0:00

The History Channel Original Podcast.

0:04

History This Week, August 8th, 1974.

0:10

I'm Sally Helm. Good

0:12

evening. This is the

0:14

37th time I have

0:17

spoken to you from this office.

0:20

Tonight will be the last time

0:22

that President Richard Nixon speaks to

0:24

the American people from the Oval Office.

0:27

He sits in front of a bluish curtain between

0:30

two flags, looking down at the

0:32

pages of his speech.

0:34

Nixon has come to the end of

0:36

the road, much as he hates to admit it.

0:39

I have never been a quitter. To

0:43

leave office before my term is completed

0:45

is abhorrent to every instinct in

0:47

my body.

0:48

But, he says, he has

0:51

to put the American people first. Therefore,

0:56

I shall resign the presidency effective

0:58

at noon tomorrow.

1:01

This moment, Nixon's decision,

1:03

this whole speech, they all

1:06

now seem inevitable. Of

1:09

course, President Richard Nixon resigned because

1:11

of the Watergate scandal. What else could he have

1:13

done? But that is not

1:16

the feeling inside the White House

1:18

in August of 1974. Nixon

1:21

is making the hardest decision

1:23

of his life. And

1:26

he's acting erratic. He's

1:28

not sleeping. He's pacing

1:30

the halls, literally muttering

1:32

to the portraits of the former presidents, trying

1:35

to figure out what to do.

1:37

Resign or not

1:40

resign. His speechwriter

1:43

would later write, On this most final,

1:45

most personal decision of his presidency,

1:48

Nixon obviously was going to keep reassessing,

1:51

keep re-examining, possibly

1:54

reverse himself. Things

1:57

are so uncertain that

1:59

there is...

1:59

an alternative speech by Nixon's

2:02

speechwriter on the president's desk.

2:07

It makes an argument against his

2:10

resignation, the exact opposite

2:13

of the speech he'll eventually give. Today

2:17

we bring you a conversation with Jeff Nussbaum,

2:20

political speechwriter and author of the book

2:23

Undelivered. We look at the

2:25

speech Nixon never gave and

2:28

at two other historical speeches that

2:30

went undelivered. What

2:32

did it feel like to be the person

2:34

looking at those two drafts, facing

2:37

an

2:37

uncertain future? And if those

2:39

speeches had been delivered, how

2:42

might the world have been different?

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3:27

Jeff Nussbaum, welcome to the show. Oh,

3:29

it's good to be with you. So Jeff, you have been a

3:31

speechwriter for more than 20 years. Is

3:33

that right? That is painfully correct.

3:38

So you have written speeches for President

3:40

Biden, for Vice President Al Gore, for

3:42

all kinds of people. The book that you've

3:44

recently published is called Undelivered,

3:47

and it is about speeches in history that

3:49

were never given. And

3:52

I'm wondering, is there something specific that inspired

3:55

you to write that book? What sent you down that path? Oh,

3:57

sure.

3:57

Like comedy, it came from pain. I

4:00

started as a speechwriter to Al Gore. I

4:02

was a kid, you know, I was the junior person.

4:04

But on election night in 2000, Al

4:07

Gore had three speeches. He had a victory

4:09

speech, he had a concession speech, and

4:11

then he had a slight modification.

4:14

Should he win the electoral college and lose

4:16

the popular vote?

4:17

And that night he gave none of those speeches

4:19

because Florida was too close to call and

4:21

we went to this protracted recount and I

4:23

lost those. I had them and I lost

4:25

them. Oh man, were you like shaking your fist

4:28

at former Jeff for losing those three speeches

4:30

that you had in your hand? You're like, I was right

4:32

there.

4:33

I mean, shaking my fist is like too gentle.

4:35

Like I was really beating myself up. I

4:37

went back and I found the teleprompter operator

4:39

from election night 2000 and like

4:42

went into the old machine to see if any

4:44

of them were still loaded on.

4:45

Wow, and no luck. No luck.

4:48

But it set me on this journey that was

4:50

kind of my own little obsession, which is what are

4:52

the other places in history where

4:54

an outcome was so in doubt where

4:56

two outcomes were so equally plausible

4:59

or possible that there was a draft

5:01

prepared for each of them. And that

5:03

when history pivoted or a decision got made,

5:06

that alternate draft got left on

5:08

the cutting room floor. And I found them in all

5:10

sorts of interesting places, not

5:12

just elections as I said, but issues

5:14

of war and peace, pop cultural moments

5:17

like the Academy Awards

5:18

all over the place. And so I found and

5:20

compiled and that's what this book really

5:22

grew from. Yeah, how did you find them?

