- [Narrator] Production and distribution of 'City Club" forums, on idea stream public media, are made possible by, PNC, and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.

(upbeat music) (bell ringing) - Hello, and welcome to the "City Club' of Cleveland.

We, where we are devoted, to conversations of consequence, that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday May 20th, and I'm Augie Napoli, president and CEO of the United way of Greater Cleveland, and it's my pleasure, to introduce today's authors, in conversation series forum, featuring Jeffrey Nussbaum, former senior speech writer for president Joe Biden.

Jeff is the author of the newly released book, "Undelivered."

The never heard speeches that would have been, would have rewritten history.

Speeches have the power to educate, to incite, and inspire.

But what if a speech was never delivered?

What if it instead, was filed away in a storage box, or left unread, inside a notebook.

These second speeches once revealed, can provide a tantalizing, or even terrifying window, into a history that could have been, if not for it changes of heart, or momentous terms of events.

In his book, Jeff does just this.

He was able to track down, and examine some of the most, consequential speeches, that were never heard.

This includes Dwight Eisenhower's apologies, for a D-Day failure.

Richard Nixon's refusal to resign the presidency.

And even Hillary Clinton's acceptance speech, for a 2016 victory, which was never seen until now.

Jeff Nussbaum has decades of experience as a speech writer, in addition to his previous role, at the white house, he also led speech writing, at least four democratic conventions, and was a partner, at west wing writers.

The premier strategy in speech writing shop in DC.

Jeff is also a humorous, yeah, he is a really funny guy.

(crowd laughing) Equality perhaps both due to, and in spite of serving as a speech writer, for an increasingly divided nation.

He is the co-founder of the humor cabinet, and has worked on numerous speeches, for dozens of elected officials, corporate executives.

He's also served as creative consultant, to the Kennedy center's mark Twain prize, for American humor.

So what can these uncovered second speeches, tell us about humanities past, and also inform our present?

Moderating, the conversation today is Rick Jackson, senior host, and producer at Idea Stream Public Media.

If you have questions for our speaker, you can text them to 330- 541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794.

You can also tweet them, at the city club.

City club staff, will try to work them into the second half, of the program.

And so ladies and gentlemen, and friends of the city club of Cleveland, please join me, in welcoming Jeff Nussbaum and Rick Jackson.

(crowd clapping) - Thank you all, thank you Augie, and let me be among those to say congratulations, and we are looking forward to your next chapter, whatever that may be, Thank you.

Jeff Welcome to Cleveland.

- Thanks good to be here.

- Good to have you here, hope you've enjoyed the, 90 degrees raining the same day.

- Yeah, yeah.

(crowd and host laughing) - I went for a jog by the lake this morning.

- Okay.

- It was not what I expected, but yeah.

(crowd laughing) - The lake or the weather?

- Yeah, both.

- Okay, good.

(crowd and host laughing) Okay.

So love the book, thank you for that.

You write early on in the book, about the five things a speech must have, to be successful.

And the first of those is get people's attention.

Now what we're doing here is more of a conversation, than a speech, I'm gonna give you the chance to, get their attention, figure out why I'm gonna talk to you for the next hour.

- Yeah, this is why we all love Ted talks, right?

They always start with a, bold counterintuitive claim, a story or a joke, and by some measures, speakers have less than a minute, even less than 30 seconds, to get the audience's attention.

So I hadn't thought about how I will get your attention, but maybe simply to say, that over the course of the next hour, you will hear stories that will be terrifying, because they could have happened, and they came so close to having happened, that there was a draft prepared, that that would give voice, to these first steps, down these alternative hard paths, that history did not take.

- Can a speech be great as written, or does it take a special orator, to bring that speech to life?

- It's a great question, and at risk of undercutting what I do for a living.

(crowd and host laughing) One of the sayings is, people don't remember what you say, they remember how you made them feel.

And so, delivery matters a great deal.

And one of the things I talk in the book, and we can get into this, but there's the chapter about, the speech John Lewis wanted to give, at the March on Washington, a much Fierier speech, than the one he ultimately did give.

And he kind of was frustrated, but one of the things, that chapter shows, that to get to the answer to your question is, people don't hear what you wanted to say, they hear how you said, what you did say.

And so a good speech is that, amalgamation of words, and moment, and delivery.

- And we are gonna get to the Lewis speech, specifically later, so hold on for that.

Your personal history being around leadership of this era, Gore, Clinton, Biden, what was it like to walk the halls of power, especially as a kid, knowing you have this responsibility?

- Yeah I, well, I'd worked for Al Gore, and then I worked for Joe Biden, when he was vice president, and I said my career seems to be, an object lesson, in how to get almost to the top, (crowd laughing) in the world of speech writing.

But it was, it was humbling, and you know, at 22, you don't know what you don't know, and looking back, you know, I look back, some of the speeches I wrote then, and I was just like, I'm sheepish at what I wrote, but, it will, and still does, actually restore a little bit of faith, in our government, and our governance, because over the years, I had a chance to work with people, on both sides of the aisle, who were there for the right reasons, who actually, were able to get things done behind closed doors, there's a little less of that today, and so maybe that faith is a little bit diminished, but to be there, when you're young, to be, to feel like you're at the center of it all, and to know that you're there for a reason, and one of the things I, as I reflect on my time with president Biden now, people ask what were my favorite speeches that I wrote, and one of the things was some of the, my favorite speeches were the ones, no one paid attention to, they were in the course of the president's day, or week, the little things, but in fact to millions of people, they were very big things, and so just to be constantly reminded, that even the little things, that you do, can make a big difference in people's lives, keeps you energized.

