by Ed  Vilade

Throughout most of the 2500 years or so that the rhetorical arts have 
been practiced, audiences have conceded to the speaker the presumption 
that he or she has personally prepared the speech. 

In classical times, rhetoric was accorded the status of an equal 
partner in the trivium, the three academic subjects the Romans considered most 
important – the other two being logic and grammar.  In those days, the 
presumption of speaker as wordsmith was probably closer to the truth than it is today.  

The Greeks and Romans always acknowledged that rhetoric could be 
taught, in the sense of a master rhetorician conveying the principles.  Since 
personal attainment in rhetoric was so highly prized, however, those who could 
speak capably in Greece and Rome usually did so to advance their own careers. 
It was necessary to their careers that they be perceived to be speaking 
extemporaneously, and the presumption was that they wrote their own 
speeches. In effect, public admission of rhetorical deficiencies would have severely 
damaged a Greek or Roman citizen in his pursuit of public life.    

Historical evidence suggests, though, that from the earliest Sicilian 
beginnings, professional writers always lurked in the shadows, ready to 
remedy the linguistic or canonical deficiencies of the Citizen Orator.   The 
professional wordsmith – the speechwriter, is a character of ancient, 
though murky, vintage.

It is necessary, however, to distinguish the speechwriter from the 
teachers and theoreticians of rhetoric.  Since rhetorical skills were 
valued in Greece and Rome, those teachers and theoreticians were accorded great 
status.  

Not just Plato, Aristotle, Quintillian and Cicero but many of the 
greatest minds of the ancient world -- not generally thought of in relation to 
rhetoric -- occupied themselves with examining the nature and scope of the subject.  
Homer, Galen, Epictetus, Plutarch, Plotinus, Thucydides, Marcus Aurelius, 
Virgil, Tacitus, Aristophanes, Herodotus and Lucretius, to name just those 
Greeks and Romans who merit having their works included in the Great Books of the 
Western World , devoted entire works and sections of larger works to rhetoric.

Corax of Syracuse was considered the “father” of rhetoric because he 
was the first to write speeches for others, and the first to record rules 
for writing and giving speeches, according to classical sources.  However, 
we have only third-hand knowledge of those rules.

Bromley Smith of Bucknell University quotes Cicero as giving an 
account of the role of Corax and his pupil, Tisias, in restoring the land of 
the people of Sicily.  The lands had been seized by one or another of the 
successive tyrants of that Greek city-state. After the last of the tyrants was 
deposed, citizens were required to prove their claims to the land in court. 
Corax won renown through teaching them to organize their arguments for court 
pleadings.  

However, Smith says that Cicero himself was quoting Aristotle, and, 
"As this remark of Aristotle occurs nowhere in his extent (sic) writings it 
is surmised that Cicero probably had in hand the lost Synagoge technon, 
wherein an account was given of the systems of Greek rhetoric ."

Although enough is known from these third-hand sources to reconstruct 
some of Corax's principles, Smith admits that, "Concerning the man we 
know nothing ." It is therefore impossible for us to know whether he merely 
instructed, or sat down and wrote out those land-winning arguments.  
The course of justice may have run slow in those days, but one would surmise that 
it would not have been slow enough for the litigant to complete a course in 
rhetoric and then draft his own legal arguments.  It is preferable to a contemporary 
rhetorician to think that Corax saw a dollar in the plight of the 
disenfranchised Sicilians, and became the first known professional 
speechwriter.  	

Although Corax may have been the first of many to write for other 
speakers, the necessity for the Citizen Orator to maintain the impression that he 
wrote his own material makes information on the speechwriting professional of the 
period a little sketchy.  What material exists suggests that some who became 
famous writing for others did so only because they could not speak for 
themselves.

Two of the most noted professional rhetoricians of ancient Greece fit 
that description.  Lysias, for example, another Syracusan, had become a 
citizen of Athens and a noted speaker.  However, notes W.R.M. Lamb, "...Owing 
to a technical irregularity...Lysias lost his citizenship and had to content 
himself thenceforth with his previous status of 'isoteles.'  This meant that, 
while he could write speeches for others, he could deliver none in public 
himself ."

