In His Candidate’s Voice

 

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"What is your theory of speechwriting?" Obama asked.

"I have no theory," admitted Favreau. "But when I saw you at the convention, you basically told a story about your life from beginning to end, and it was a story that fit with the larger American narrative. People applauded not because you wrote an applause line but because you touched something in the party and the country that people had not touched before. Democrats haven't had that in a long time."

The pitch worked. Favreau and Obama rapidly found a relatively direct way to work with each other. "What I do is to sit with him for half an hour," Favreau explains. "He talks and I type everything he says. I reshape it, I write. He writes, he reshapes it. That's how we get a
finished product.

"It's a great way to write speeches. A lot of times, you write something, you hand it in, it gets hacked by advisers, it gets to the candidate and then it gets sent back to you. This is a much more intimate way to work."

Some speeches are much more the product of the candidate himself. Obama e-mailed Favreau his draft of his announcement speech in Springfield, Ill., at 4 a.m. on the morning of the campaign launch last February.

Now Favreau has his own team: Adam Frankel, a 26-year-old who worked with Ted Sorensen on his memoirs, and Ben Rhodes, a 30-year-old who worked with Lee Hamilton on the 9/11 commission's report.

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Member Comments

  • Posted By: thehappyamerican @ 10/10/2009 12:57:13 AM

    Here it is , October of 09 and Obama STILL isn't for real. We have teleprompter "it's gonna" "we're gonna" I'm gonna" and his ME,MY, I as he spends. Iraq is not concluded yet--just removed from press coverage. He was going to get the terrorists in Afgahnistan but now--NOPE! Stay tuned!
    The health care bid isn't in writing..he wont share it on the web...and it's about lawyers making money any way! not health care!
    Spend money! The economic stimulus didn't ,and cash for clunkers was a clunker way to stimulate or auto industry.
    Cap and trade is a major tax to come! Only that and we now see ACORN was vote rigging on a grand scale! We only touched the tip of the iceberg on this!
    Now he got the Nobel Peace prize and maybe he should give it to the person who really won it!
    The Obamaprompter is a stuffed suit! More Americans will catch on in the months ahead!
    HEY! Has anyone been saving our oil industry with tire gauges,out there? How's it working?

  • Posted By: Hagbard Celine @ 08/20/2009 12:34:24 PM

    Take your meds.

  • Posted By: Hagbard Celine @ 08/20/2009 12:34:04 PM

    "If some one in the Obama administration had experience doing anything REAL it's possible N. Korea and Iran would not be saber sharpening and our economy a bit better off!"

    Uh huh. Who was president when North Korea tested their first nuke?

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