- Let's get to undelivered.

What was the Genesis of the book?

was just a light bulb moment where you thought, hey, there's a great speech nobody ever heard.

- There's a clearer Genesis than that, and it's election night 2000.

I was working for Al Gore, I was on the campaign in Tennessee, and election night, Gore had prepared three speeches, a victory, a concession, and then ironically enough, a win the electoral college, lose the popular vote.

And at one point during the night, I was holding all three of them, and then that the, Florida goes out of Gore's column, undecided, into Bush column, back undecided, and at 4:00 AM, bill Daley, the campaign chairman speaks, Gore gives no speech that night.

And ironically for the book, those are the speeches I lost.

So those speeches are not, (Jeff and crowd laughing ) are not in the book, but it set me thinking, where are these other moments in history, where an outcome was so close, where everything rested, on a razor's edge, and this other outcome was envisioned.

And I, even if you play forward Gore, and I think about this a lot, probably more than is healthy, you know, Al Gore was obsessed with Al Qaeda, would September 11th have happened, where would we be on global warming, if we had four, or eight years of Al Gore's president.

So, and from Gore then went to work for Senator Tom Dashel, who was the democratic leader, and then the majority leader, and we lived through September 11th, and an anthrax attack, and the Warren Iraq.

And so as I, got a chance to have a front row seat through history, I continued to think about, what are the alternatives that would've spun off, and so that's really what set me on this path in this book, and not just elections, election nights are, are fascinating, but obvious cases where history branches, but issues of war and peace, speeches that didn't get delivered, 'cause the speaker died, before they could deliver them.

And that's, that's where the hunt began.

- So the hunt begins, but how do you actually find them?

Some are in the public domain, but you have to do some research, some begging, I guess there's some donation involved.

(Jeff and crowd laughing) - There's a bag borrow, and occasionally steal, (crowd laughing) the, you know, you start to see the breadcrumbs, and the example I use is when New York, almost went bankrupt in 1975, I saw a newspaper article, in the New York times, that basically said, this was so close to happening, the Mayor, Mayor Beam at the time, had a speech prepared, and I thought okay, let's find the speech.

So I called the journalist, the journalist referred me to, the press secretary at the time, press secretary remembered the speech, but didn't have it, but he said talk to the communications advisor, communications advisor at that point, was sort of a famous New York PR person, named Howard Rubenstein, Rubenstein kind of remembered, but was in failing health, said talk to the, bankruptcy attorney, the young bankruptcy attorney, who prepared the city's bankruptcy filing.

He too was not in, in great health, but I, but he invited me to his law firm, to look at the bankruptcy filing, but he said I haven't seen the speech, at which point his assistant tapped me on the shoulder, and said, I think I might have what you're looking for, and pulled out of a dusty filing cabinet, the only existing copy of Mayor Beam, declaring New York city bankrupt.

And so, I'm neither a historian nor a journalist, but writing this book, allowed me to pretend to be both, (crowd laughing) and so each speech, had a slightly different journey, and I followed different breadcrumbs, and sometimes as I say in the book, the breadcrumbs lead to a brick wall, the one that one that got away, was president Carter, had a speech prepared, for the failure of the camp David Accords, and it was on his desk at camp David, and when the, and I spoke to the person who helped write it, and he said we were really gonna lay the blame, at the feet, of the Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, but when the deal came together, we swept everything on the desk, into a box, and headed back to the white house, to get the handshake done, and so I called the Carter center, and they have the box, but the speech isn't in it.

So, so I failed in some cases, and incredibly, gratifyingly succeeded in some, and unearthed some that, that have not been seen before.

- You used a phrase in the book, and you just used it here actually, history sitting on a razor's edge.

- Yeah.

Great expression, but what did you mean, that we really could have had, turned into a different people with different America?

Had some of these speeches actually, been delivered?

- Yeah, one of the things I say, and I say it sounds kind of like former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and we think things happened, the way they happened, because in retrospect that's how they had to happen.

And I use the expression razor's edge because, they didn't have to happen that way.

And it's just by virtue of, leaders using the position they have, and the influence they have, to make the difference they can, in favor of one outcome or another, that really do shape things differently, I mean, a absolutely things, would be very different, if we had launched 800 airstrikes on Cuba, not realizing that the missile sites there, were already operational.

Things would've been very different, if Edward VIII succeeded with Winston Churchill's help, in giving a speech, appealing to the British people, asking not to abdicate, and Britain then has not just a Nazi sympathizing, but a Nazi supporting king, at the Dawn of world war II.

So, so several of these instances, things certainly would've been different, if the D-Day invasion had failed, as Eisenhower feared, and prepared an apology for it.

And I talked to military historians, who said you know, it would've taken another year, America would've come through Europe from the south, but by that point, Russia may have advanced further, and you may have had half of Europe, sitting under Russia's influence, which feels very relevant, to the conversations we're having today.

So, so absolutely this is a Razor's edge, and those little decisions, you know, those moments, could have cascaded through our history.

- In undelivered, you break speeches into segments, there's six different segments, too hot change of heart, crisis averted and others.

I wonder why those demarcations, and were there editorial discussions, amongst you and your team, as to, what goes where, how do we decide whether a speech is, too hot to have been delivered.

- Well, it's a, you make it sound a little more strategic, than it was?

(crowd laughing) I sort of looked at the 15 or 20 speeches I had, and basically laid them out, and said, what are the through lines?

