1 HOUR SPEECH, NO SCRIPT: CAN OUR POLITICIANS DO THE CAMERON?
First, tell them what you want to say. Second, tell them what you have to say. Third, tell them what you have said. Some speechwriters and PR luminaries recommend this traditional mode. Start it with humour or some light-hearted human-interest story, to transport the audience into the world of the speech. Or skip the humours altogether if the message is to be taken seriously. Or mix the two for maximum impact. Then you practice how you would deliver it: tempo, pitch, facial expression etc. Then, there is the rhythm: start from a crescendo, descend to a diminuendo, to the pianissimo, back to a crescendo, and finally to the climax, where you issue the command. Often times, you would have to identify with a memorable slogan-something to get them singing your tune.
You also need to know your body language: do you stand still and rely on gesticulations, or you move your entire body up and down the space on the platform? You can even grab the lapels of your suit to express conviction. Do you read the script like a textbook or you keep eye contact with those listening? Good speechwriters often tell their clients: you are not reading a story; you are telling them a story-your story. You personalize it and make the story real, but you also need to let them see it as their story. When they have the story, they have you. In the end, the speech must achieve an objective, often a desired one. It could leave the audience with a cathartic effect, or it would seek to bamboozle and mesmerize, evoking instant response in the form of spontaneous applause. Or do you just go on a jolly ride with the audience, doing what you can and leaving it for them to judge when you are done?
Most of these work well when there is a script in front of the person delivering the speech. What happens if there is no script? No autocue! No lectern! You have no choice but to do the Cameron. The disadvantage there is that the speech might come across as messy. And that is exactly how David Cameron, the 41 year old leader of the Conservative party in the UK, started his speech at the recent party conference in Blackpool: ‘‘Today I want to make a speech about why I want to lead our country. I’m afraid it is going to be a bit longer and I haven’t an Autocue, and I haven’t got a script, I’ve just got a few notes, so it might be messy; but it will be me.’’ Was it messy? Nope. In fact, it was fantastic and the conference loved it. He stood for 67 minutes, walking up and down the stage speaking with so much conviction and power, making only six tiny glances at his handwritten notes. It was the speech he had to make, and he made it well, very well. So, it was not surprising that he hugged his wife afterwards and sighed: ‘‘I love you babe, I am knackered.’’ And it was the least surprising when the polls showed after the speech that he is neck and neck with Gordon Brown, the sitting Prime Minister. Before that speech, he was about hitting the all time low. Today, the Conservatives can win an election, courtesy a single ‘unscripted’ speech.
Of course, there is more to being a conviction politician than making a convincing speech. What if results do not follow afterwards? Well, then the dumb is King of rhetoric. The thing about speeches is that those who say it well often end up doing it well. I have before me a copy of Presidential aspirant Nana Akuffo-Addo’s speech, which he delivered to the media at the Alisa Hotel, South Ridge, Accra, on 28th August, 2007, to launch his campaign for the flagbearership of the ruling New Patriotic Party of Ghana. I also have a copy of David Cameron’s Blackpool speech; the transcript of what he delivered extempore, as produced in The Times newspaper, UK. It will not be appropriate to do a comparative, because the contexts within which the speeches were given are different: Nana’s is a leadership bid and the other is an address by a party leader seeking the mandate of his country. Even so, there are a few things we can look at about the two speeches.
What is Nana’s Akufo Addo’s selling principle? Politicians are a bit like Key Soap or Alomo Bitters: they are branded and marketed on a selling strategy. So, they would also have the big idea: that enigmatic thing on which the virtues of the brand are planked. Nana does not lack a selling principle; perhaps he has one too many. What he lacks is the unambiguous articulation of that principle. His speechwriter, Gabby Otchere-Darko it could be, did brilliantly, by making a broad philosophical swoop on issues to tame people’s suspicion of Nana as a candidate leaning on the ‘it’s my turn’ selling principle. By so doing, the nuts and bolts of good leadership traits that a speech of this nature should project were left to screw themselves. At a point, he makes this ‘it is my turn’ tool almost palpable: “Nana yenim wo fri tete”, grassroots activists were supposed to have said, to indicate their solidarity. And this tool, although craftily put away after the first mention, forms the backbone of the campaign.
