Disdaining Sarah Palin’s speech last night because she had a speechwriter is one of the lamest criticisms of her performance last night. The Obama campaign sent out a press release highlighting that a speechwriter, Matthew Scully, had crafted much of her speech last night — as if that should make people discount the whole thing. Then many of the TV analysts brought this up in their commentary sneering that Scully had written a good speech for her to read but all she had done was deliver someone else’s lines.
Well, Abraham Lincoln wrote his own speeches, (although he did get people like William Seward to help edit his First Inaugural) but most politicians use speechwriters. Even the saintly Barack Obama uses speechwriters. Andrew McCarthy reminds us of that whole kerfuffle when it turned out that Obama was using the same lines from Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts when he denied that his speeches were “just words.” Remember Hillary Clinton’s jab at “change you can Xerox”? And the reason he used the same lines was because the two men share a common speechwriter: David Axelrod.Mark Hemingway links to articles here and here about Obama speechwriters. They all have speechwriters. Big whippety doo.
If all it took to deliver a speech was to read the words your speechwriter wrote, then no one would be talking about Obama’s superior speech-giving skills compared to McCain’s. Some people have it and some, well, just don’t.
Our country has a long history of famous figures using words written for them by others. I figure that if it was okay for George Washington to have James Madison and Alexander Hamilton write his Farewell Address (which he then went through and edited himself, of course) then it’s okay for today’s lesser politicians.
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Magnolia Tribune