5:24

How did you track these beaches down? Each

5:27

one was its own journey. I have a chapter

5:29

in the book on New York City, nearly

5:31

going bankrupt. And some

5:33

of the people involved in that were still alive. I

5:36

interviewed them. Each one of them referred me to

5:38

the next person, to the next person. No one had

5:40

the speech. Finally, I found the

5:42

young lawyer who had prepared the bankruptcy filing

5:45

and he invited me to his office. And at

5:47

one point his assistant tapped me on the shoulder

5:49

and said, I think I might have what you're looking for. And out

5:52

of a dusty filing cabinet, she pulled

5:55

the only existing copy

5:56

of the speech declaring New York City bankrupt.

5:58

So each one was a...

5:59

journey and not all of them yielded

6:02

fruit. Okay. But you did find a bunch of them and we're

6:04

going to talk about three. Your book is organized

6:06

into several sections and they're

6:09

based around reasons that the speeches

6:11

were not given. So like sometimes

6:13

a major world event intervenes,

6:16

sometimes a person dies before they have

6:18

the chance to give this speech. But we're going to start

6:20

with a person who changed

6:22

their mind. We're going to start with Richard Nixon.

6:26

So let's set the scene a little bit. Where do

6:28

we find Nixon and his team in the summer

6:30

of 1974 when all these drafts

6:31

are, are flying?

6:34

So for Nixon at that point, the

6:36

writing is on the wall. His support

6:38

is cratering in the house and Senate.

6:41

It seems clear he's going to be impeached

6:44

and he's going to face a trial in the Senate. And

6:46

he is having to release

6:49

all of these secret tapes. And once those

6:51

tapes become released, it's going to look

6:53

even worse for him. And some

6:55

of his closest advisors think, you know,

6:58

spare yourself, spare the country.

7:00

It's time to get out. You're not going to survive

7:03

this. And even Nixon knows to a certain

7:05

extent that he's not going to survive it. But

7:07

the chapter, I really started as

7:09

an opportunity to go back 22

7:11

years earlier to 1952 when Nixon

7:17

is again in trouble. First

7:19

time in his career, he's on Eisenhower's

7:21

ticket as vice president and he's involved

7:23

in a fundraising scandal. And

7:26

he fears rightly that Eisenhower

7:28

doesn't like him and wants an excuse

7:31

to kick him off the ticket. And so

7:33

he takes the decision out of Eisenhower's

7:35

hands by delivering a speech

7:37

that's come to be known as the checkers speech.

7:41

It's really like a seminal moment

7:43

in American politics because it's

7:45

this incredibly plain

7:47

spoken speech where he lays out his

7:49

family's finances for all to see. Well, in addition to the mortgage,

7:52

the $20,000 mortgage on the house in Washington, $10,000 one

7:55

on the house in Whittier.

7:59

I owe $4,500 to the Riggs Bank in Washington,

8:02

D.C., with

8:04

interest of 4.5%. He

8:07

doesn't have much in the way of savings, and

8:09

he lists that out.

8:11

I own a 1950 Oldsmobile

8:13

car. We have our furniture.

8:16

We have no stocks and bonds of

8:18

any type.

8:20

He basically takes the grievances

8:23

of the American working person, the

8:25

financial grievances,

8:27

and makes them his own. His wife

8:29

has a cloth coat, or as he calls it, a Republican

8:31

cloth coat, not a mink coat. And I always

8:34

tell her that she'd look good in anything.

8:36

Right, he's not above his constituents.

8:39

He's one of them.

8:39

It sounds like the kind of thing that would be familiar

8:42

now. He sort of lays himself bare

8:44

for the American public. But you're saying that mode

8:46

of speech writing and speech giving

8:49

was new, was unusual. Totally unusual.

8:52

In fact, commentators absolutely

8:54

derided it. They called it a financial

8:57

striptease. They said he'd debased

8:59

himself for the American people. And the reason it's

9:01

called the checker speech is

9:03

that he ends it by saying, look, there is one gift

9:06

we received, and we're not giving it back.

9:08

And it's a little dog, and the dog's name

9:10

is Checkers. A little Cocker

9:12

Spaniel dog

9:13

in a crate that he'd sent all the way from Texas.