But whose turn is it really, this time? There are seventeen of them seeking the flagbearership slot. May be, nobody’s, except the poor man in the village who has voted too many times and has seen too little for so long. So, whoever plays the ‘my turn card’ may have it rebound badly on him. David Davis was the party favourite in the 2005 elections that saw young David Cameron elected leader of the Conservatives. Davis, a traditional Tory through and through, had relied on peoples’ recognition that it was his turn to lead the party. He gave a lackluster speech, which saw ‘his turn’ slide on to little known Cameron. Again, Cameron, a PR practitioner, had wowed the party with another ‘unscripted’ speech. He has given the Conservative party a youthful character.
To be fair, the other reasons for Nana’s leadership bid were sold quite well. The criteria he proposed for delegates to consider were: the candidate’s record of active work for the party, his ability to unite the party, capacity to win the presidential election, leadership qualities and the vision he holds. And he was quite clear on why he ‘fits the bill fully.’ What he wasn’t clear on was what he was going to change. In Nana’s entire speech, the word change was not mentioned even once. That only gives the impression of a politician who is only concerned with occupying the centre ground; politics these days is about changing paradigms, and that means changing the status-quo. Even if he is to “ride on the impressive record of the Kufour Government”, his message should necessarily seek to identify with the changes people continually yearn for in a third world country.
While Nana articulated his beliefs very well, he only said in passing where the next level of Ghana’s leadership really lies. The title of his speech was: why I want to lead Ghana to the next level. Still, his belief in Ghana is admirable. He mentions Ghana and Ghanaian 41 times in the address. The next buzzword in his speech is unity, which is mentioned about six times. Leader/leadership also received 20 mentions. It is not easy to glean a memorable slogan from Nana’s speech. Perhaps, the speechwriter did not want to give us one. When he said “As I see it, the task is also to get Ghana thinking..”, that came across as something we could go home with. Sounds good: Get Ghana thinking. Get thinking.
On the whole, Nana’s speech was good, just that you couldn’t pin a sense of strategy to how he was going to win the NPP leadership race, or indeed how he was going to improve anything. At the time Cameron’s speech was over, one thing was clear-his message: “call that election, we will fight. Britain will win.” The warning was so powerful that Gordon Brown had to chicken out and press the mute button on the election he had wanted to call. Of course, delivering a speech without a script comes with a lot of advantages: you are the one talking, not a decorated figure amplifying the thoughts of another. Gordon Brown’s speech, which he gave the week before Cameron’s had been criticized as having the thoughts of an American speechwriter, Schum, streaming through. Gordon’s politics had been seen as manipulative populism laced with spin. So when Cameron presented himself as a man of integrity in a world of spin, courtesy the off-the-cuff speech, the pools started ticking in his favour. The decision to speak without a script had three reasons: to project clarity, spontaneity and authenticity. You look at him and you see the argument, not borrowed words.
The buzzwords added to the intensity of the drive behind the message. This is a man who wants to change things, so he mentions the word change 36 times in his address. Britain/British is mentioned 26 times, education 28 and national heath 16 times. Like Nana Addo, Cameron’s privileged background has often played against him. And he knows that he is not a typical tribune, so he harps his patrician side in a way that the tribune will appreciate: “I cannot give you some hard luck story. I am the son of a magistrate and a stockbroker. Yes, I went to a fantastic school and I am not embarrassed about that because I had great education and I know what great education means.’’ If people fail to sympathise with you, they would not appreciate you. I wrote sometime ago that Nana Addo comes across as somebody who does not need the sympathy of the commoner. You can either love him or loathe him; anything in between is other people’s gain. But, Nana is honest about where he belongs: “In all humility, I can say that my entire political career in politics has been about leadership’’, he had said in his speech. Can you blame him? Nope! So, you believe him when he says he can lead a country.
Detractors criticized Cameron’s speech as that of a rambler without a map. He might have gotten messy somewhere, but he was convincing and passionate. I was wondering whether it would not be worthwhile for our politicians seeking their party’s leadership to address delegates without a script during their primaries. Years ago, journalists were on cue to see when JJ Rawlings would shove his script during his presentations. As soon as he says ‘Menuanom, sabi taferakye’, people were all ears, because what followed was either unprintable or too good to print. And he didn’t drink a lot of water, if you observed. Mostly, what he said from his head came with a lot of energy and conviction. That was his trick. Cameron’s trick is not to visit the lavatory before a speech. It helps sharpen his performance- he once confided in his friend after a powerful speech.
The author is a freelance journalist; he lives in London, where he also teaches Journalism and English as a foreign language. Email: quesiquesi@hotmail.co.uk
Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.