Because initially, 'cause writing a book, is an act of organization, as much as it is an act of writing.

And initially, I was writing these as discreet chapters, In fact the first chapter I wrote, early on in the process, was published in the new yorker.com.

It was about New York city's bankruptcy, and it was when people were like, oh, this is cool, maybe more of these, that I realized, maybe there's a book there, but as I laid them out, it actually became pretty clear to me, there aren't a infinite number of reasons, that speeches don't get given.

Too hot, and we'll talk about this a little bit, these were speeches that the speakers, were sort of prevented from giving, because they were gonna be too angry, too honest, too blunt, too direct, you know, the fog of war path to peace, like these are the speeches that because of a, because of an outcome in battle, change the outcome.

And so, or events intervene, right?

That was, that's one of the categories.

so basically in the book, there's six, sort of general categories, as to why speeches don't get given.

And it was just a matter of, laying out what I had, and seeing which naturally seemed to fit where.

- You mentioned too hot, and I mentioned that we get back to the John Lewis story, August 63, he really wanted to give a speech, that would've infuriated, some actually you had people who talked about, leaving the stage, if he were permitted to give that.

- Exactly.

So John Lewis, in his later years, he became, almost warm fuzzy, civil rights icon, but that's with time we really, sanded off the rough edges.

He at the time of the March on Washington, was a relatively new leader of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which was really the youth, activist arm of the civil rights movement.

And Lewis had been in the fight, he had been on the freedom rides, his bus had been, attacked and burned, he wasn't on the bus at the time, he had been arrested upwards of 20 times, at this point in his life.

And he basically said, this is being described as a March in Washington, if I'm gonna participate in it, and he was doubtful, whether he wanted.

to participate in it, He said if I'm gonna participate in it, it's gonna be a March on Washington, and he later said, I wanted, you know, people were gonna give speeches, and the establishment has kind of co-opted this, and Kennedy's embracing it, but I want put some sting into it.

And that's really what his, what his words did, his initial draft, and what happened is, his advisors shared the draft the night before, because they wanted him to get more attention, but when organizers saw the draft, they were apoplectic.

He, you know, a big thing for Kennedy supporting the draft, had been that the Catholic church was behind this, but here Lewis has this line, about patience being a dirty and nasty word, which is offensive to the Catholic church.

He has, and I'm turning open the book here, because for those listening on the radio, because I have a visual of what went into the speech, and what went, came out of the speech.

But he basically said, you know.

"We are gonna March through the south, through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did, we will pursue our own scorched earth policy, and burn Jim Crow to the ground."

non violently.

(crowd laughing) So, but you know.

So, there's a lot of language in here, and basically the advisors, the people organizing the March, and I draw in each chapter, I kind of do a digression, on what's sort of happening behind the curtain, and I draw on some of my experience, leading events where many speakers, have to speak, and while they're ostensibly all on the same page, in actuality, they have their own agendas.

And so Lewis, can't be, convinced to really change much of his speech, and even Martin Luther king, who was friends with him, and an advisor said, John, this doesn't sound like you, and Lewis responds, no, but it sounds like us, meaning it sounds like the movement.

And finally, a Philip Randolph, who is the sort of the grandfather of this whole, of this whole March, turns to him and says, you know, John I've waited 22 years for this, I've waited all my life for this opportunity, Please don't ruin it, and then Lewis later said, how could I say no?

It would be like saying no to mother Teresa.

(crowd laughing) - Yeah.

- And so I found in the archives, this amazing picture where Lewis, at the very last minute, makes a decision, retreats to the back of the Lincoln Memorial, and there's this wonderful image of, under the arm of Abraham Lincoln, he's huddled with Jim foreman, and Cortland Cox, and he is reworking his speech, to make it suitable for the organizers.

- And you go on to say that, Martin Luther king also, toned down a little bit of his speech, which directly followed.

- Exactly.

King's advisors, wanted him to give a speech that they had entitled, "Normalcy never again", and both Lewis and king, had language that said, essentially, you know, a lot of white southerners are saying, maybe we can make some progress on civil rights, when things return to normalcy, I wanna be super clear, there will be normalcy never again in this country, so, you know, pretty strongly worded message.

King, even though his advisors, wanted him to give that speech, never quite warmed to it.

And one of the fun things king says about speech making is, it's really terrible, to be circling up in your airplane, and not knowing where you're gonna land.

And so here he was giving this speech, and he said I didn't quite know where to land, and then Mahalia Jackson, who's standing behind him, says Martin, tell them about the dream, which is, he had been giving versions of the, I have a dream speech, dozens if not hundreds of times.

And he goes into the I have a dream riff, the preparation in speech writing terms, from memory.

And afterwards King's advisors, were a little bit upset too, because they felt like, king had taken this opportunity, to say something new, and delivered kind of a warmed over greatest hits album, of speeches that he'd already given.

And it's just a reminder, as I tell clients in the private sector, and elsewhere, it's the hundredth time, You say the exact same thing, that people finally hear it.

But it paints this picture overall, Lewis and king, where they formed this really powerful, yin and yang, right?

One described the nightmare, the second described the dream.

If that March had proceeded differently, if each had given the speech that they wanted to give, if the takeaway was the nightmare, and not the dream, what happens?

Does Kennedy invite them to the white house?

Does he embrace the civil rights bill, the way and fight for it, the way he ultimately did?

We don't know, but it certainly could have been a very different vibe.

- We talked in the beginning about, grabbing people's attention.