9:17

Black and white, spotted. And

9:19

you know, the kids, like all kids, love

9:22

the dog. Now, a lot

9:24

of the speech was a lie. He hadn't met the dog at that

9:26

point. The story of the dog wasn't quite

9:28

accurate. All he's trying to do is

9:31

take the decision out of Eisenhower's hands

9:34

and get the American people to say, you should keep

9:36

this guy on the ticket.

9:37

Every good speech has a call to action, and

9:39

he calls people to action by asking them to write

9:42

to the Republican National Committee. And when

9:44

he finishes the speech, he goes offstage,

9:46

and he's fuming because he forgot to give

9:49

the address. And yet, by

9:51

the hundreds of thousands, people wrote

9:53

to the RNC, keep Nixon on the ticket,

9:56

and Eisenhower was furious.

9:59

because his hands really were tied. He had

10:02

to keep Nixon on the ticket at that point, and he did.

10:04

This is Nixon's formative

10:06

experience. If I can just

10:09

go directly to the American people, explain

10:12

what happened, explain what I'm

10:14

all about,

10:15

maybe I can weasel my way out of this.

10:18

Well, yeah, so he's facing this terrible crisis,

10:20

of course, and you're saying he has in his mind

10:22

a sense that if he just speaks

10:25

to the American people in a candid way, like he did

10:27

in that famous Checkers speech, then

10:30

maybe he'll be able to convince them to

10:32

stay on his side. Like the stakes are

10:34

extremely high, and he believes that

10:37

he could do it. Like he believes that a speech could

10:39

do it. Absolutely.

10:41

So he calls on his chief speechwriter,

10:43

who at the time was a guy named Ray Price, and

10:47

he wants to write a speech saying

10:49

that he will not resign.

10:50

So tell me about that speech. What

10:52

is it like, what kind of arguments does the

10:54

writer make, and how

10:56

is it similar to like other speeches he's given

10:58

before? Yeah, so he kind of

11:00

re adopts this tone

11:02

of the 1952 Checkers

11:04

speech and updates it. You know, there's language

11:07

like, speaking of the Watergate break-in,

11:09

I thought the break-in itself was stupid as

11:12

well as wrong. But once it had taken

11:14

place, I knew that I had inherited the consequences.

11:17

So it's just very, very plain

11:19

spoken. He talks about that

11:21

he's reviewed all of the tapes that

11:23

he's had to turn over to the judge, and

11:26

says, I've also come across a new piece of

11:28

evidence that I know won't help my

11:30

case, right? Which is very

11:32

honest. And one of the things we

11:34

know in persuasion is

11:36

that the best way to convince someone

11:38

who disagrees with you is too

11:41

often to concede that they have a point. So here

11:43

he's conceding his critics a point like, yeah,

11:45

this doesn't look good for me. But let me explain

11:47

why my staying in office and

11:50

seeing this through to the end is the most important

11:52

thing.

11:53

Can you read part of it? Sure.

11:55

If I were to resign, it would spare

11:57

the country additional months consumed.

12:00

the ordeal of a presidential impeachment

12:02

and trial. But it would leave unresolved

12:04

the questions that have already cost the country

12:06

so much in anguish, division, and uncertainty.

12:10

More important, it would leave a permanent crack

12:12

in our constitutional structure. It

12:14

would establish the principle that under

12:16

pressure, a

12:17

president could be removed from office by

12:20

means short of those provided by the

12:22

Constitution. By establishing

12:24

that principle, it would invite such

12:26

pressures on every future president

12:29

who might, for whatever reason,

12:31

fall into a period of unpopularity.

12:34

Wow, interesting. So that's kind of the nut of his argument

12:36

in this speech that he didn't give. If

12:39

I resign, that's a constitutional

12:42

crisis, sort of, is what he's implying.

12:43

Exactly. So this is the

12:45

speech that his speechwriter puts together

12:48

for him for the refusal to resign

12:50

option. And that's what Nixon thinks he's going to do.

12:53

But you write in the book that the speechwriter also puts together

12:55

another speech that he was not asked

12:58

to write. Can you tell me about that, about the option

13:00

B speech? Yes, exactly. So

13:03

Ray Price also feels that the

13:05

refusal to resign course is

13:08

not the right course. And

13:11

so he takes it upon himself

13:13

to write a resignation speech. And

13:16

he says later in his memoir that

13:18

he's kind of guessing at what's

13:20

in Nixon's head. And his

13:23

hope is that by putting

13:25

together a resignation speech that

13:27

appeals both to Nixon's

13:29

sense of grievance, but also

13:32

to his sense of accomplishment, that

13:34

maybe Nixon will choose that course.

