Here’s a picture from the official White House Flickr stream showing a draft of the speech President Obama gave about health care to a joint session of Congress in September 2009. (Click on the image for a close-up look.)
As a writer, I’ve always liked Peggy Noonan’s What I Saw At The Revolution as a really good look at what Presidential speechwriters go through. I’m sure there are other good books like that. Writing great copy is hard, writing a great speech is way harder.
(Updated to correct the date of the speech. The photo itself was uploaded to Flickr today. See, some of us don’t read the captions the way we ought to.)
Mike "Og" Ogden says
Once I saw an earlier version of FDR’s speech after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. “A day which will live throughout history.” Sometimes it’s all in the edit.
adchick says
Next time a client raises their red pen to my copy, I’ll think of this.
I feel so much better now. 🙂