The Business of America

...All in all, Mr...

...Bundy did not extend his observation to any group other than businessmen...

...Rawls is remarkably reticent about effort...

...The damnedest thing about such claims is they are not wholly wrong...

...A good writing team consists of a writer, a political office, a research office, and the boss...

...The furor in the press over Vice President Ford's use of a speech draftedby White House writers is an example of the public confusion surrounding the role of the speechwriter...

...Most speechwriters are neither Svengalis nor Uriah Heeps...

...We returned to the road and in one stop I locked myself in a hotel room and worked on the speech throughout the night, referring to dozens of memos and position papers and some material that was coming The Alternative May 1974 13...

...In my own experience with the Nixon staff, I found myself (a former teacher) working with Bill Satire (a public relations man), Pat Buchanan and Ray Price (former editorial writers for the St...

...But Mr...

...Bundy before San tions and the market economy was, after into lard...

...Bundy was porting radical activism, the destruction of being a bit disingenuous...

...Packis, he did not elevate his beatific vision to ard's view is that he didn't go far enough: the status of a general principle...

...it can never be wholly autonomous from the political realm...

...It must therefore seek to alleviate poverty and to prevent excessive concentrations of wealth where these might prove dangerous to liberty...

...He feared that Mr, Packard's "narrow" view of what is good for free enterprise would actually cause hostility on campus toward business, and generate a "lack of understanding" about business, and goodness sakes alive, even cause mediocrity because business would be subsidizing only its own...

...They do a personal and often exasperating--but ultimately rewarding--job for someone they not only work for but believe in, neither dominating nor grovelling before their boSS...

...I didn't know a damn thing about conservation...

...Mc~vern's senior speech writer, urged the inclusion of the theme, "Come home, America," in the Senator's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention...

...Goodness, said Bundy, that's a frightening notion that Packard had conceived...

...We are continuing this series now by publishing essays discussing the American condition from the perspective of individual businessmen...

...He did corporations ought to withdraw all subsinot, that is, suggest that George Meany and dies to higher education immediately, and on the ground that its researches would undoubtedly support unionism by helping to purge it of its follies and oppressions...

...He motioned to Bryce Harlow with his hand...

...For business to subsidize every Nadermanque on the campuses is simply masochistic...

...But unless I misunderstand Mr...

...But to deny these claims completely and to redistribute income merely for the sake of satisfying some abstract egalitarian principle i s t o endanger the moral foundations of a free society...

...To judge by media accounts, Ford mindlessly mouthed the words of sinister White House wordsmiths whose commas, semicolons, and rhetorical flourishes were taken as sacred scripture by the zombie-like victim of executive action, I must confess there have been times when I have secretly lusted for such a power over those for whom I have written speeches, but the unromantic facts of speechwriting life are, alas, quite different...

...He didn't say what we would be doing once we got there, but it didn't matter...

...Francisco's Commonwealth Club, "simply because he suggests a dangerously narrow view of what is good for free enterprise...

...Rawls' principle for distributing wealth is unjust...

...He did not the researches of supercharged ecological attack Mr...

...Although I have no personal knowledge of the Ford incident, my hunch is that because of his heavy speaking schedule he needed a speech, had some White House writer draft one, loolted it over, made some changes, added a few words, read it over a few times, and then delivered it...

...Huebner (a professor and one of the coAdded to all this is the gnawing doubt, founders of the Ripon Society), and Jim fed by critics who see speechwriting as a Keogh (former executive editor of T/me...

...He seems to be saying that the schools . . . should be supported only to the degree that they themselves support the free-enterprise system, and I find no mention in his analysis of the kind of support that includes criticism and even opposition...

...And there are invariably legitimate and cornpelling political reasons for pursuing policies that have the effect of altering the "natural" distribution of income...

...New York Times, November 9, 1972 Ms...

...One can only describe the argument as quaint...

...We went by car to the Nixon home, where, besides the writing team of Keogh, Pat Buchanan, Ray Price, Bill Satire, and me, there were Nixon's advisors Bryce Harlow, Bob Finch, and Martin Anderson...

...Finally he said, "O.K., let's see, we have---<~mservat i o n . . . Gavin can handle that...

...He is probably the first speechwriter who has ever publicly admitted that one of his ideas was, perhaps, not entirely useful...

...Beneath the polished, upper-Bostonian rhetoric was the gross presumption that the business community should participate in its own murder and support unquestioningly the new patrician class in America, the solons of the academy...

