Melissa Waugh
Dr. Sturgeon
English 255
13-Oct-2008
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In “The Making of the Speech” by D.T. Max, Karen P. Hughes clarifies that having to write a speech for another person is tricky. Every person has his or her own voice. For somebody else to try and imitate the voice of another person is like implying that all humans should look and think the same. We would be very boring, but we are a race of creativity, differentiation, and understanding. Hughes’s role in creating the presidential “voice” is to ensure that the President sounds like himself, sounds educated, and can reach the people. Those watching on TV. need to be sucked through the screen and sitting in the audience. It is hard to write a speech on such a horrific event without either being too broad or too narrow. The majority of the American public reads on an eighth grade level, therefore the speech needs to be written on a level that people can understand.
The ways in which the president’s voice differs from what his speech writers create is phenomenal. A speech writing team, led by Michael Gerson wrote a speech that was considered “too literary” to sound like the president. Therefore, the team needed to hear the president talk in a comfortable setting and get a better grasp on his educational emphasis in college such as; the courses he took and how much did they have to do with language? President Bush seems like a man that beats around the bush to make a point. Many of the speechwriters would use language mechanisms that beat around the bush in a colorful way. They were too much for the average American and did not resonate enough like the president. Naturally, humans are judgmental about appearance and accent and one would expect Bush to speak on a level that is not philosophical or literary, but on a level that is well-rounded and educated.
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