Isocrates, states Russell H. Wagner, was "(u)nfitted by nature for the 
delivery of speeches, (and so) compelled to exist as a professional 
writer of speeches.... ."  He founded his school of rhetoric, says Wagner, 
because he would have found mere writing unsatisfying.

Thus, down through the Greek and Roman development of the rhetorical 
arts, which were so bound up with their idea of the role and 
responsibility of the citizenry, speechwriters were second-class citizens of one sort or 
another, unless like Isocrates, they advanced into teaching. 

The various trends in rhetorical thought that blossomed with the 
Renaissance were also predicated on the self-delivered oration.  
Moreover, practitioners of three major schools of post- Renaissance rhetorical 
thought -- the Classicists, Belles Lettrists and Epistemologists --simultaneously broadened 
the scope of rhetoric to include the written word and grounded their 
theories so firmly in the qualities of the individual that, with the probable 
exception of leading literary figures ghostwriting for their royal patrons, 
professional speechwriting was not a growth industry.

Nor was the Golden Age of Oratory as exemplified by such as Pitt the 
Elder, Disraeli and Gladstone in England and John Quincy Adams, 
Webster, Edward Everett and many others in America a prosperous period for the 
professional speechwriter.  Words were valued and heeded by the people, and the time 
was found in the busy schedules of statesmen to do the job themselves.

Those who were drawn to rhetoric but who lacked the skills or stature 
to enter public life took their skills and opinions on the road in tent 
shows or Chautauqua, writing and delivering their own lectures and orations.

And so into the 20th Century, where ironically the combination of the 
continued demand for both public and private figures to mount the 
platform, and the continued devaluing of the speech as a communications tool, has at 
last created a constant and flourishing demand for the professional 
speechwriter.

The development of the trend was a gradual one.  Confining the trend 
to American politics, and presidents, we find that the presidents of the 
early part of the century, from the stirring and eloquent Teddy Roosevelt and 
Woodrow Wilson, to the wretchedly incoherent Warren G. Harding, the 
surprisingly effective Calvin Coolidge and the leaden Herbert Hoover, more than 
likely wrote most of their own speeches.  

The modern trend began with Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

"Roosevelt was fully aware of the importance of oratory in democratic 
leadership," writes Barnet Baskerville. "He regarded the preparation 
and delivery of his speeches as a vital part of his presidential 
responsibilities, deserving a large measure of his time and energies.  Some presidents, 
regarding speech preparation as onerous, have been content to delegate such work 
largely to others.  This Roosevelt never did, although such immensely talented 
men as Raymond Moley, Adolph Berle, Rexford Tugwell, Benjamin Cohen, Samuel 
Rosenman, Archibald MacLeish and Robert Sherwood worked with him on speeches at 
different times during his long tenure of office ."

That is a heavy group, containing as it does the Pulitzer 
Prize-winning poet MacLeish and playwright Sherwood, who also won the Pulitzer.  It 
was almost enough to give speechwriters a good name, and Roosevelt's orations 
showed it.

From all accounts, Eisenhower needed a lot of help with his speeches, 
and Kennedy had enough help to make it seem as if he did not need any – 
including the masterful Ted Sorenson, craftsmen of the “ask not...” 
call to action.  

The Johnson era, the first of my personal acquaintance, marked the 
explosion of specialized White House aides into a brigade that began to fill not 
only the huge and stately Eisenhower Old Executive Office Building next to the 
White House, but the brand new and ugly New EOB across the street.  At least 
five of those aides during the Johnson years bore the title "Presidential 
Speechwriter", for all to see.

The number varied during the Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush 
years, but there certainly have been speechwriters in residence at the White 
House during all their administrations.  I had occasion to work with those 
from Nixon through Reagan, and they took great pride in their status, and made 
considerable demands on the speechwriters for various Cabinet Secretaries.  I myself 
bore the title of Chief Speechwriter at the U.S. Department of Energy.  The 
function was sanctioned, and my existence and duties were not concealed in any way.  
Nor did the Secretary, or to my knowledge any recent President, suffer from the 
public's awareness of the employment of speechwriters.

Although corps of speechwriters busy themselves in the West Wing, 
their production has been uneven, in the opinion of Sorenson.  The cause, he 
maintains, is the value accorded to public speaking.

“[Oratory has] declined in my own opinion,” Sorenson said, in a 1996 
interview. 