I know that when you're writing for people who are giving, the same speech, in Omaha, and Dubuque, and then they come to Cleveland, and then they go to Pittsburgh, et cetera, et cetera, it can get old to them, and so you always wanted to localize it with, what you call, the how the hell moment.

- Yes .

Yes.

- Where the audience isn't supposed to know, how the hell they figured that out.

- Yeah So, so this was when I was working for Al Gore, I was put on, I was again the kid, and I was put on what we called, how to hell duty.

(crowd laughing) And basically, I would go find out every place the speaker, he was gonna go speak, and find out, all right, what was the high school football game, that took place the night before, knowing that he's gonna be late, what's the intersection where in town, where everyone gets stuck at in traffic, what's the railroad crossing, that holds everyone up.

And so he can say, I'm sorry I'm late, I got stuck at malfunction junction, and people go, how the hell did he know that?

(crowd laughing) And the, but there's actually a deeper value, it's not just like a cheap parlor trick.

And I talk about sometimes, what I do as a speech writer, is could be done with a quill imparchment, right?

Or it could be done with a chisel and granite, right?

It's pretty analog, and this goes back to, logos, pathos and ethos, right?

Logos is a logic argument, you wanna make a logic argument, and pathos is, is really powerful, right?

Pathos is the emotional argument.

Ethos, We all kind of assumes, means like ethics, but it's really more about characterization, what characterizes this speaker?

As someone who is approachable, likable, trustworthy, who I wanna listen to.

And so, the how to hells, actually play an ethos role.

They basically say to the audience, he gets us, he gets us on this little thing, and maybe, that allows me to think, well maybe he gets us, on the other things he wants to discuss as well.

So there's, that's my justification, for the many hours I spent on how to hell duty.

(crowd laughing) - Okay.

- What was your best how to hell?

- Oh, my best how to hell.

When I was working for Tom Dashel, he was speaking at like a local high school graduation, and I found that two of the graduates, were almost comically famous for hitting deer, with their car, (crowd laughing) and so in this graduation, he basically congratulated the two brothers, on being such successful deer hunters, and then said, but in the future you might try using a rifle.

(crowd laughing) And so you know, again this town goes, how did Tom Dashel know?

that like, we got these two guys, who just keep hitting deer.

(crowd laughing) So that that's, that's the one sticks with me.

- Another of the highlights in the book, and we talked about one that 60 years ago, talk about, (clearing throat) excuse me, one more recently, the speech given by secretary of state, Clinton, and then the speech she never gave.

- You mean election night?

- Election night.

election night 2016.

So, one of the things and she was really generous of her to give me this, this speech.

One of the things you notice, early on in the speech is, here's this what would've been an incredibly historic night, regardless of your politics, but what you see in the early draft of the speech, the other draft of speech, is all of the fishers, right?

All of the cracks, that ran through the campaign, run right into the victory speech.

What are we gonna say to the Bernie supporters?

What are we gonna say to the people, she has called deplorable?

What are we gonna say to the media, who expected a bigger victory?

And then finally, what are we gonna say for history, and for posterity?

And the speech becomes, you know, over success of drafts, a strong speech, but it's missing that, like that elevated moment of lift.

And when you're working for a campaign, that's not going, as well as you hope, you get lots of emails, everyone becomes a speech writer.

She should say this, he should say that, if she just say this, it would change everything.

When the campaign's going well, you get none of those emails, 'cause everyone's out busy taking credit, for whatever they are saying, but her speech writer, a wonderful guy named Dan swear, was getting lots of these unsolicited emails, and he would file them away.

Including one that came from a, Pulitzer prize winning poet, named Jerry Graham.

And one of the touchstones in, in Hillary's life, had been the story of her mother, and for those who don't know, her mother was basically, became an, had a terrible life, was an indentured servant effectively, was sent to California, as an eight year old, with her three or four year old sister on a train, by themselves to live with grandparents, who neglected them, before another family took them in.

And so, this poet imagines, a conversation which an adult Hillary, walks along the aisle of the train, and sits down next to her eight year old mother, and describes to her, the difficult life she is going to have, and says, but you may not believe this, you're gonna have a daughter, and that daughter is gonna grow up to be, president of the United States.

And it's just this, heart wrenching beautiful moment, it's hard for me to even recount it, incorrectly, (laughing) and not choke up.

And as Hillary was sort of grasping, for what's gonna be the moment of the speech.

Dan remembers getting this email from a poet, and it was not too dissimilar from something Hillary, had said before, and so in an act of convergent evolution, they work this beautiful conclusion to the speech.

And ultimately, that would've been a tremendously memorable moment, on a tremendously historic night.

- Thank you.

I want to just talk a little bit about speeches, that did not make the book, starting with Nixon, if the moon landing had not worked.

- Yeah.

So thank you for asking this question.

So there are a lot of undelivered speeches, where people say like, oh, I've sort of heard about that, and one is the, the moon landing failure for Nixon.

And so the bar I drew in this book, was the leader had to have engaged with the idea of it.

And there's no evidence, that Nixon ever saw that draft, - Okay.

- William Sapphire wrote it, and he kind of slipped it, into the archives just in case.

And later on I learned, and William Sapphire is a tremendous writer, but that he kind of had a habit of doing that, on several different things, including when I was working, one of my colleagues was working for president Clinton, in the middle of the impeachment, Sapphire came to me and said, you should write a resignation speech, just to have it in the files.

