Lecture 4

Communication
 Importance of Communication
• Leaders must have visions, but must also be
able to communicate his goals and visions to the
people.
 Importance of Communication
• Each new form of communication has an
essential character. The politician who grasps its
potentials can use its power to sweep all before
him, to convince and to move the people in one
direction or another.
• Every several decades, new communication
channel has emerged and revolutionized the
relationship between politicians and supporters.
Politicians who are smart and competent enough
to seize this has usually been able to ride it into
power.
 Successful Examples
• Benjamin Franklin used his ownership of a printing
press, and his publication of a daily newspaper to
bring his political views to a wider audience.
• William Harrison used mass parades, festivals, fairs,
songs, decorations, souvenirs etc, to build up
modern campaign model and recapture the
presidency in 1840.
• Abraham Lincoln used open letters to newspapers
and speeches to the public to deliver his political
discourse.
 Successful Examples
• Woodrow Wilson broke down a symbolic barrier between two
branches of government by becoming the first president to address
Congress in person.
• Franklin Roosevelt used radio to deliver his fireside chats, which
was the first time in history that a chief executive communicated
directly with a large number of citizens. Roosevelt spoke to millions
of Americans about the banking crisis, the recession, New Deal
initiatives, and the principal purposes and specific progress of
World War II, and quelled rumors and explain his policies
comprehensibly.
 Successful Examples
• John F. Kennedy used the medium of television heavily in his
campaigns for senator and president. He realized that the image
was everything in the medium. By offering glamour where Nixon
merely gave speeches, JFK built up a charismatic relationship,
particularly with America’s young.
 Successful Examples
• Ronald Reagan’s merger theater and politics, bringing the skill
of a talented performer to the presidency, earned him the
reputation of “the Great Communicator.”
• The permanent campaign of Bill Clinton, using polling and
television advertising during his term to project and explain his
issues.
• Obama was able to use internet and social media to interact
with the voters and could grasp 66% of 18-29 years old voters.
 Speech
• Churchill had once said, “Of all the talents bestowed upon man,
none is so precious as the gift of oratory. He who enjoys it
wields a power more durable than that of a great king.”
 Lincoln
• Lincoln is perhaps the best speech writer among the
US presidents in history. He was also a noted public
speaker. Much of his influence is attributed to his
ability to deliver a message publicly.
• One of the most noted and long-remembered parts of
Lincoln was his ability to tell stories. Many
historians point to his ability to tell appropriate
stories as part of the "magic" that drew people to
him once they got to know him.
• With all these talents, he was able to communicate
with his goals and visions.
 House Divided Speech
• "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
• I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave
and half free.
 House Divided Speech
• I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do
not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it
will cease to be divided. It will become all one
thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of
slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and
place it where the public mind shall rest in the
belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction;
or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall
become alike lawful in all the states, old as well
as new—North as well as South.
 The Gettysburg Address
• Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to
the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are
engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any
nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are
met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate
a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here
gave their lives that that nation might live.
 The Gettysburg Address
• It is altogether fitting and proper that we should
do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate,
we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this
ground. The brave men, living and dead who
struggled here have consecrated it far above our
poor power to add or detract. The world will
little note nor long remember what we say here,
but it can never forget what they did here. It is
for us the living rather to be dedicated here to
the unfinished work which they who fought here
have thus far so nobly advanced.
 The Gettysburg Address
• It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the
great task remaining before us --that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to that
cause for which they gave the last full measure
of devotion-- that we here highly resolve that
these dead shall not have died in vain, that this
nation under God shall have a new birth of
freedom, and that government of the people,
by the people, for the people shall not perish
from the earth.
 Lincoln’s Stories: Swap Horses
• During reelection, he convinced others to vote for him by the
following analogy:

“I have not permitted myself, gentleman, to conclude that I am

the best man in the country, but I am reminded, in this
connection, of a story of an Old Dutch farmer who remarked to
a companion once that “it was not best to swap horses when
crossing streams.””
 Churchill
• One of the giants of the 20th century, Churchill led England in its
time of greatest crisis, transforming the nation’s darkest days into
what he himself called its “finest hours.”
• He saved not only England from defeat at the hands of the Nazis,
but also defended the world against totalitarianism of the most
brutal kind.
• His leadership, and particularly his speech, inspired courage,
hope, determination, and confidence of its people.
 Churchill: This was their Finest Hours
• What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I
expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle
depends the survival of Christian Civilization. Upon it depends
our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions
and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must
very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break
us in this island or lose the war.
Churchill: This was their Finest Hours
• “If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free
and the life of the world may move forward into
broad , sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole
world, including the United States, including all that
we have known and cared for, will sink into the
abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and
perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted
science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our
duties and so bear ourselves that, if the British
Empire and its Commonwealth last a thousand
years, men will still say, “This was their finest
hour.” “
Churchill: This was their Finest Hours
 Churchill: We shall fight
• “We shall go on to the end,
• we shall fight in France,
• we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
• we shall fight with growing confidence and growing
strength in the air,
• we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be,
• we shall fight on the beaches,
• we shall fight on the landing grounds,
• we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
• we shall fight in the hills;
• we shall never surrender, ……”
Churchill: We shall fight
 Reagan, The Great Communicator
• Reagan was called as “The Great Communicator”. Many of his
speeches were regarded as classics of the 20th century.
• He was able to communicate with great things with his
speeches. He provided am idealized vision of America to the
people, that was what America had been and could be again.
Liberty, heroism, honor, and a love of family, country and God.
• He believed that if Americans could recover the values of the
past, the country could be great again.
 Reagan, The Great Communicator
• Storytelling was one of his most effective weapons. But the
storytelling went beyond the anecdotes and jokes. Behind the
stories were his values, and the stories brought his values to daily
life. In these stories, he told his people who they were and what
they could become.
• His point was to show that the country had been on a journey of
over two hundred years in which people fought and died for liberty,
and form that struggle had become today’s America. He suggested
that they must have the determination stay on that same roadso that
their grandchildren will enjoy even more freedom and well-being.
 Reagan, The First Inaugural Speech
• Under one such marker lies a your man --- Martin Treptow, who
left his job in a small town barber shop in 1917 to go to France
with the famed Rainbow Division. There, on the western front,
he was killed trying to carry a message between battalions under
heavy artillery fire.
• We are told that on his body was found a diary. On the flyleaf
under the heading, “My Pledge,” he had written these words:
 Reagan, The First Inaugural Speech
• “American must win this war. Therefore, I will work,
• I will save,
• I will sacrifice,
• I will endure,
• I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost,
• as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone.”
 Reagan, The First Inaugural Speech
• The crisis we are facing today does not require of us the kind of
sacrifice that Martin Trepow and so many thousands of others
were called upon to make. It does require, however, our best
effort, and our willingness to believe in our capacity to perform
great deeds; to believe that together, with God’s help, we can and
will solve the problems which now confront us.

• And, after all, why shouldn’t we believe that? We are Americans.”

……
Reagan, The First Inaugural Speech
 Reagan, The Great Communicator
• Reagan also gave speech at a time of crisis to comfort people’s
souls. The moment in which words fail are precisely the
moments in which words are most needed.
Reagan, Space Shuttle Challenger Speech
 Reagan, Space Shuttle Challenger Speech

