Speeches and Speech Makers
Once upon a time I went to an event to see my father receive an award for community service. My dad was not a trained or great public speaker. When he spoke, he had a very convivial way about him, as though he were talking to a friend over a beer. I made some remark to dad about his speechmaking abilities, and his retort was: “Well, if you don’t like the way I speak, maybe what you should do is take a speech class, and you can achieve much more than I ever did.” I realized that I had hurt my father’s feelings, but he was not about to change.
I did take that speech class. The class was very enjoyable. It consisted of reading the great speeches of others. We started with the speech of George Washington and worked our way into the speeches of Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and even the famous speech warning of the military industrial complex given by Dwight Eisenhower. Kennedy was one of the great speech crafters of all time.
The speeches that we studied of the great orators, from Greek times to the present, read like a work of art. A Monet or a Rubens was no more impressive than a well written and competently delivered speech.
Enter Donald Trump. He is my father! Trump gives a speech like he is talking to a friend at a bar. President Trump obviously has great speech writers, and he does throw in some appropriate lines written by his speech handlers. Someone said that Donald Trump speaks like he is conducting an interview on the Apprentice Show. However, listening to Trump carefully when he addressed the Israel Knesset was much more like sitting down at the family dinner table whose guests I grew up with.
In particular, I recall my father’s fabulous imitation of Ronald Reagan. Many of the guests at the Friday night dinners were not Reagan fans. My father, however, loved Ronald Reagan. He proudly started Ronald Reagan Headquarters on Long Island and brought the message of Ronald Reagan to our highly democratic small town.
What dad was able to transmit about Ronald Reagan was his downhome warmhearted, sometimes inappropriate message. Reagan also was a funny guy. The former president became famous for telling his opponent during a presidential debate, when Reagan was questioned about his age: “I won’t hold your youth and inexperience against you.” President Reagan also would have been great to have a few beers with.
During President Trump’s Knesset speech, he spoke of important international events, but could not resist trashing Hillary Clinton. He tried to sound like Mahatma Gandhi on the peace train. There are worse things than the leader of the free world trying to be known for making peace between enemies and saving the human life lost to the carnage of war.
I have worked hard at it, but I now can imitate Donald Trump almost as well as my father could imitate Ronald Reagan. Nobody is showing up at my house to have me do those imitations, but like Donald Trump, I was born in New York City. I understand the schtick.
Early in Donald Trump’s political career, I wrote an article about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama insulting each other during the primary campaign. Each said about the other, that their opponent was guilty of chutzpa. They mispronounced the word and to anybody who knows a modicum of Yiddish, they sounded pretty silly. My article was on, “Yiddish For Politicians.” I pointed out there were many more nasty things they could say about each other, but they needed to say it correctly. I offered myself as tutor. Not surprisingly, neither one of them called me, but I did receive a telephone call from Clyde Haberman of the New York Times. Haberman said that they never reprinted anybody else’s Op-ed, but they had seen mine and wanted permission to quote me.
Haberman is now gone as are two other great New York Times writers, A.M. Rosenthal and William Safire. Also gone is my subscription to the New York Times.
Early in Trump’s political life I compared him to a borscht belt comedian. When I was a child, I was frequently sent to Swan Lake, New York to spend a few weeks with my grandmother. She prized her time on the former family dairy farm. Part of the farm then belonged to the failing National Hotel. Saturday nights, after Shabbat, which always ended late, we would go to the “canteen” and listen to the entertainment. Sometimes the entertainment was a Yiddish singer, and other times comedians. They were all from the borscht belt. That term refers to those of Russian origin who had come to America for a better life. Borscht, to my understanding, was essentially beet soup which was very popular on the cucalane; the bungalow colonies in upstate New York inhabited by Jewish families seeking to escape the crowds and summer heat of the Lower Eastside and Brooklyn.
I listened carefully to the borscht belt comedians, who used so much Yiddish in their entertainment that it was difficult for me to follow. By the time my grandmother translated for me what they said, they were on to the next joke.
One thing all the borscht belt comedians had in common was delivery. They talked to the audience like each member of the audience was a personal friend. Donald Trump, whether he knows it or not, is an heir to the legacy of the borscht belt. He can be amusing, charming, warmhearted, and nasty all at the same time.
During his historic speech in Israel, Donald Trump talked to Miriam Adelson as though they were schmoozing at a Shabbat dinner. He looked at an Israeli general and said, “You look like you are from Central Casting.” Trump specifically looked a Bibi Netanyahu and told the Prime Minister that he could be “hard to deal with” but that he liked him anyway. He then pointed out that the hardshell side of the Israeli Prime Minister is probably what saved the country.
When Donald Trump looked at Prime Minister Netanyahu’s opposition leader, he said, “Bibi he is really a nice guy. You should get along better with him.” I chuckled to myself thinking that it would be nice to see Donald Trump get along better with Chuck Schumer and his opponents. However, as we know, sauce for the goose is not always sauce for the gander.
If I had any advice for Donald Trump’s speech making, it would be to shorten it. While the President is entertaining, can be funny, and even is substantive, once in a while, he is too amused by himself. When Donald Trump has the world stage he will do his best to charm, amuse, criticize, compliment, and just say whatever is on his mind after a beer or two. Donald Trump gets intoxicated without drinking alcohol!
The real test of Donald Trump’s presidency will be whether he can make a deal with and get along with his opponents and whether he can translate his considerable talents into longstanding success. Only time will answer that question.