(crowd laughing) And so, so this was sort of a maybe fetish, isn't the right word, maybe it is sort of a fetish for, for Sapphire, and so because Nixon never engaged with the speech, I didn't include the speech, There was another example, of one that I really wrestled with, which is Truman had a speech prepared, in which he would announce, that America would not pursue, development of the hydrogen bomb, that we had that we had a fussion bomb, but we were not gonna pursue fusion bombs, and hydrogen, I might have the science a little wrong, but anyway, so the speech is prepared, and it's really compelling.

But when it was presented to Truman, he looked at it, didn't read it, said can the Russians do it?

And the folks from the state department said yes.

And they said, then we're doing it too, and that was the sum total of his engagement with that, so I didn't include that speech either.

- Was there any speech you found, where you thought two incidiarie, I can't go there, I don't know why I'd ask you to do it here, if you didn't do it there but.

(crowd laughing) - No, not really.

Not really, but what I will say in response to that, is that there are first drafts, that it's very clear, are acts of catharsis, right?

That they may not actually be intended to be delivered, and actually we go back to Truman, right?

He was famous for writing these letters, that he didn't send, or Abraham Lincoln, you know, in the civil war, wrote letters to his generals, telling him how off he was at them, you know, and how much they had failed, and then he never sent them either.

So certainly there are some speeches, that are acts of catharsis, that are never really meant to see the light of day.

And the one that comes closest in this book, is Mayor Kevin White in Boston, during the busing crisis.

This was busing children, at behest of a judge, There was a judge's order to integrate the schools, and the plan was, a little bit slip shot, because it basically, linked, south Boston with Roxbury, these are two very cloistered communities, and south Boston was, unwelcoming as an understatement.

These buses were, bricks were thrown through the windows, as these children of color, were bused to south Boston, the terrible things were chanted at them, it was incredibly dangerous, police in south Boston who were members of the community, were being called traders by their own community, one police officer was killed, Whitey Bulger, who was the brother of the, of a state Senator, who was the gangster was threatening to kill people, he fire bombed John F Kennedy's childhood home, I mean it was, hideous and ugly, and the Mayor Kevin White, who was a, wonderfully progressive Mayor, was even thought of as a potential, democratic vice presidential nominee, basically prepared a state of the city speech, where he said, I'm not doing it, I'm not enforcing the judge's order, In fact I'm gonna shut down south Boston high school, rather than integrate it.

And I'm gonna support the most, retrograde conservative elements in the city of Boston, in appealing this decision, rather than enforcing the decision.

And ultimately, and at one point he says, look, this was 80% unpopular in Boston, so he said, if Boston was a sovereign state, and I was a sovereign leader, I would be overthrown, overdoing this, but he reverses course, and he says, we're a nation of laws, we've just seen president Nixon resign, this is the judge's order, you may not like it, I may not even like it, but we are gonna do it.

And I love it as an act of courage, because he did this thing that was 80% unpopular, but right.

And he wins reelection, and he wins reelection on it.

So, it's a reminder that, and he has a quote, let's see if I can dig it up on a moment's notice here, where he basically says, I may misquote it, but he basically says, "There is no order saved death, worse than that of a public official, too frightened and fearful to say, above a whisper, what he honestly believes."

And I just find that to be such a wonderful, powerful statement.

And that's what he ultimately said, in his state of the city speech.

And he said, here's what I really believe, that we've gotta suck it up and do this.

- Fantastic.

Most of the speeches you have a lot of attribution.

- Yeah.

- Did you find any great speeches, where you have no idea who the author or authors were.

- Yes.

This was the case with the airstrike speech on, on the missile sites in Cuba.

Everyone who was potentially involved, with writing the speech after the fact, denied having written it.

(crowd murmuring) And so I actually even commissioned an FBI forensic analyst, to look at the handwriting, on one of the drafts of the speech.

And that found that, McGeorge Bundy, who was the national security advisor, had at least edited it.

And Ted Sorenson, who of course is a, was a thought partner, and seek clarity to president Kennedy.

He was a conscientious objector in world war II, and he maintained, for most of his life, that the, a very idea of this was so abhorrent, that I couldn't have written it.

But one of the things I found was that, if you look at some of the language that was used, and you look at some of the interviews he gave later on, that he at least, wrote the beginning of it.

And it's hard, it was hard for me to explain, was he just denying it after the fact, and I think that what really happened, and Robert Kennedy talked about this, in the Cuban muscle crisis.

He basically said, we were all under such pressure working such long hours, that like our minds began to play tricks on us.

And I did a little thought experiment, where I had written a speech, for my boss at the time, in support of the Iraq war resolution, and I did not agree with it, and I didn't like writing it, but I remember every where I was, I remember that I was writing it, and I went back and looked at the speech, and if you showed it to me now, I'd say I didn't write that.

And so like, I don't remember that, and so I really do think your mind, you know, memory is a little bit of a subjective thing, I think Sorenson says he didn't write it.

I believe he wrote more of it, and I marshal some evidence, to show that I believe he wrote more of it, that he admitted, but I also believe that he believes, that he didn't write it.

(crowd laughing) - Thank you.

We are about to begin the audience Q and A, I'm Rick Jackson, senior host and producer, at Idea Stream Public Media, joined today by Jeffrey Nussbaum, former speech writer, senior speech writer for president Joe Biden, author of the book, "Undelivered", the never heard speeches that would've rewritten history.

We welcome questions from everyone, city club members, guest, those joining us via our live stream@cityclub.org, were radio broadcast at 89.7 Idea Stream Public Media.