13:37

And one of the things you see in both

13:40

speeches is that they both share

13:42

a justification in search

13:44

of a decision. And by that, I mean in

13:47

each speech, the idea is,

13:49

or one of the ideas is that America's

13:51

been through a

13:52

terrible time of upheaval culminating,

13:55

you know, as we reach the mid 70s. You've

13:57

had a president assassinated and President

13:59

Nixon. President Kennedy, you've had

14:02

a president effectively drummed out of office

14:05

in Lyndon Johnson, you have chaos

14:07

and violence in the streets, and so

14:10

what we need most in this country is stability.

14:12

And so Nixon is basically saying, in

14:15

the non-resignation speech, and

14:17

therefore, for reasons of stability,

14:20

we need to turn back to the Constitution and

14:22

see this process to the end. And

14:25

in the resignation speech, he's saying, therefore,

14:27

for reasons of stability, I'm resigning

14:30

so we can get back to normal.

14:31

It's such a funny way to have to try to

14:33

convince someone to not

14:36

give your own argument about why they should

14:38

do it, but give them their

14:40

argument, like what they would say if

14:42

they went with what you, the speechwriter,

14:44

want, right? Like, it's an odd position.

14:47

It really gets at the core strangeness

14:49

of the job. There are people who approach

14:51

the job of speechwriter in a bunch of different ways. There

14:54

are some who believe that their job

14:57

is to lead the person

14:59

they're writing for, to sort of put ideas out there

15:01

and hope that the person they're writing for will follow. There

15:04

are some who attempt to chase the person they're

15:06

writing for. In other words, they look at what the person

15:08

they're writing for has said before, and they

15:11

kind of bring that back and then modify

15:13

it. And then there's the third

15:15

approach, which I believe to be

15:17

the right one, which is you really want to

15:19

just help them be their best self. It's

15:21

not about the writer. It's about helping

15:23

the person you're writing for articulate

15:26

most clearly the best version of themselves.

15:28

Because you have to kind of ventriloquize this person,

15:31

like speak in their voice. Exactly. You

15:33

kind of have to be a method actor. That option B

15:36

speech, do you think it was a good speech?

15:38

And how do you think it compared to the

15:41

ultimate resignation speech that President Nixon,

15:43

of course, did give?

15:45

The option B speech, as originally

15:48

written, was pretty defensive. Ray

15:51

Price, the speechwriter, I think in trying

15:53

to appeal to Nixon, was

15:55

trying to appeal to the part

15:57

of Nixon who wanted at least

15:59

to read.

15:59

rebut all of the arguments

16:02

against him. He wanted to trumpet

16:04

his accomplishments. He wanted to clap

16:07

back a little bit at his detractors. And

16:09

the ultimate resignation speech

16:12

is far less defensive. It's

16:14

far more reflective.

16:16

It has more of an elevated

16:19

tone. For example, he says, quote, the interest

16:21

of the nation must always come before any personal

16:23

considerations.

16:25

To continue to fight

16:27

through the months ahead for my personal

16:29

vindication would

16:31

almost totally absorb the time

16:34

and attention of both the president and the Congress.

16:38

It celebrates accomplishments

16:41

like opening diplomatic relations with China.

16:43

It reminds Americans about the full

16:46

sweep of Nixon's service. Together

16:49

with the Soviet Union, we have made

16:51

the crucial breakthroughs that

16:53

have begun the process of limiting nuclear

16:55

arms.

16:56

In that moment, he

16:59

kind of recognizes that

17:01

it's a statement for posterity and

17:03

it actually isn't just about

17:06

the Watergate break-in. It's a coda

17:08

to a full life of service.

17:13

After the break, we cover two more speeches

17:15

that were never given, one by an

17:17

American general, another by

17:19

a presidential runner-up. Welcome

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18:08

Let's move

18:10

on now from a person changing their

18:12

mind and so throwing out one speech and going

18:14

with another. And let's look at a moment where

18:16

a world event goes away that

18:19

was impossible to anticipate beforehand. This

18:22

is General Dwight D. Eisenhower and

18:24

his alternative D-Day

18:26

speech. Yeah, so here we are

18:29

on the eve, potentially of D-Day

18:31

and Eisenhower does think it's going to work. He's got

18:34

over 150,000 troops, you

18:36

know, marshaled in the southern part of England. He

18:39

thinks he has a good plan and

18:41

the lengths to which they've gone to keep it secret

18:44

are unbelievable. You know, once the troops

18:46

were given their orders in these camps,

18:48

barbed wire was put around the camps so no

18:51

one could leave. The

18:52

map makers at Eisenhower's

18:54

headquarters, they finished this map, it's up there

18:56

on the wall and then they locked up the map makers

18:58

in the house. I mean, they had done everything

19:01

they could and the one thing that wasn't cooperating

19:03

was the weather. There

19:04

were high seas, there were storms and

19:07

Eisenhower, we know from his journal,

19:09

wasn't so worried that we wouldn't be able

19:11

to get our troops ashore. He was

19:14

worried that they'd be stranded there, pinned down and

19:16

stranded.