“On television, old-fashioned eloquence sounds too heated and perhaps a 
little pompous. Ronald Reagan has been the only first class orator we’ve had 
since John F. Kennedy, and his came mostly from carefully written scripts. 
Presidential candidates and incumbents today talk more informally; they talk a 
little less perfect English, and frankly, I think the standard has declined.”
Reagan, it should be noted, employed the only speechwriter who became 
anything like a household name – Peggy Noonan.  Bill Clinton was verbose and 
intermittently effective, but his speechwriters admit that he doctored 
their efforts assiduously.  As for the incumbent, George W. Bush, the only 
noteworthy speechwriting occurrence thus far in his tenure has been the 
unfortunate claim on the Internet by one of his scribes to have authored the “Axis of 
Evil” epithet.

The proliferation of speechwriting – and speechwriters – is not 
limited, however, to government. Chrysler employed something like eight 
speechwriters during the Lee Iacocca era, and at least 450 of the Fortune 500 employ 
at least one speechwriter.  Some, like IBM, consistently employ dozens.  
Corporate speechwriting ranks are swelled by itinerants – known as freelancers – 
who hire out to burnish prose, much as Corax did two-and-one-half millennia ago.  
Speechwriters have their own newsletter, and associations such as the 
Washington Speechwriters Roundtable and similar organizations flourish in New York 
City, Chicago and other hubs of gasbaggery.   

However, it is a long way down from Archibald MacLeish to Peggy Noonan 
to the Axis of Evil, and the modern speechwriter can by no means 
consider him or herself the lineal descendent of Lysias or Isocrates.  Many are, like 
the writer, former newspaper reporters.  The writer was hired into 
government to produce speeches for a government official without ever having written 
a formal speech.  Not only have most speechwriters not studied rhetoric, many 
could not tell you what it is, other than in the pejorative sense.  The theory, 
which still pertains somewhat to this day, was that if one was a writer, one 
could write anything.  Not strictly true, and a subject for a separate 
examination.  	

In a sense, the rise of the modern speechwriter has come about because 
the societal convention of the assembly of an audience to hear a speaker 
that originated in Greece has endured, and people have largely forgotten 
why.  The busy government or corporate official is invited to speak, accepts 
without knowing why--or what to say--and forgets all about it in the rush of 
business. It becomes the province of the speechwriter to decide why and what, and 
to find out before whom.

The crucial point of it all, however, is that when the speech occasion 
comes, the audience shows up, and it listens.	
Extrapolating from the Fortune 500 and the White House down to City 
Councils, Rotary Clubs and Toastmasters chapters, perhaps a million speeches were 
delivered in the U.S. last year, and the amount holds at least steady 
from year to year.  Oratory may be no longer be part of modern rhetoric, and 
public speaking may no longer qualify as oratory, but those million speeches 
are heard by an average audience of 100, which means that something is being 
communicated on the stump to a good percentage of the American people face to face 
and not over the tube.

Many of those speeches are written in toto by professionals, or else 
partially prepared and handed out through corporate speaker's bureaus.  

Those professionals work hard, and, oddly enough, usually are quite 
highly valued by their employers and clients.  The good ones are often 
in great demand.  And some of them even study rhetoric.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ed Vilade is the principal of Vilade Communications.  
He has nearly 40 years of experience as a freelance and corporate speechwriter, 
communications manager, media relations and strategic communications 
consultant, award-winning newspaper and magazine writer and editor.  
His employers and clients include the White House, U.S. Department of 
Energy, U.S. Department of Commerce, Fortune 500 companies, 
U.S. Senators and Congressmen, Governors, international organizations 
and leading Washington, D.C. trade associations.  Ed holds a B.A. in Public 
Communications and an M.A. in Speech Communication.  He is the author 
of scholarly works on rhetoric and public speaking, and of speeches, newspaper 
articles and other published writings numbering in the thousands.  
 
Contact: 
Ed Vilade, Vilade Communications, 7525 Bradley Blvd., Bethesda MD 20817, 
301-365-1532, evilade@comcast.net, 
www.viladecommunications.com
 

1. The Great Ideas, A Syntopicon, Ch. 81, Rhetoric, pp. 645-664, 

Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.

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