the party of

Margaret Thatcher, stepped onto
(tricolon); beginning sentences with
the same word (anaphora) or ending
– which was the stage at the Tory nominating
convention and spoke brilliantly,
them with the same word (epiphora);
joining long lists with conjunctions
a shame, courageously and word-perfectly (polysyndeton) or omitting the

because he for 17 minutes, completely without

notes or lectern-all to an absolutely
conjunctions altogether (asyndeton);
asking rhetorical questions (erotema)

actually astonished audience. His name was

David Cameron; he quickly became
and answering them (anthypophora);
juxtaposing contrasting ideals
had a lot the leadership favourite and is now
presiding over what may be a second
(antithesis); and so on. These turn
mere sentences into a form of prose
left to say.
”
conservative economic revolution. poetry that attracts the ear. The most
The common thread in these confident speechmakers like these
success stories is oratory. Unlike also liberally use metaphors, tell
Exhibit One, our Exhibits Two, Three stories, employ ridicule, and make
the Republican machine chose a little-
and Four had the courage to appeal powerful appeals to our emotions
known governor of a little-regarded
to the people using the weapon that using principles like courage and
state to be the slightly dismal John
has been the decisive factor in politics patriotism.
McCain’s running-mate. Her name
since the birth of democracy more How many of these techniques,
was Sarah Palin, and history records
than 2500 years ago: well-crafted for instance can you detect in
that she took a great speech written
rhetoric. the following great passages from
for her by George W Bush’s old
Their courage, however, was just Obama’s and Palin’s 2004 and 2008
speechwriter and smashed it out of
their starting point. Reading Obama’s, convention addresses?
the park. Her Tea Party movement
Palin’s and Cameron’s speeches- …there’s not a liberal
has changed American politics, which
or better still, watching them on America and a conservative
means it may change the world.
YouTube-you will notice something America there’s the United
States of America. There’s not
a black America and white
America and Latino America
and Asian America; there’s
the United States of America.
The pundits like to slice-and-
dice our country into Red
States and Blue States; Red
States for Republicans, Blue
States for Democrats. But I’ve
got news for them, too. We
worship an awesome God in
the Blue States, and we don’t
like federal agents poking
around our libraries in the
© Newspix

Red States. We coach Little

League in the Blue States and
have gay friends in the Red

16 IPA Review | December 2010 www.ipa.org.au

 States. There are patriots who
opposed the war in Iraq and
patriots who supported it.
We are one people, all of us
pledging allegiance to the stars
and stripes, all of us defending
the United States of America.
…when the cloud of rhetoric
has passed, when the roar of
the crowd fades away, when
the stadium lights go out,
and those Styrofoam Greek
columns are hauled back to
some studio lot; when that
happens, what exactly is our
opponent’s plan? What does
he actually seek to accomplish
after he’s done turning back the
waters and healing the planet?
The answer-the answer is to
make government bigger, and
take more of your money, and
give you more orders from
Washington, and to reduce
the strength of America in a
dangerous world.
Now, that it’s been established why
this is important to politicians and
their careers-the next question is,
why is it important to the rest of us?
To answer that, consider Exhibit Five:
Al Gore.
Gore’s 2000 presidential bid
famously flopped because, as the
American commentator Joe Klein
has described it, he was unable to
project himself as a credible human
being. People may have identified
with his party and his beliefs but his
robotic political persona put them off.
Depending on your political views,
the result for the world was either a
blessing or a disaster. Certainly Gore’s
reputation was in tatters. Then he
met a documentary film-maker called
Davis Guggenheim.
If you have seen the film An
Inconvenient Truth, which is a movie
version of Gore’s global warming
stump speech, you will be aware of a
number of curious interludes in the
Ronald Reagan addressing a crowd in front of the Brandenburg Gate | © Newspix

www.ipa.org.au IPA Review | December 2010 17

 of the speech comes from those who
denounced it as ‘pure rhetoric’.
If we go back 20, 30 and 40 years
to the great liberal-conservative cause
of the previous century-the defeat
of communism and the triumph
of liberal capitalism-we find that
rhetoric played a great role in that
struggle too. In that extended fight,
John F Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and
Margaret Thatcher-speechmakers
who could project belief and courage
and get others to follow them-become
Exhibits Six, Seven and Eight in the
case for oratory. The first implored us
to ‘ask not’ in the struggle for freedom;
the second implored Mr Gorbachev
to tear down a wall; the third told us
that even in the darkest moment, she
wasn’t for turning. All three in fact
Sven Nackstrand | © AAP Image

employed classical technique to do so

(to give them their names, they are, in
order): antemetabole, apostrophe and
paronomasia.
In other words, a good speech
can both make careers and change the
world, for good or ill. Its DNA con-
sists of rules, but this DNA can only
come to life when it is charged with
belief and passion.
argument where Gore talks about his including the cherry-picker he uses to
Why is it important for you to
old Harvard professor Roger Reveille; reach the point on the graph at which
know this? Because if you care about
his son’s near death in a car accident, the world begins its ecological death
politics, you can do something about
and his sister dying of lung cancer- spiral. Again, depending on your view,
it. You are Exhibit Nine and your
in a family that made its living from it is either hyperbole, or sheer genius.
audience is Exhibit Ten, in my case. In
growing tobacco. These are in the Guggenheim knew that this positive
fact, as an engaged citizen it’s your duty
film for a reason speechwriters will projection of Gore’s character and
to do something about it. Whether you
immediately recognize: they help the judicious use of interesting facts
are an elected politician, a candidate
humanize him. He’s a disciple, with were the secret rhetorical ingredients
for office, an executive member of
a wise mentor; a father who wants to needed to make an OK speech into a
your local branch, or a member of that
bequeath his son a safe future; a loving global phenomenon.
much-misunderstood class of political
brother able to see the errors of his All this is important whether
advisers, think-tankers or assorted
family’s way and own up to his mistakes. you’re a believer in global warming
political professionals, you need to get
This makes him the sort of person we or not, because what can’t be denied
better at speaking or speechwriting.
wish we could be-the fragile hero on a by either believers or sceptics is the
And if you’re an audience member,
mission-and therefore someone we’re movie’s political success. It’s hardly an
who simply can’t take it any more, you
more inclined to listen to and believe exaggeration to say that the first great
need to demand that our political class
than the faux alpha-male who got liberal cause of the twenty-first century
gets better at speaking to you.
destroyed by Bush. The Greeks called took off because a failed politician
With that argument and evidence,
this appeal to character ethos. You will learned how to make people listen to
I rest my case. The rest is up to you.
note also Gore’s highly effective use what he had to say. Perhaps the greatest
of facts in his movie-length speech- compliment of all to the effectiveness R

18 IPA Review | December 2010 www.ipa.org.au