list of ronald reagan speech writers

list of ronald reagan speech writers

The Impact of Ronald Reagan’s Speechwriters on American Politics

1. Introduction to Ronald Reagan’s Presidency and Speechwriting Team

Depending on how one chooses to measure their importance, American presidential speechwriters either emerge lost in the shadows of presidents and the media spotlight, or as the major figures in presidential speechwriting. U.S. presidents, particularly since the age of FDR, have employed gentlemen-of-the-orchestra speechwriters to generate ideas, write drafts, guide arguments, fashion speeches, soothe nerves, ruffle feathers, pacify jealousies, and tamp down tempers. The expansive and powerful role played by the men and women crafting the president’s words reflects the critically important relationship between the effectiveness of presidential rhetoric in shaping perceptions and beliefs about administrative policy. Ray Price, Reagan’s chief writer and longtime confidante, once indicated that speechwriting is the soft underbelly of political life. In this article, we inquire whether Reagan’s speechwriters lived up to the promotion or the challenge.

Ronald Reagan entered national politics as America was wrestling with numerous social and economic problems, including high inflation, difficult transoceanic negotiations, terrorist assaults on American citizens held abroad, challenges to American economic hegemony, the Vietnam “syndrome,” an American embassy holdup, and a nuclear stand-off. The new president confronted an exhausted bureaucracy, a weakened President Carter, and a frustrated American public. This was the American political landscape in 1980, and communication was the key to effectively implementing transformative policy by reshaping public attitudes.

2. Key Speechwriters and Their Contributions

Three individuals who have not received the deserved examination by scholars are Peggy Noonan, Anthony Dolan, and James Coyne. Part of what makes these speechwriters crucial is that they each can be representative of a key issue, similar to the work created by Richard Wirthlin and Michael Deaver. Peggy Noonan can serve as an examination of the gendered side of speechwriting. She was an assistant to President Reagan who quickly moved to the role of writing speeches regarding economic policy, largely because of her training in economics, rather than communication. The current study provides a micro examination of the content of her contributions in speeches on “The America I Believe In” and the “Proclamation 5322 and 5323,” as well as reassessing her contributions in Reagan’s “Challenger Speech.” Hence, as a representative of gender and occupation, Noonan provides a source of data helpful for advancing the literature on this emerging field.

Ronald Reagan was acclaimed for his communication skills and powerful speeches, and the individuals who constructed those speeches are not as familiar to the public. This section of the research paper provides an examination of Reagan’s “point man” on issues related to defense, global policy, and anti-Communism, including the emerging issues with Russia. Some individuals involved with Reagan’s communication strategy who are not examined in this research are Mark Helmke, who was hired as Reagan’s assistant and became a liaison to Congress and the press, as well as Eliot Janeway, who was often used by Reagan to collect information on labor union organization efforts. This absence of attention to most individuals involved with Reagan’s communication strategy is a limitation of the research, as it does not provide a holistic examination of Reagan’s communication plan.

3. Analysis of Memorable Speeches and Rhetorical Techniques

It would be circular to suggest that the rhetoric of the “Great Communicator” was memorable simply because his administration was successful. But this much is clear. More than thirty years following Reagan’s first inaugural, his legacy is a subject of intense and continuing controversy in the realms of history, biography, and journalism, among others. Few observers would deny that some of Reagan’s defenders wrote as if they were taking part in the first round of the 2016 Republican presidential nomination debates. They did not just write; they argued. Reagan’s political opponents and left-leaning critics also wrote aggressively, using adjectives such as “evil” and “poisonous” to describe the Reagan presidency. Against that background, the intellectuals inside and outside Reagan’s administration took their shot at shaping the initial draft of history. Part of that shaping involved the completed speeches. There may be as many explanations for Reagan’s status as a conservative icon as there are people who have written about him. French’s analysis predicts his political impact will endure. One reason for this enduring impact is because Reagan was always running: his political narrative was as eccentric as it was continuous. Reagan gave a larger number of speeches in his eight years as President than all preceding Presidents of the television era (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter) combined. Reagan utilized unusual techniques to do some often unconventional things. Reagan may have reframed American politics, and thereby fashioned a new moral philosophic center of gravity, but his speechwriters refrained his rhetoric in a set of questions that are not only unresolved but are fundamentally definitional.

When Ronald Reagan passed away on June 5, 2004, the outpouring of sentiment from around the nation reminded us of the impact of his public speaking. He knew the value of his speechwriters, saying, “I can deliver a hell of a speech. But my writers are the ones who have made history.” In an analysis of memorable speeches where Reagan enticed people to think in new ways, Drew Hansen wrote, “Reagan’s take command of the irregularity and unpredictability of events and manage people’s fears by helping them construct manageable, comprehensible, and predictable stories.”

4. Legacy and Influence of Reagan’s Speechwriters on Subsequent Political Communication

Today, the formalities Reagan vs. the Reality of Reagan’s republic – the separation of the Reagan Image and the Reagan Function in law and practice – is as American as apple pie. The foundation of the Science of Political Communication simply could not have been laid as soundly or expensive as it was without Ronald Reagan as its cornerstone. Between the Reagan and Bush administrations, and under Bush’s auspices, our newly professionalized speechwriters ply the methods of the Reagan era protest veterans: Millions of dollars have been pocketed by ex-Government employees for profiting off the inside story. “Our” modern practitioners of the Strunk & White school of expert verbal engineering bear names as kid-tested as the theologian of absolute truth’s “The Strategy Group’s” Kevin Sullivan, the Heritage Foundation’s Michael Johns, the Bush-Quayle Administration’s Jane Kerrigan, the libertarian Cato Institute’s Doug Bandow, the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Gregory Jaynes, the staff of the United States Commission on Civil Rights’ (that is, the new one) Dorcas Hardy and Suzanne Stier, and former dominant force behind the scenes of the Reagan administration Peter S. Hannaford. The speechwriters have “gone on to higher office” with even light training in form, having founded movements, run bureaucracies, and led at least one Fortune 500 Company.

Reagan’s speechwriters did not only transform presidential rhetoric; they changed the way American politicians relate with citizens. After the Reagan presidency ended, movement conservatives would spend resources institutionalizing the provisions of Movement Conservatism that the Reagan revolution had etched into the policy architecture of the Welfare and Warfare States. And among the K Street consultants that enabled this process are the original Reagan speechwriters, led by the “Great Communicator,” Michael Deaver. Reagan’s speechwriters fundamentally transformed law and practice of a species of presidential communication – something unique to Reagan’s administration and its ideas about leadership – into a format appropriate for the mass media so that it might efficiently acculturate and socialize an alienated nation into a “better” America.