19:17

And so Eisenhower did something

19:19

he had done traditionally before every

19:22

engagement where he sent troops into battle,

19:24

which is he sat down and he wrote

19:26

an apology for the failure.

19:29

He anticipated failure, he envisioned

19:31

failure and he apologizes for

19:33

it. And that's the D-Day

19:35

failure speech that exists to this

19:37

day.

19:38

This is a little bit trying to read someone's mind, but

19:41

when Eisenhower sits down to write that speech,

19:43

I mean, what do you imagine that feels

19:46

like to him? Like, do you think it sort of feels

19:48

like tempting fate to write about the

19:50

version where things go badly? Or do you think it might

19:52

feel like protective to

19:54

imagine all the worst ways things

19:56

could go? Like, I

19:57

spent a lot of time thinking about this. I

20:00

spent a lot of time trying to figure out when in

20:03

that day he had time to write

20:05

it. And it's not exactly clear,

20:07

but my best guess is earlier that

20:10

day, he went to see the paratroopers

20:13

off, and he had a real sort

20:15

of emotional moment with them. He

20:18

knew that young men, almost

20:21

boys, were gonna die. And my

20:23

best guess is that he

20:25

was writing this as he saw our

20:27

first wave of paratroopers leaving

20:30

overhead. That that was the moment in the

20:32

day where he had a tiny bit of free time. And

20:35

so, in my mind, I picture that. In

20:38

his head, I think that

20:40

he wrote the apologies to

20:43

do a final pressure test as

20:46

to whether he had put in all the thought

20:48

and energy required

20:50

to prevent that outcome. To say, did

20:53

I do everything to make it so that

20:55

I'm unlikely to have to

20:57

deliver this speech? Right, and projecting

20:59

myself forward, if I did have to say these

21:01

words, could I stand behind the decision that I'm about to

21:03

make? The decision that I haven't fully

21:05

made yet, but that I'm about to.

21:07

Exactly. So Eisenhower

21:09

sits down and he really, he writes

21:12

quite quickly a failure speech.

21:15

It's just a paragraph or two long. And

21:17

we have the original

21:19

draft.

21:21

One of the interesting things he does is

21:23

that he goes back and he makes a couple of corrections.

21:26

He corrects two things. He has first written,

21:29

the troops have been withdrawn.

21:31

And he crosses it out. And he writes,

21:33

I have withdrawn the troops. And

21:35

then he has written this particular

21:38

operation. And he crosses

21:40

that out and substitutes my decision to

21:43

attack. And I love it because

21:45

what he's done is

21:46

he's removed the passive voice. Right?

21:49

The passive voice is mistakes were made. Right,

21:51

like not saying who made the mistakes. Exactly.

21:54

But he doesn't say mistakes were made. He

21:56

says, this is on me. This is 100% on me. And

21:59

as if to understand.

21:59

that literally at the

22:02

end of it, he writes, if any

22:04

blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it

22:06

is mine alone, and he underlines

22:09

mine alone.

22:09

And at the underline, you can see in the

22:12

pen stroke, the emphasis.

22:15

It's just a wonderful demonstration of the

22:17

language of responsibility. And

22:19

by the way, so the story is what happens is he

22:21

writes it, he folds it up, he puts it in his

22:24

wallet, the operation proceeds,

22:26

the outcome is not really in doubt, but

22:29

it takes a couple weeks for things to

22:31

sort themselves out. He looks in his

22:33

wallet, he sees he has this,

22:35

he throws it in the trash, and his aide fishes

22:37

this one out of the trash and says, you know, like,

22:40

this one's a keeper. Huh, and future Jeff

22:42

Nussbaum breathes a sigh of relief. Yes,

22:44

exactly. Will you read it

22:46

for us? What does it say? Our landings

22:49

in the Sherburg-Averer area have failed

22:51

to gain a satisfactory foothold, and

22:54

I have withdrawn the troops.

