Let Passionate Voices Speak, All Voices Heard!

I want to know: What's wrong with citizens giving public officials hell?
What's wrong with taxpayers raising their voices to elected officials?
What's wrong with ordinary people (seniors, taxpayers, vets, moms) coming out to meetings and speaking their minds?
That's what the Tea Party people do and I honestly can see nothing wrong with that.
What's wrong with afflicting the powerful?
What's wrong with challenging authority and being passionate about it?
What's wrong with passion?
Would we rather have a citizenry that's laconic, disconnected, apathetic? Is that what we want?
That's not America.
Our founders were passionate people. They cared. And the movement that created this nation was neither quiet nor particularly well-behaved.
Look at some of the trailblazing figures of American history: Patrick Henry, Ethan Allen, John Brown, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, W. E. B DuBois, A Philip Randolph, Walter Reuther, Samuel Gompers, John L. Lewis, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, Harvey Milk. These people were not particularly docile. They were vocal. They challenged authority. And they were often disruptive.
Even many of our leaders have been rambunctious: Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, General Patton, General MacArthur, Barry Goldwater.
Harry Truman gave 'em hell and he became an American hero.
It's far too easy to sit on the sidelines and smugly ridicule those who believe in something while often accusing them of ignorance or lack of intelligence.
But watch out for those who remain vigilant and honestly defend their beliefs. Remember: Ronald Reagan was considered a dim-witted novice and a tool of special interests before he and his ideas began to catch on.
Yes, the anti-war movement, the environmental movement, the women's movement and the civil rights movement have all embraced passionate, vocal and sustained challenges to the powers that be.
I know; I marched in those civil rights and anti-war marches and I shouted down a few opponents myself. I was there at the Poor People's Campaign and the Days of Rage. It's called free speech. The First Amendment embraces it.
And at the other end of the spectrum, the modern conservative movement upset the sleepy, dispassionate, country-club mentality of the Republican Party to unleash a cause that led to the triumph of capitalism and the end of communism. That was ignited by free speech, too.
None of it was quiet.
All of it was noisy.
Much of it was disruptive.
The people, the system, the nation can handle it.
Let all be heard.
God bless America!

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Biden Verbose, Obtuse In Praise Of Public Speaking

As someone who teaches public speaking I constantly marvel at the ineptitude of many well-known speakers. The current Vice President of the United States is a good example. Joe Biden continues to embarrass  himself and our nation with his inability to be brief, coherent or sensible. And this does not even count his numerous gaffes, inappropriate comments, inaccuracies and outright buffoonery.
In China at Sichuan University Biden answered a simple question from a student about the importance of  public speaking with a long-winded 863 word answer that included a rambling, incoherent 68 word sentence on the value of brevity.
And all this came on the heels of a 4.600 word speech.
Whew! This man is a pathetic windbag.

BTW: Here is the final part of Biden's answer. Read it and see if you can figure out what he's saying:

"And so language, the ability not only to master the ability to put your ideas into words succinctly on a platform to communicate ideas to your own people, it is even more impressive when you have the capacity to do that and communicate your ideas, especially as future business and political and moral leaders of the world in the language of the people to whom you are speaking."

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Obama's Empty Rhetoric Gets Tuned Out

In her column in the Wall Street Journal Peggy Noonan dared to reveal the sup rising secret about President Obama's rhetoric: It really ain't that good.
And Peggy should know as she was one of the major speechwriters for The Great Communicator himself, Ronald Reagan.
I use Peggy Noonan's book, On Speaking Well, in my speechwriting class.
One of Peggy's mantras is this: Great speeches contain real ideas. And great speakers communicate great ideas clearly and convincingly.
Without great ideas, a speech is nothing.
Peggy points out that Reagan never felt he was a great communicator. The soft-spoken former actor did admit however that he tried to communicate great ideas -- the idea od our nation's founders: limited, shared government; a strong free-enterprise system, the power of the individual, God-given freedoms and the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Obama may be a fine speaker but his ideas are not-so-great: an all-powerful central government, more taxes, more spending, government intervention and redistribution of personal income. These ideas are not in harmony with the great democratic tradition of our nation. But these are the ideas that Obama has embraced.
And often Obama communicates no ideas at all. Hope and change for example are not ideas at all. They merely represent a slogan. Tag lines such as this only work when they have real ideas behind them.
Great speeches and great speakers make great ideas come to life. Great speakers and great speechwriters know how to encapsulate these ideas and make them meaningful and easy to understand.
For all the talk about Obama as a great orator, he simply does not measure up. In other words, his empty rhetoric has caught up with him. Nobody's listening anymore.

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Noonan: Obama's Rhetoric Never Really That Great

An excerpt from the latest column by Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal:

"The president is supposed to be great at speeches. Why isn't it working anymore? One answer is that it never "worked." The power of the president's oratory was always exaggerated. It is true that a good speech put him on the map in 2004 and made his rise possible, and true he gave some good speeches in 2008. But people didn't really vote for him because he said things like: "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." They voted for him in spite of that. They voted for him for other reasons."

Click here to read The Wall Street Journal.

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Can They REALLY Chuck The Legalease?