...The boss wanted to see the writers and that was that...

...The series attempted to bring to our readers" attention some of the problems inherent in doing business in America today...

...Louis Globe-Democrat and the New York Herald Tribune, respectively), Lee of such virtues...

...Bundy was grieved...

...The speechwriter must be prepared to contend with and learn from the political advisors to his man, plus those experts whose guidance is necessary in writing about complex fields, e.g., farm policy, and just about everyone who has access to the man--and finally, the man himself...

...In seeking to correct for the "arbitrariness of the world" Rawls obliterates the most fundamental moral distinctions among men...

...On the contrary, Mr...

...I was given a deadline for my draft...

...No employment agency advertises openings in Speechwriting...

...If persons in the original position conclude an agreement for distributing wealth, one would think they would also want to reach an agreement for distributing work...

...The urbane Mr...

...Marc F. P l a t t n e r The Business of America Packard Fords the Rubicon by Richard S. Wheeler ill Lindley H.Clark Jr., the economic news editor Of the Wall Street Journal, initiated this column with four essays discussing the practice of business in America...

...Or at least not to those humanities, economics, or religiOn departments that would only bite the hand that feeds them...

...The academic community was shocked, if not outraged, at this insolent challenge to its imperial power from a mere moneygrubbing citizen...

...Nor did he propose that political liberals settle no-strings gifts on William F. Buckley and his staff, with the hope that Mr...

...Henceforth, he proposed, such freely given munificence should be directed toward research that would directly benefit the corporate giver, or schools of business from which corporations draw managerial talent, or carefully defined scholarships...

...Government must necessarily concern itself with the welfare of its citizens, the maintenance of social order, and the perpetuation of its political institutions...

...If men lack all responsibility for their characters, they lack all responsibility for their actions, and it becomes impossible to distinguish between good men and evil...

...Professional pride and a coarse Irish.Americanprejudice against unemployment tend to make me believe that speechwriting is a necessary and even desirable part of the political process, but it must be admitted that not everyone shares this view...

...After a few more words he stopped and we all left the house...

...A political speech is such a mystery, such an unpredictable thing, that it very often happens a semiliterate, old-time political hack will be able to smell out a rotten part of a speech draft while someone with a doctorate in English will not...

...It seems clear that there is no single background or way of life from which speechwriters come...

...William F. Gavin The Art of the Speechwriter Robert Shrum, Mr...

...Not that it would have to: none of its grantees has ever threatened to tear down its house or render the foundation George Bundy, president-rex of the Ford Foundation, liberal blue blood, moderate, earnest, and terribly enlightened...

...The amazing thing is that corporate givers have been so forbearing for so long in the face of such provocations...

...ROBERT SHRtrM should be given a place in the Speechwriters' Hall of Fame...

...How does one become a speechwriter...

...Price would handle so-and-so, Harlow would do such-and-such...

...The list of important topics was dwindling...

...Speechwriting, I have found, is a group process at worst and a partnership at best...

...his colleagues supply no-strings subsidies Packard, Chairman of the Board of the to the National Right to Work Committee Hewlett-Packard Company, simply asserted in a speech to corporate donors that it is time to end no-strings gifts to higher education: too much of that hard-earned money was being used to oppose corporations and the free-market economy...

...Packard h~d indeed suggested that a certain selectivity in gift-giving might enable business to breathe a bit more easily...

...All in all, that is a position that business should have adopted years ago...

...He then spent the next few minutes talking about the need for a concerted effort to be made by all of usduring the last three weeks of the campaign...

...There is no ~ c h w r i t e r s Union...

...He looked tan and fit...

...Jim Keogh, head of the speechwriting team, told me we were all to meet in the lobby at one o'clock and then go to the Nixon house, about a half mile away...

...There was to be, he said, a kind of radio blitz in which he would make a halfdozen or more radio speeches of the kind he did before the convention (Ray Price's "Black Capitalism" speech being one of the best-known and best-publicized examples...

...to get his material accepted by the boss and arguing with the boss' other aides who claim to know much more about rhetoric and subject matter than the writer take up most of his time and leave little room for the development glaring exception to the general rule...

...Bryce, you know this but let me say it so everyone knows...

...In short, the White House speechwriters offered this service for the simple reason that somebody has to provide a speech draft and Ford didn't have his own speechwriters at the time...

...A pained response was not long in forthcoming...

...The wonder is that it took until 1973 for any corporate executive to conclude that maybe businessmen ought to be more selective with their donations...

