Matt Latimer, a Republican speech writer for Bush and Rumsfeld, has written a very entertaining book called Speech*Less. <\/em><\/p>\n

In it, he chronicles his misadventures as an idealist in a palace of racketeers.<\/p>\n

Here he is describing the 2008 campaign from inside Washington.<\/p>\n

\u2026I was at a dinner party with four or five Republicans who\u2019d been involved with every GOP election since 1976.\u00a0 Without exception, they hated McCain. \u00a0“He\u2019s a lunatic,” said one.\u00a0 Others attacked him from the right as a betrayer of the faith.\u00a0 Another attacked McCain from the left, saying he was too quick to go to war.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yet I was the only one of the entire group who balked at voting for him.\u00a0 They\u2019d all vote for someone whom they admitted was a “lunatic,”\u00a0a “liar,”\u00a0a “sellout,” and a “traitor”\u00a0because, as one of them put it, \u201cgetting elected is the name of the game, right?\u201d\u00a0 To these people, politics was just a business.\u00a0 They might have hated McCain, but Republicans gave them contracts and consulting fees.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t care who led them or what they stood for as long as they stayed in power.\u00a0 I was reminded of what a philosopher said early in the twentieth century:\u00a0 \u201cEvery great cause begins as a movement, degenerates into a business, and ends as a racket.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not get partisan here.\u00a0 The other side acts the same way.\u00a0 The point being made is that idealistic institutions are founded on passionate idealism and end up running on dogged determination to keep the corpse of the original idea alive so that the people running the thing can have a job.<\/p>\n

Ideals have a half-life.\u00a0 It\u2019s why Jefferson said that the \u201ctree of democracy\u201d needs to be watered now and then with \u201cthe blood of tyrants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Businesses have a half-life too, and need to be watered with new ideas, new products and new people. \u00a0Public speaking, likewise. \u00a0It needs to grow and change too. \u00a0It can’t stay antique, pompous, lousy with cliches. \u00a0As an institution and a craft, it needs to break new ground. \u00a0PowerPoint is new. \u00a0TEDTalks<\/a> are new. \u00a0The rise of story vs. rational, analytical discourse represents at the very least a swing of the pendulum.<\/p>\n

But where do we go from here. \u00a0Do we play music when we speak? \u00a0Do we waft scents into the room to manipulate the olfactory and emotional centers<\/a> of the listeners’ brains, the way some realtors bake apple pies in Open Houses? \u00a0Does PowerPoint get replaced with a software that sends\u00a0subliminal\u00a0<\/em>messages to the audience, bypassing their conscious awareness, and tipping them toward agreement with the ideas of the speaker?<\/p>\n

Who knows? \u00a0Do we rehearse in front of hired audiences that wear electro-encephalograms\u00a0on their heads in order to test the neuro-power <\/em>of our phrases? \u00a0Or do we use robots as guinea pigs?<\/p>\n

Will we learn how to build talks that are addictive, like the salty and fatty food<\/a>s designed by food chemists and flavor engineers?<\/p>\n

Can we create implants to help us remember all the facts we’d like to rattle off? \u00a0Microscopic chips planted just under the skin enabling us to forego the hard work of rehearsal? \u00a0Or do we hire avatars or holograms to speak on our behalf?<\/p>\n

Stay tuned for a re-birth of the ancient art of rhetoric, persuasive speaking grounded in research, rooted in science, and capable of hitting the rational and emotional thought centers of decision makers, whether they are voters, customers, or senior executive decision-makers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matt Latimer, a Republican speech writer for Bush and Rumsfeld, has written a very entertaining book called Speech*Less. In it, he chronicles his misadventures as an idealist in a palace of racketeers. Here he is describing the 2008 campaign from inside Washington. \u2026I was at a dinner party with four or five Republicans who\u2019d been… Read More »A movement becomes a racket<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_ti_tpc_template_sync":false,"_ti_tpc_template_id":""},"categories":[144,336,24,149],"tags":[603,18,145,146,337,600,117,609],"yoast_head":"\n