I haven't spoken to a large group of lawyers for quite some time.
But I did spend years talking to and for lawyers. And I did write my share of letters, memos, speeches, columns and related matter for them.
Over the years, I've always tried to get them to chuck the jargon and speak and write simply and clearly.
In a little while I'll be giving them a message here at the Pennsylvania Bar Association's Conference of County Bar Leaders on the campus of Penn State University in State College, Pa.
Here's part of what I want to tell them:
1) As much as possible, try to rid your language of qualifiers. Qualifying adverbs, adjectives and other words and phrases muddy the meaning of what you're trying to say.
2) Be specific. Wherever and whenever you can, replace words like "often" and "sometimes" and "maybe" with more specific words.
3) Get rid of prepositional phrases. These phrases (like "in order to") bog down your language.
4) Use active verbs. Ditch the passive voice and avoid the verb to be. Remember: Something that's happening now is always more interesting than something that happened yesterday.
5) Keep sentences and paragraphs short. Short words. Short sentences. Short paragraphs.

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Reagan Was Adept Writer And Superb Editor

Lou Cannon has an excellent piece at Politics Daily that verifies that Ronald Reagan wrote most of his own remarks and was a superb writer and deft editor.
Cannon should know. As a reporter, he covered Reagan for decades.
Here's part of what Cannon says:

I learned early on that he [Reagan] wrote most of his own speeches and one-liners -- and an even better editor. The book "Reagan in His Own Hand," by Annelise and Martin Anderson, with Kiron Skinner, reproduces illustrations of presidential speech drafts and the edits Reagan made in them. My favorite, also reproduced in one of my books, is a passage from a historic speech to British parliamentarians in Westminster on June 8, 1982, in which Reagan took some mush that had been written for him about Soviet actions in Europe, crossed it out, and wrote in his distinctive, looping hand: "What I am describing now is a policy and a hope for the long term -- the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history as it has left other totalitarian ideologies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the expression of citizens."

These are strong words from Joe Sixpack, but Reagan was at once a man of conviction who thought seriously about the great issues of his time and an ordinary American, never braggy, who treated his audiences -- all of us, really -- with consideration and respect.

 Click here to read more at Politics Daily.

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Top Ten Reagan Quotes: A Centennial Special

Ronald Reagan said lots of things worth remembering.
But these have often been called the Top Ten Reagan Quotes of all time.
They reflect his humanity, his quick wit, his most deeply held beliefs and his steadfastness. Here they are:

10. "Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."  
—Remarks at a business conference, Los Angeles, March 2, 1977

9. "You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans."—The Observer, March 29, 1981

8. “Thomas Jefferson once said, "We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying."  
—Circa 1988

7. "I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting." 
—Said often during his presidency, 1981-1989

6. "How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."  
—Remarks in Arlington, Virginia, September 25, 1987

5. "The government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."  
—Remarks to the White House Conference on Small Business, August 15, 1986

4. “I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.” 
—Said often during his presidency, 1981-1989

3. "All great change in America begins at the dinner table." 
—Farewell Address to the Nation, The White House, January 11, 1989

2. "I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born."  
—The New York Times, September 22, 1980

1. "There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit." 
— First Inaugural Address, January 21, 1981

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Peggy Noonan: Obama SOTUS Was 'Flat, Mushy'

Peggy Noonan is out with a great column about Obama's State of the Union speech.
Peggy had hoped the speech would soar. She was cheering for Obama to succeed. She really wanted a great, inspiring speech -- a genuine game-changer.
She didn't get it and she's disappointed. Here's part of what she has to say:

The State of the Union speech was not centrist, as it should have been, but merely mushy, and barely relevant. It wasted a perfectly good analogy—America is in a Sputnik moment—by following it with narrow, redundant and essentially meaningless initiatives. Rhetorically the speech lay there like a lox, as if the document itself knew it was dishonest, felt embarrassed, and wanted to curl up quietly in a corner of the podium and hide. But the president insisted on reading it. . . .

 As for small things and grace notes, there is often about the president an air of delivering a sincere lecture in which he informs us of things that seem new to him but are old to everyone else. He has a tendency to present banalities as if they were discoveries. "American innovation" is important. As many as "a quarter of our students aren't even finishing high school." We're falling behind in math and science: "Think about it."
Yes, well, all we've done is think about it.

Click here to read Noonan's entire analysis of the speech. It's worth reading!

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The Sayings Of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie

Maybe you've wanted to say it to an unfaithful spouse. Perhaps you've longed to shout it out to a shiftless co-worker. Or tempted to telegraph it to a disagreeable neighbor. "Let me help you pack."
That's what N.J. Gov. Chris Christie said to an overpaid school superintendent who tried to front-load his contract so he wouldn't be subject to Christie's proposed salary cap. When Christie tagged the superintendent the "poster boy of greed and arrogance," the school chief noted that he didn't have to work in Jersey - he could go elsewhere.
And then Christie said what a lot of people were thinking.
Click here to read the rest of my column from today's Philadelphia Daily News.

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What Would You Have Done?

Well, what would you have done if this happened to you?
Did the President handle this in the right way.
Too much humor? Too little? About right?
Did he spend too much time on it? Too little? About right?
How a speaker handles an awkward and/or unexpected moment is a good test of his abilities.
How would you have handled it?

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