If you would like to tweet a question, @city club, it's where you tweet that, you can also text them, 330-541-5794, (clearing throat) excuse me.

330- 541-5794.

Staff will try to work it into the program, may we have the first question please?

- About 20 questions have gone through my mind, as I'm trying to pick which question to ask, you have brought up so much, but I wanna ask you, is it different, or would it be different for you to write, for a woman than for a man?

Does a woman have any different challenges, either connecting to the audience, things that she has to be careful of?

She can't be too much this, she can't come across too much this, how different or the same is it?

And do you then coach, your, the person that you wrote for, or do you just hand it off, and then that becomes someone else's job.

- Yeah, So thank you for asking, that question.

And I have a chapter in the book, where, I pair up two speeches by women, that were not delivered.

One is Helen Keller, at a March for women's suffrage, and one was, - Emma Goldman.

- Emma Goldman thank you.

The anarchist who declined to speak, at her at her trial, for inciting a riot union square.

I'll turn to that in a second, but I will say, my, the, I think I realized, that there is a difference actually in writing comedy, in writing jokes, 'cause I always used to maintain, that there's only one truly safe form of humor, and that is self deprecating humor.

And the reason self-deprecating humor works, is that, the speaker is sort of above the audience, and self-deprecating humor, brings you down to the level of the audience, in a way that makes you more approachable, and human.

And I was writing for a woman who said, self-deprecation doesn't work for me as a woman, and the reason it doesn't work for me, is because I had to work harder, to get to this position above, and my hold on, it feels a little more tenuous, and so if I joke in a way, about giving up that hold, that undercuts me in a way that's meaningful, and it was just so eye opening for me.

And so now this turns, now we turn to, to Helen Keller, and I fear that in answering this question, I'm admiring the problem, more than I'm solving it.

But when Helen Keller was young, she was beloved, right?

She had this, it was the miracle worker, She had this incredible story of overcoming.

As she got older, she actually had something she wanted to say, she wanted to talk about women's suffrage, and family planning and birth control, and maybe even a little bit anarchy, so she had, but she had, but all of a sudden, you know, she was a strong, empowered, inspirational woman, but all of a sudden when she had something to say, that people didn't want to hear, she was sort of re-infantalized, who's controlling her, Who's, you know, who's doing this.

And similarly, Emma Goldman, she, people thought that she's such a persuasive speaker, that she's, that it's almost witchcraft, right?

She's so, that her words are so powerful, that they will bring people to action, in ways that can't be controlled.

And so you have this kind of, unfair balance, where on one hand, and I think this has changed a little, people feared women speakers, for practicing almost black magic.

And on the other hand, we hear words applied to women when they speak, that don't get applied to men.

Shrill, angry, and they get worse from there.

And so it really is more of a delicate balance.

And in my private sector life, to answer your second question, I work with speech trainers who, some of them work exclusively with women, and they spend a lot of time, focusing on things, that you don't spend as much time focusing with, focusing on with men.

Breathing in a way, to not sound as high pitched, you know, keeping your voice measured.

And so, it's again, I don't have a answer, but the answer to your question is, it is absolutely different, and it's not fair, and maybe simply the recognition of the unfairness, will help us kind of process, these things in a slightly different way, than we normally do.

- In the back of the book, you include some of the speeches in their entirety, Golden is one of those, right?

- Yes.

- Yeah, that's one of the most, powerful things, right?

- It's really, it's really amazing.

And then in the audio book, we've hired actors to read, some of the speeches, So you get to hear me narrating a lot of the narrative, but you get to hear these wonderful actors, reading the speeches, and it's uncanny, I mean, you really think you're hearing.

- Yeah.

The historical stuff.

- The Hillary actor is spot on.

- Yeah, it's really like, if you're not told it's an actor, you think you're listening to Hillary.

- Yes sir.

- So you mentioned, Quill and paper I believe, and chisel and stone.

How did the changing technology of writing, over the period you're talking about, affect how you find these things, and how writers who are writing about this phenomenon, 20, 30, 40 years book in the future, will deal with that, as people write in different ways, and write on different instruments.

- Yeah it's tricky, right, because the Hillary one was emailed to me, here, or actually they shared a Google doc, you know, (crowd laughing) So it's like, I don't know how a future historian's gonna, get access to the Google doc.

So yeah, but you know, one of the things that happens, at the white house, is like we really had to archive everything, and a lot of it, the digital archives, they will be good.

And archivists and librarians, as I learned in the writing process, are just gifts, gifts to all of us.

They really helped me write this story.

I'll also answer a little bit of the unasked question, which is, I thought you were gonna ask how speeches, have changed over time as well.

And that's interesting too, because they've certainly gotten shorter, right?

They used to be entertainment, you'd go to Lincoln Douglas debates, and this would be like four hours of entertainment.

No one wants to hear a four hour speech now, no one even wants to hear a 40 minute speech now.

And also audiences have changed.

I think speakers are much less likely, than speakers of an earlier era, to be speaking to such a broad audience, that they need to do a lot of explaining, and persuading.

Now speakers almost universally are speaking to, audiences of supporters, where the goal isn't persuade, and explain so much, as the goal is to activate and energize.

So yeah.

- Do speakers speak differently now, because we can all fact check them in real time.

- Yeah, there's certainly, you know, there's certainly one of the other changes, is that, and when I worked in the Senate, I was sort of present at this moment, some of you may remember, that Trent Lott got in trouble, and had to step down, because he said such wonderful things about, Strom Thurmond, at Strom Thurmond's birthday party.

