Shaping a Speech, 50 Years After ‘I Have a Dream’
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
Published: August 21, 2013
Associated Press
Next week, President Obama will mark the 50th anniversary of the March
on Washington with a speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial,
willingly putting himself in the very place where the Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. delivered one of America’s greatest oratories five decades ago.
The split-screen comparisons are as inevitable as they are unwanted. A
gifted orator himself, Mr. Obama nonetheless faces an unenviable task:
to offer Americans a stirring, resonant moment that goes beyond his
sometimes professorial remarks, without falling into a politically
dangerous mimicry of Dr. King’s cadences and rhythms.
But the challenge has become something of a self-created one for Mr.
Obama during his presidency. This summer, he presented himself at the
Brandenburg Gate in Berlin 50 years after President John F. Kennedy
declared “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
Last month, he chose the University of Cape Town in South Africa as the
place for a speech to young people, just as Senator Robert F. Kennedy
did a half century ago.
And in November, Mr. Obama has been invited to attend the 150th
anniversary celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The
president has not formally accepted yet. But if he finds himself on that
battlefield, he will once again be speaking in the shadow of rhetorical
genius.
“You don’t try to outdo the speech that was there,” said Jon Favreau,
the president’s former top speechwriter, who left the White House this
year. “You want the speech to say something new, to add to whatever was
said before. Why is it relevant today? What can we learn from it in our
time?”
Mr. Obama’s mere presence on the Lincoln Memorial platform on Wednesday
will speak volumes: the election of the nation’s first black president
serves as a testament to America’s sometimes halting progress toward
what Dr. King that day envisioned as an “invigorating autumn of freedom
and equality.”
But the president will not be able to leave it at that. He — and his
speechwriters — will have to carefully choose words for Mr. Obama that
stand on their own, a task made almost impossible by the ease with which
the youngest of schoolchildren recite Dr. King’s most famous lines.
“It’s a hugely daunting challenge,” said Jeff Shesol, a speechwriter for
President Bill Clinton. “If you give some sort of wonky address on the
economic agenda, I think it will sink like a stone. It will have to have
some lift.”
Aides to Mr. Obama insist that the president, an assiduous student of
history, is not dwelling on any comparisons that might be made between
him and Dr. King, in large part because he sees it as foolish to try to
match him.
“In moments like these, he’s cognizant of the historical importance of
the moment he’s marking or the location where he’s speaking,” said Dan
Pfeiffer, a senior adviser to the president. “He does not view this as
some sort of competitive exercise.”
Mr. Obama’s current speechwriters declined to comment for this article.
But Mr. Pfeiffer added, “What does not give us any pause is the idea
that a bunch of pundits might say his speech wasn’t as good.” He mocked
an observer in the news media who might suggest that “those were pretty
good remarks, but they weren’t the Gettysburg Address.”
All presidents face rhetorical challenges at key moments in their
tenure, but Mr. Obama has had more than his share of legends to live up
to. His acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2008
happened to land on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King’s speech in
Washington, five years ago next week.
Mr. Favreau recalled a debate among campaign advisers about how much Mr.
Obama should talk about Dr. King in the acceptance speech that year. In
the end, Mr. Obama made just a glancing reference to Dr. King and the
anniversary.
“We went with a light touch,” Mr. Favreau recalled. He said in such
moments, “you don’t have to be too self-conscious about it.”
Lincoln — whom Mr. Obama has repeatedly said he greatly admires —
delivered just 272 words in the address at Gettysburg in November 1863.
Lincoln predicted, famously and erroneously, that “the world will little
note, nor long remember what we say here.” Former presidential
speechwriters said Lincoln’s few words would make it even more difficult
for Mr. Obama to find ones that feel fresh.
“I’d be pretty nervous as a speechwriter,” Mr. Shesol said. “It’s high-stakes speechwriting, no question.”
But because Lincoln’s address is so much less current than the one
delivered by Dr. King, it presents the president with fewer speechmaking
challenges, said Robert Schlesinger, the author of “White House
Ghosts,” a book about modern presidents and their speechwriters.
“Gettysburg is pure history,” Mr. Schlesinger said. “In terms of living
up to a moment, it’s tougher in the Martin Luther King instance, since
people remember. You can’t go to YouTube and see Lincoln delivering his
original address.”
Mr. Favreau said that his successors in the speechwriting office are
sure to have reread Mr. King’s speech as preparation for Mr. Obama’s
remarks next week. He said the president would typically go back and
read the speech again, too.
They are words that Mr. Obama already knows well, Mr. Favreau said. In
his 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama borrowed from Dr. King’s speech to help
convey his impatience with the slow pace of change. He often paraphrased
Dr. King’s comment that “we have also come to this hallowed spot to
remind America of the fierce urgency of now.”
While declining to preview the president’s remarks ahead of next week’s event, Mr. Obama’s aides made one thing clear.
“Spoiler alert,” Mr. Pfeiffer said. “It will be good, but it won’t be the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.”
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