• “I know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things

like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and
discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's
horizons. The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it
belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into
the future, and we'll continue to follow them..”
Reagan, Space Shuttle Challenger Speech
 Reagan, Space Shuttle Challenger Speech
• “The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the
manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them,
nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for
their journey and waved goodbye and ``slipped the surly bonds of
earth'' to ``touch the face of God.”
 A Speech Created a Leader: Obama
• He was only a senator who was unknown to most of the people
before 2004. But after he gave a speech in the Democratic
Party National Convention that summer, he immediately
became a rising star. It was widely said that this speech is the
best speech in the similar occasion in American history.
• He was elected president four years later.
• It was a classical example of how a speech creates a leader.
 Obama, DNC Speech
“ There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is
the United States of America.
There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino
America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.”
“ America, tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do;
if you feel the same urgency that I do;
if you feel the same passion that I do;
if you feel the same hopefulness that I do;
if we do what we must do, then …..”
 Obama, DNC Speech
“ I have no doubt that all across the country,
from Florida to Oregon,
from Washington to Maine,
the people will rise up in November, and John Kerry will be
sworn in as president, and John Edwards will be sworn in as vice
president, and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of
this long political darkness a brighter day will come. Thank you
and God bless you”
Obama, DNC Speech
 A Speech Created a Leader: Thatcher
• Thatcher gave her speech “Let me give you my Vision” in the
Conservative Party Conference in 1975.
• Before that she was accidentally elected as the party leader, and
not all senior party members could accept that.
• After the speech, the whole conference reacted with warm
applause. She then talked privately with her staff, she had now
finally become a real leader.
 FDR, Radio and his Fireside Chats
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) used radio as his
medium and intimacy as his message. Possessed of a rich
and resonant voice, FDR was the first leader to give the
presidency a sound to go with the image which public had
grown accustomed to seeing in newspapers.
• He once said, “nothing since the creation of the newspaper
was so profound an effect on our civilization as radio.”
• He also said, “Amid many developments of civilization
which lead away from direct government by the people,
radio is one which tends on the other hand to restore
contacts between the masses and their chosen leaders.”
 FDR, Radio and his Fireside Chats
• The phenomenon of radio had begun sweeping the
nation in the 1920s. FDR was not the first politician to
use radio to talk to the public, but his brilliance was in
seizing the medium’s potential for intimacy.
• Using the growing phenomenon of national radio
networks to broadcast both his public speeches and the
more personal addresses called as “fireside chats”, he
came into the living rooms of every American, seeming
to speak to each listener individually with a casual
manner.
 FDR, Radio and his Fireside Chats
• With his intimate chats, FDR reached out to Americans in
a way no president had ever done, and built a bond with
the public that for four successful presidential races.
• By moving political discourse off the platform and into
the living room, Roosevelt was able to build up a
connection with the average person more intimate than
any other politician ever had.
 FDR, Radio and his Fireside Chats
• There was another reason FDR and radio were such a
good match: his physical condition. Afflicted with polio in
1921, he lived in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
Unable to walk, radio was the only practical way to
project his presence throughout the country. It provided
this disabled president with “the authority of his voice,”
he himself said, to use in leading the nation.
 FDR, Radio and his Fireside Chats
• FDR realized that the emotional stress of the Great
Depression, with the disaster it brought with it to each
home, had caused people to look for an emotional
connection with each other, and with their leaders.
• More than three hundred times during his twelve years
as president, FDR took to the microphone to speak to
the listeners he greeted as “my friends”. Whenever his
administration faced a crucial juncture, such as
Depression and WWII, his charismatic voice would
come into homes across the land to explain to people
what was at stake.
 FDR, Radio and his Fireside Chats
• His first radio broadcasting was delivered on March 12,
1933, one week after taking presidential office, and
was used to explain his banking policies to the public.
This was at a time of banking crisis with thousands of
banks failed. The crisis was worsening hour by hour.
Roosevelt responded by closing all banks in the nation
for four days. In less than twenty-four hours, he got
Congress to pass the Emergency Banking Act,
permitting the reorganization of banks.
FDR, Radio and his Fireside Chats
 FDR, Radio and his Fireside Chats
• FDR made himself welcome not just a politician, but
as a friend.
• He seemed to invite people to lean back, kick off their
shoes, and listen to him as he took the opportunity to
explain complex issues in simple and easily understood
term.
• His “fireside chats” were typically delivered at 10:00
pm eastern time, so that voters throughout the nation,
in all three time zones, could easily tune in after dinner.
 FDR, Radio and his Fireside Chats
• FDR realized that speaking slowly was the key. While
most radio orators were accustomed to speaking at one
175 – 200 words per minute, he consistently spoke as a
much slower 120 words, and during crucial broadcasts, he
even reduced his rate of speech to less than 100 words per
minute so that everyone could even easier to understood.
• His language was natural. One study of the texts of the
chats has revealed that almost three quarters of his words
were to be found among the one thousand most
commonly used in the English language. Other presidents
strived to be presidential and spoke dignified words.
 FDR, Radio and his Fireside Chats
• During one fireside chat on July 24, 1933, amid
extreme summer heat, FDR asked, on the air, “where’s
that glass of water?” After a brief pause, during which
he poured and drank the water, he told his national
audience, “my friends, it’s very hot here in Washington
tonight.”
 FDR, Radio and his Fireside Chats
• FDR used the radio to bypass political opposition and
take his case directly to the people.
• His speechwriter Sam Rosenman recalled, “During
each [legislative] session, he delivered radio talks in
which he … appealed to [the people] for help in fight
with the legislature … A flood of letters would urge
the members of the legislature after each talk, and they
were the best weapon Roosevelt had in his struggles
for legislation.”
 TV, JFK and
the Classical Presidential TV Debate
• John F. Kennedy used the medium of television heavily in his
campaigns for senator and president. He realized that the image
was everything in the medium. By offering glamour where
Nixon merely gave speeches, JFK built up a charismatic
relationship, particularly with America’s young.
 TV, JFK and
the Classical Presidential TV Debate
• The TV debate was widely believed as the turning
point of 1960 presidential election. It was the first
presidential debate which was broadcasted by TV.
• In 1960 it had been only four years that a majority
of American homes had a television set.
 JFK, TV and
the Classical Presidential TV Debate
• Nixon had not completely recovered from his
hospital stay and thus looked pale, sickly,
underweight, and tired. He even insisted on
campaigning until just a few hours before the first
debate started. He also refused makeup for the first
debate, claiming it was not masculine enough, and
as a result his beard stubble showed prominently on
the era's black-and-white TV screens.
 JFK, TV and
the Classical Presidential TV Debate
• Kennedy, by contrast, rested before the first debate and appeared
tanned, confident, and relaxed during the debate.
• Right before the debate, Nixon only rehearsed the Q & As and also
did it alone, while Kennedy had a whole team to discuss with him
about the body gesture and glamour.
• As they knew that Nixon had problems with his foot, Kennedy’s
aides convinced the host unit to have the candidates to stand up
during the debate, and made Nixon painful.
 JFK, TV and
the Classical Presidential TV Debate
• Nixon was not used to hot temperature and would easily sweat.
Kennedy’s aides urged the CBS to use strong lighting and
claimed that it would created better effects.
• Kennedy’s aides recommend him to wear dark suit, unlike
Nixon wearing grey one, and had much better TV effect.