And over time, what happened is that scandal, kind of evolved is that, bloggers and others, this is early in the days of blogs, found that he had been saying all this stuff, in Mississippi for years, but he hadn't been saying it in Washington.

And so we've really lived through the end, of an era in which as someone could, say one thing to one audience, and a different thing to a different audience, and get away with it.

That's not possible anymore.

- Yes.

- Good afternoon.

People who know me know that I usually ask school questions, cause I taught school for 40 years.

- Yeah.

So I have like a double question, for high school students, who are interested in doing what you do, first of all, what tips would you give them, to be the best speech makers of all time.

And the second part is, how would you advise them, to eventually get into speech writing, the way you do?

I love this question, and thank you.

Because for me, when I started, there weren't blogs, and there wasn't Twitter, but I had a white house internship, and I applied for the white house internship, and I kind of wrote a wise guy application essay.

My sister and I had gone into the oval office, when president Carter was president, I was five, She was one, apologies if she's watching, she went the rug in the oval office, and my essay said, very few people are lucky enough to get a chance, to make a mark in the white house.

(crowd laughing) I just want a chance to improve the one, my sister already made.

But so I had this wonderful internship, and I realized, that I had to double down on writing.

And so I wrote for, whoever would let me write, school, newspaper, school yearbook, no one writes for the school yearbook, the local arts rag in Providence Rhode Island, which is where I went to school.

- I wrote the school yearbook.

- Okay, sorry.

(crowd laughing) Right.

So that makes two of us, So you know, so there you go.

And so the first piece of advice, and this is sort of simple is, write, write for whoever will let you write, give a toast at a friend's birthday party, as ridiculous as that is because when people hire writers, they want to see writing samples.

So write, write, write.

That's the first thing, the second piece of job advice, before we get to the speaking of it, advice is, one of the things I tell young people is, no one is waking up tomorrow saying, how can I make your dream come true?

What they're waking up and saying is, how can I deal, with the absolute impending doom, that is happening to my work, or my organization on a daily basis?

And so, research, when people applied to my company, they would start by telling me how wonderful they were, but being wonderful as table stakes, what I wanted to see was, tell me that you've done enough research, so that you shown understanding of what, my challenges are, and then how do your skills help me address those, challenges?

Because again, people aren't saying, how can I make your dreams come true?

They're saying, how can I solve my problems?

And when you're applying for jobs, to the extent you can say, I think I can help solve your problems.

That gets you to the top of the pile.

And then the second point about speaking is, find opportunities, and practice.

And I don't have a, I don't know that I have a, a better way of saying that, but I just think that communication, and clear communication, is such an important tool of leadership.

It is an arrow you absolutely have to have in your quiver.

And so we expect our leaders to be good at a lot of things.

We expect them to be policy experts, and we expect them to be good fundraisers, and we expect this and we expect that.

But public speaking is part of it.

We expect them to be good speakers.

And so this is just part of a core skillset.

- We have a text question next.

- Sure.

- In the age of disinformation democracy under attack, is there a fine line with repeated stump speeches, with tagline taglines becoming propaganda, and are speeches leaning more towards soundbites, for social media, than sharing a message?

- Yeah, so let's start with sound bites, because, I kind of divide sound bites into two categories, right?

There's like Twitter snark, but those I call sound barks, right?

(crowd laughing) Those are like little like, like little like gotchas, but a sound bite, is not an intellectually dishonest thing.

In fact I would argue, that in almost every speech or statement, you should be able to summarize what your main point is, in a sentence, or 280 characters.

Like you actually should be able to do it, in fact, one of the exercises I go through, when I write a speech is, I write at the top of the page, what would be the dream headline, that comes out of the speech?

Because if you read the speech, and that's not the headline in your mind, then something, then you're not doing it right.

So ,and the example I use in the book is, right, like Julius Caesar, had more to say about the sacking, of the city of Zella in 76 BC, but if all you heard was, was Veni Viti Vici.

I came, I saw, I conquered.

It was a pretty good soundbite, you understood what happened, You got the message.

(crowd laughing) Right?

So a soundbite, is actually a very useful thing.

A sound bark, is not a useful thing.

And that's part of my answer to the question.

The other part of the answer is, I think the question is, really asking about like, do we only get kind of like this, distilled mainline concentrated sound bite thing.

And what does that mean for speeches?

And one of the things I think about a lot, is that, in this age, there it's less and less likely, that you'll sit through, and hear an entire speech, but a speech is still valuable, because it becomes the source document.

It's often the speaker's most direct personal encapsulation, of what they're doing, why they're doing it, why they want to do it.

And so, even if you don't hear the whole speech, the speech still becomes, and this is how it worked often in the white house, that becomes the source material from which, to draw the tweet, or the Instagram post, probably you didn't draw the TikTok dance from it, (crowd laughing) but like, but you, but, you know, but it, it is the source material.

And in that sense, I still think it's, it's valuable.

- You mentioned the importance of the manner of delivery, of speeches.

I recall when bill Clinton spoke at the city club, I happened to be sitting where I could hear this.

His speech writer handed him the speech, said with feeling, Clinton got up, and gave the speech and it was out absolutely outstanding.

But my question is a little different.

So often politicians have to give multiple speeches a day.

Those of us who are old enough, remember Harry Truman and the train, and he would stop 6, 7, 8 times a day to give a speech.

How do these fellows and women maintain their ability?

Their vocal chords, Clinton would be rasping half the time he spoke.

