GOP National Convention, Part One: “Where the hell did they get these speechwriters?”

Vital Speeches readers, I may do some live blogging Thursday night just for grins (over on my personal blog, Writing Boots, so I can swear and stuff).

But I’m not going to analyze every speech. I’m not going to analyze any speech. I’ve watched a million pundits, inside our profession and out, try to separate the rhetoric from the content. They invariably sound partisan, or like they’re trying too hard not to sound partisan. (If I had to borrow the analysis of one speechwriterly pundit … I don’t disagree with a word of what former Reagan scribe Peggy Noonan said in her analysis.)

I will say only what is true for me, which is that, at a small party I attended last night to watch the Ann Romney and Chris Christie speeches, people kept glowering at me over their bourbon glasses and no period longer than five minutes went by when somebody asked me accusingly, some version of: “Where the hell did they get these speechwriters?”

Speechwriters, did that happen to you?

(I hear plumbers got the same thing during Hurricane Katrina.) —DM