...But he came close, dwelling plaintively on the virtues of unfettered inquiry...

...I got a call in my room at the Key B~scayne Hotel...

...He sat in a chair on the side of the room farthest from me, near the glass-paneled doors facing Biscayne Bay...

...He is quite right that inquiry is presently trammeled on campus, but that is largely because timid corporations have failed to fund the researches and politics that run counter to the Ford Foundation's orthodoxies...

...The relationship between a politician and a speechwriter is something far more complicated than the popular wisdom would suggest...

...But Mr...

...There are, thank God, no courses in Creative ~ c h w r i t i n g in the universities...

...In this respect, at least, he carries the principle of egalitarianism to its most extreme and perverse degree...

...All of this is bad for the ego---and a writer has more than his share of self-esteem--but necessary for the job...

...Actual criticism of corporaconcentrate exclusively on scholarships...

...rhetorical con-game played on the electorate, that he is doing something disreputable in the first place...

...Bundy had no case...

...After that, the division of labor was made...

...On this occasion, the Nixon campaign staff was in Key Biscayne for a weekend during the 1968 campaign...

...Packard put more of a gloss on it, but his point was clear: Business should stop subsidizing its enemies...

...More than that, any principle for the distribution of wealth that totally disregards the moral claims of individual talent and effort is unjust...

...Bundy's prophylaxis was reserved for one group alone, the businessmen who will profit from the slings and arrows of the academy...

...Thus, a paradox: a speechwriter whose strength lies in his individuality, in his own crazy, unique way of looking at the world must at the same time not only tolerate but welcome the advice of others whose literary~ skills are, to put it in the mildest terms, questionable...

...Shrum said, he questions the political wisdom of such an approach...

...But this does not mean that individual talent and effort are the only claims that may validly determine the distribution of income, or that the verdict of the market must reign supreme...

...There was only one problem...

...they were sup- suspects, again, that Mr...

...Bundy acknowledged that his very own Ford Foundation carefully controls the terms of its grantsmalthough he hastened to add that the foundation never monitors the opinions of its grantees, of course, of course...

...The economic claimsof individual talent and effort must be modified by the imperatives of the public good...

...It is not a typical case history--there is no typical case history---but it does contain enough elements of the speechwriting process to be instructive...

...Mr...

...Packard, I must conclude that he is more wrong than right," intoned Mr...

...Apparently he subsumes it under the category of character: The amount of effort that a man is willing to expend, like other aspects of his character, is a product of his upbringing, and hence the result of chance...

...The realm of property and of economics does not exist in a vacuum...

...We can, however, property, the blockage of transportation, praise him for his forbearance...

...That LAST FALL, David Packard administered a dose of castor oil to the Establishment, and the Establishment has been passing unseemly amounts of gas ever since...

...And, we might add, it has rarely all, the mildest and most innocuous of the been heard of throughout Christendom activities that had mushroomed on cam- that the foundation made grants fostering puses...

...If, on the other hand, it was a case of Ford playing puppet to the writers' ventriloquist, then it is a Since I left the White House staff John McLaughlin, a Catholic priest, became one of the President's speechwriters...

...Speechwriting is not a field in which the virtue of humility and the readiness to admit failure or even misjudgment are conspicuous...

...The only difficulty with Mr...

...The candidate came into the room...

...It was Columbus Day weekend and there were disquieting signs in the polls, not quite ominous (as they later would most definitely be), but nothing to ignore...

...Perhaps a case history of one speech might serve as an example of the teamwork necessary to create a useable draft...

...Corporate moneys were underwrit- laissez-faire or other rightist heresies...

...About hvo weeks after Packard's lese majestd, the Establishment retorted, in the papal person of Mc, and consumerist militants, legal suits, political action against the interests of business, demagogues, and a whole army of academic housewreckers and revolutionaries...

...Packard for destroying academ12 The Alternative May 1974 ic freedom root and branch, or even as an antiintellectual...

...This argument not only fails to accord with the "considered judgments" of most men, but is destructive of all decent morality...

...Bundy's homily on the value of academic criticism is a bit disingenuous...

...The problem is that while few are likely to claim expertise in the field of the novel or political reporting, almost everyone connected with a political office claims to know what makes a speech work...

...One ing more than criticism...

...One suspects that Mr...

...I had an assignment...

...Buckley's researches would thereby support liberalism by purging it of its offenses against intelligence and morals...

...Now, Mr...