How do they do it?

- Gosh, well, I think, I don't know exactly.

I know that when I've worked in speech, Frank shops, a lot of you know, tea with honey and lemon gets consumed.

You remind me of a, of a joke that, that RFK in his campaign, you know, gave the same speech over and over, and the media started to notice, that he would always end with this quote, you know, George Bernard Shaw or something, and he would say the quote, and they knew the quote was like a minute from the end of the speech, and they would head for the buses, and so at the end of one of these speeches, he said, you know, I think it was George Bernard, as George Bernard Shaw once said, "Head for the buses", so, you know, speakers need to do things to keep themselves entertained, but it is draining, it is hard work, and the raspiness actually becomes a little bit of a badge of honor.

I don't know, you heard the speech writer say it, so I believe it, I don't know that anyone ever needed to tell Bill Clinton to do something with feeling, I think that probably came relatively naturally, but one other observation I'll make is that, that there are different types of speech making, and, you know, there's some speeches that are orations, and there's some that are conversations, and like, again, I didn't see president Clinton when he was here, but I imagine he was sort of draped over the podium, you know, having a conversation!

And so, you know, different styles also help speakers, in different moments mix it up, and at least keep their energy up, and keep themselves engaged.

But I can talk to some of the speech coaches I work with and get back to you on how they keep their voices.

- Great, thank you.

- [Woman] Hi, I know you've worked on both the public and private sector, do you have a favorite speech that you've written?

- Thank you for asking this question.

So I, and this goes to how I started working with president Biden.

So I was helping oversee speech writing at the 2008, democratic convention for Senator, then president Obama, and I was assigned to write for whoever, the VP nominee would be.

And so I wrote three speeches, and when it was Biden, I was introduced to Biden, and he looked at me, looked up, crossed himself and said, "I've been in the Senate longer than you've been alive, what are you gonna teach me?"

(crowd laughing) And, (man clearing throat) so I didn't write Joe Biden's 2008 convention speech, what he had me do, was sit with his son Beau, now late son Beau, and work on Beau's six minute introduction of Joe Biden, and Senator Biden at the time, kind of sat in the room as Beau and I were working together, like flipping through briefing books.

And when the Beau speech became a really powerful, emotional moment at the convention, and you can look it up now, and you can read it, it really is six minutes long, Beau Biden at the 2008 democratic national convention, when that speech became a powerful moment, that was the moment at which the father basically said, okay, you can, you can roll with me.

And so that speech, both because Beau was just the most wonderful, tremendous person, and because I had just that opportunity to help him give voice to his love for his father, it remains one of the speeches that I'm really proud of having worked on.

- Thank you for that.

As we close, we talk about these Razor's edge moments.

We've talk about D-Day, we've talked about resignations going on, but you close the book by talking about Hollywood.

This is the debacle when "Moonlight" was not announced as the best picture, when it actually was, and they never got to give the acceptance speech.

Now, to the world, what does it matter which Hollywood mansion the statue sits on the mantle, (man chuckling) but in the real world?

- So, well say also the last last chapter of the book, is four speeches people were working on at the time they died, so I have Pope Pius about to disavow Mussolini, I have Albert Einstein about to speak about Israel independence day, I have FDR looking past the end of world war II, and I have Kennedy at the Dallas trademark, where it was a foreign policy speech, but he talked about domestic extremism.

So that's like the last, last words.

But the Moonlight speech, one of the things that was really powerful to me, and there was a time when we talked about the academy awards, we weren't talking about a slap, we were talking about a snafu, and Barry Jenkins is a master storyteller, of course, and I use that chapter, because it comes near the end of the book, to really say at the end of the day, it's all about storytelling.

And in that moment, he was denied an opportunity, to tell this wonderful story, about bringing lights, to film the movie, to Liberty city, Miami, a neighborhood that where the lights blow out, they don't get replaced, and so bringing lights brought out the children, and bringing out the children, he turned at one point and saw, a kid who looked just like him as a young man, sitting in the director's chair, in front of the monitors, wearing his headset.

And he basically said that moment, "I got to see a child, seeing for themselves, a thing I never got to see for me," and that moment, just to remind people, that it is so powerful, to see yourself in a story, to hear yourself in a story, and that's why I wanted to resurrect the speech that Barry Jenkins wanted to give.

- [Man] Jeffrey, nice man, thank you for your time at the city club.

- Pleasure.

(audience clapping) - Today's forum is part of our "Authors in conversation" series in partnership with Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, and the John P. Murphy foundation, we'd also like to welcome guests at tables hosted by, the friends of Dave Nash, and the United Way of Greater Cleveland, thank you all for being with us today.

The "City Club" will be off next Friday, in observance of Memorial day, be sure to join them the following Friday, June 3rd, they'll be talking about the challenges, in changing reality, human resource managers are facing in today's workforce.

Join the conversation that day, George Saple, with The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Tiffany Short with Metro Health, Dalethia Smith at ODI company, Beth Burke at the Fund for Our Economic Future, will moderate that conversation.

Tickets are still available, grab your checkbooks, you can purchase those, and learn more @thecityclub.org.

That brings us to the end of today's forum, again thank you, Jeffrey Nussbaum.

Thank you members and friends of the "City Club", I'm Rick Jackson, and this forum is now adjourned.

(gong dinging) (audience clapping) - [Narrator] For information on upcoming speakers, or for podcasts of the "City Club", go to cityclub.org.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Production and distribution of "City Club" forums, on idea stream public media are made possible by, PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland incorporated.