The Speechwriter’s Life: Gary Delsohn
March 03, 2015
Schwarzeneggerโs speechwriter speaks about writing for a governor with good communication instincts.
From 2006 to 2009, veteran journalist Gary Delsohn shouldered a dream assignment for many speechwritersโhe served as chief scribe to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. โPerhaps itโs thanks to his background as an actor that Schwarzenegger has such a strong, intuitive sense of how to move an audience with a speech,โ Delsohn recalled in a recent talk with Vital Speeches.
โHe liked to begin almost every speech with humor, usually self-deprecating. He knows how to connect with people this way. Youโve got the audience in your hands if you can get them to laugh at the start of a speech.ย On the flip side, he also understood that thereโs no getting an audience back after youโve bored them by starting a speech off with five straight minutes with minutiae and numbers,โ he continued.
Delsohn knew a lot about Schwarzeneggerโs speaking style from covering his first gubernatorial campaign and first two years in office. But once brought into the Governorโs inner circle, Delsohn gained additional insights into his new clientโs approach to speeches. โThe Governor would rehearse major speeches 20 to 30 times. Sometimes, he would even read the draft three or four times over the phone to you. I was really surprised by how much preparation he would put into his speeches.ย It’s the same approach he used when he was preparing for a movie.ย He told me many times that he’d rehearse his lines over and over until he felt comfortable with them, and he stuck to that approach even with a full calendar as an elected official,โ Delsohn said.
And there was also the Governorโs habit of tracking how many times he rehearsed a speech, in the same way he once kept track of completed bicep curls or leg presses at the gym.
Delsohn found the transition from journalism to speechwriting a relatively smooth one. โBeing a journalist means trains you to get to heart of an issue quickly, and then write about it at high speed. This means youโre accustomed over many years to get to essence of a topic and then organize an article on that topic. This emphasis on speed and writing to deadline helps you sort through dense documents, like policy statements, when drafting a speech. Through this experience, you bring a sense of how to cut through the details and to grasp, at a high level, what the speech should say,โ he said.
โAnd Iโve also always liked reading and listening to speeches. I suppose my appreciation for speechwriting and oratory helped as well. It sounds obvious, but speechwriting is like any writing-related job. Any kind of writing that youโre doing, it just makes sense to study good writing. I would read Ted Sorensonโs speeches for JFK, or study Abraham Lincolnโs speeches, for example and others by Ronald Reagan or President Obama. You need to pay attention to other speeches and watch them, in order to learn,โ Delsohn said.
Even with this preparation for his new role, writing speeches for the star of films like The Running Man, Commando and Predator brought some unexpected moments for Delsohn.
โWhen I went to work for the Governor, there was a strong belief among some in his office at the time that, when delivering speeches, he shouldnโt repeat any of those lines he made famous in his films. So I did not put them into any draft speeches. But, whenever he decided to improvise and use one of those lines, I would invariably receive an email from the chief of staff asking if I had inserted it into a draft,โ he said.
One example of this came in 2007, when Schwarzenegger used a climate change conference in Florida to state that “[w]e have to say, `Hasta la vista, baby,’ to greenhouse gases.โ Schwarzenegger used the same speech to publicly castigate some of his fellow Republicans for dragging their feet on environmental legislationโeven after some staff had cautioned him against doing so.
โIt just goes with the territory,โ Delsohn observed. โA draft speech is really a template, and speakers will, when at the podium, embellish or improvise. As a speechwriter, you canโt take it personally, or fall in love with your own words. If you think a speaker is going to read your material verbatim, and then some other words come out and you feel upset, then youโre not going to last in the job very long.โ
While Delsohn helped the Governor with a number of important policy speeches, the speech he remembers perhaps most fondly had nothing to do with matters of state. โIt was a 2008 commencement speech the Governor was going to deliver at his oldest daughterโs high school, to her graduating class. It was very personal. He wanted to be funny, and provide something that the kids would be pleased with and remember โ and that his daughter would like. I was in Hawaii on vacation at the time, but I knew how much this meant to him. We spent five days working on the speech, going back and forth,โ Delsohn said.
In some ways, this commencement speech signaled Delsohnโs future directionโhe now works as a speechwriter for the chancellor at the University of California, Davis.
What makes for an effective speech in Delsohnโs view? โItโs so basic, but you need to first ask yourself: โWhat is it I want to have this speech accomplish for the audience’s understanding of a particular issue?โ A speech needs a narrative arcโa good story that people will remember, with a beginning, a middle and an end. And the end should be a call to action. You want the speech to move people to a different place then where they started.โ
Beyond the mechanics of writing speeches, Delsohnโs background in journalism proved useful in other ways after he became a speechwriter. Take the process of vetting the information presented in a speech.
โWhen youโre writing for a major public figure, thereโs no margin for error in a speech. An error in journalism can be corrected. You still feel lousy about the mistake. It goes into your personnel file, and you have to explain what happened to everyone involved. But an error by a public figure in a speech can be a news story for days and days, and you feel totally responsible for it. So when youโre gathering information from the experts as part of a draft, you have to be good about tracking people down, sometimes even physically, and saying โI need this checked. The Governor needs thisโ or โThe University Chancellor needs this,โโ he said. You have to be persistent, just as you would when checking facts for a newspaper or magazine article.
Another way Delsohnโs prior work in journalism has helped his speechwriting is that it equips him to act as a communications advisor. This advisory side of a speechwriting role isnโt often made explicit, Delsohn said, โbut it really is a vital part of the job.โ
โIn journalism, you can write a great investigative story, and you donโt worry much about how people will react, or how they will take it. Their reaction is beyond your control, anyways. When writing a speech, however, you have to think about questions like โhow will the audience take this?โ or โif we express things in this particular way to this particular group, what problems could it create for the boss?โโ Delsohn said.
โThe oath for speechwriters should include the oath for doctors โ โfirst, do no harm.โ Journalists who have been political reporters, I think, have a sharp understanding of this part of a speechwriterโs work. This includes things like knowing a sense of the audienceโs expectations of a speaker. It wasn’t always easy to find the time to do this while working for the Governor, but it is almost always helpful to call the point person for the group your boss is speaking to, to find out what issues the audience was cued up on. Sometimes, I would even ask the organizer โwhat would you like to hear the Governor say?โย You donโt need to always follow what they tell you, but you do need to know it.โ
Delsohnโs final observationโremember that being a speechwriting/advisor means that you are helping your clients with their goals, not to advance your own. โYour suggestions, or your arguments for this or that change to a draft, need to mesh with and support the goals of the person for whom you are writing. Most speechwriters, but not all, understand the need to respect the agenda of the speaker โ youโre writing for someone to support that personโs agenda, and not so you can push a personal agenda. If you were a journalist like I was, you have to leave that role behind.โ