The Speechwriter | A Breif Education in Politics

Imagine you are a speechwriter for a rampaging, cheating, and generally mean governor. You have to write talking points, op-eds, speeches, and more for an ungrateful, lying jerk of a politician. You have to compose speeches for a man who likes to substitute half of the Oxford English Dictionary for the word "indeed". He has such a bad vocabulary that when writing in his "voice" you have to have a list of his favorite ungrammatical words, sayings, and phrases. This is the work that author Barton Swain had to do for the governor of South Carolina. This book serves as a memoir to the times he spent in the press rooms of the statehouse writing speeches for the governor to hate and rewrite himself. However, this book does more than just keep track of every wrong move the governor made, but to teach about politics and what goes into them. Hence the subtitle: A Brief Education in Politics. Now, to dive into the story!

(Image Credit: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/books/review-in-the-speechwriter-barton-swaim-shares-tales-of-working-for-mark-sanford.html)

The story begins with writer and author Barton Swain with a doctorate in English Writing just starting out working for the Governor of Soth Carolina. He is in the conference room with the other staff in the press room. When he [Barton Swain] asks what they are doing here the other staff say that the governor is planning on apologizing, at lead what he calls apologizing. The staff feels it as more of an excuse where they feel inclined to "forgive him", at least to his face. But why would he take a job working for an ungrateful tyrant, because one, a speechwriter has all of the gratifications of being a writer but has political power too. The best of both worlds to Mr. Swain. When one of his co-workers tells him to take a stab at a speech the words flow easily onto the paper. When he put it into the governor's speech binder, Nat a co-worker says that you usually wait for several hours and then the governor would come in and tell you to "take another stab", or "give me something memorable". However, he didn't come back with complaints. On the say of the speech, Mr. Swain listened to it with greedy ears. The next day he was told that that was the first and only time the governor had ever used a hard copy of the speech! However, this was the calm before the storm. Later a co-worker gave him the famous last words "welcome to h*ll". This was just the beginning of a massive downhill slide. Op-ed after op-ed and many talking points later the governor still did not like Barton's work. Until he started transcribing the recorded letters that the governor had sent to people over the years. It was now that he was able to compose a list of all of the governor's favorite words and connecting phrases. The job of transcribing the letters could be sometimes difficult because the governor would forget the name of the person he was sending the letter to and it would just sound like this: Dear someone who's name I forgot go as so and so they will know. But sometimes he would forget all the bits of relevant information.

Dear someone ask jane she will know,

Thank you so much for the "Oh I forgot he sent me something, go ask Janice, she will know". Whatever it was, I appreciated it. I hope you are doing well down in "He lives somewhere, ask so and so she will know". I hope we can meet you again in "Oh, wherever we met them last time"

Because of the governor's massive forgetfulness, some of the letters took a long time to decipher due to all of the asking around.

To learn even more about the antics of the press office then you should read this book: the Speechwriter!