22:56

My decision to attack at this time

22:58

and place was based on the best

23:00

information available. The troops,

23:03

the air, and the Navy did all that

23:05

bravery and devotion to duty could

23:07

do.

23:08

If any blame or fault attaches to

23:10

the attempt,

23:11

it is mine alone. Wow, it's

23:13

so short. That's it? Yeah. Right?

23:16

Gettysburg address-esque. Yeah, yeah.

23:19

The classic phrase, mistakes

23:21

were made, sort of the classic, like, I'm

23:24

not taking responsibility. Where does that phrase

23:26

come from? It was first

23:27

used in 1876 when President Grant acknowledges but

23:32

doesn't take responsibility for the scandals of

23:34

his administration.

23:36

And so he says, mistakes have been made, as

23:38

all can see, and I admit, except

23:41

he doesn't actually admit. And then, of course, since that time,

23:44

mistakes were made has become

23:47

almost a catchphrase, almost a meme, a

23:49

little bit of a get-out-of-jail-free card.

23:51

It's seductive. I mean, we can admit mistakes,

23:54

and who made them? How were they made? Exactly.

23:57

And here, Eisenhower's doing the exact opposite.

23:59

He's being made. basically saying, it's on

24:01

me. And in writing this chapter, I found this wonderful

24:04

quote, ironically, from

24:06

President Grant, where he says, I am

24:08

a verb. And I just loved it because

24:11

leaders are verbs, leaders are action takers.

24:13

And Eisenhower just demonstrated that

24:16

so wonderfully powerfully.

24:19

Okay, let us turn now

24:21

for our last speech to a very

24:24

recent speech that was

24:26

not given. And that is the speech that

24:28

Hillary Clinton would have given in 2016 had

24:31

she won the presidential election.

24:34

So you were actually, Jeff, you were the first

24:36

to get a hold of this speech, is that right? Yes, yeah,

24:39

the first person outside of her immediate orbit.

24:41

And how I came about, how I

24:43

was able to get a hold of it is actually kind

24:46

of a funny story.

24:47

One of the chapters in this book that we have

24:49

not discussed, but I mentioned

24:52

is the night New York City went bankrupt,

24:54

or almost went bankrupt. And

24:56

that night was the night of a famous

24:58

dinner called the Al Smith Dinner, where all

25:01

of New York's kind of leading business and

25:03

political leads are all in the room together.

25:06

And so part of the story about the night

25:08

New York almost went bankrupt is that all

25:10

of the players were in the room together and they were

25:12

all a little bit over-served and tipsy, but

25:14

like sort of pulling each other into hallways

25:17

to say, like, will

25:17

you buy these bonds? Can you do this for

25:19

the pension? Like, so it was all happening

25:21

that night.

25:22

Fast forward to Hillary's campaign,

25:24

and I was not particularly involved

25:27

with the campaign. I sort of helped oversee

25:29

speech writing for the convention and

25:31

was pulled in just a little bit to help

25:33

out with her Al Smith speech. And

25:36

at one point during the prep process,

25:38

she said, am I the first woman to

25:41

speak at this dinner? And I said, actually

25:43

not. It was Ella Grasso, governor

25:46

of Connecticut back in the mid seventies.

25:48

And she kind of looked at me like, how in the world

25:51

would that be a piece of trivia that you

25:52

know? And I said, well, actually that

25:54

was the night New York City almost

25:56

went bankrupt. And I have this undelivered speech.

25:59

And she said, oh.

25:59

Well, when this election's over, maybe

26:02

we can talk about my giving you the speech that

26:04

I don't give. Oh, wow.

26:07

I mean, you get the speech ultimately from her

26:09

after, of course, the dust has settled. But

26:11

let's set the scene before all

26:14

of this happens. Earlier in 2016, what do Hillary Clinton

26:18

and her speechwriters want her victory

26:20

speech to accomplish? What are the different tasks

26:22

they think they might take? Yeah,

26:24

that was really the question, is what do

26:26

we need to have this speech accomplished?

26:28

The initial draft of the speech, all

26:30

of the fissures that ran through

26:32

the campaign run right

26:35

into that draft. Here's a line

26:37

for the Bernie supporters, and here's

26:40

something to hopefully pacify the

26:42

Trump voters, and here's a line for the elite

26:44

media that expected a

26:46

bigger win. And here's a line

26:49

for the people who have been my base. This

26:52

is a win, this is a moment for America that she made

26:54

history. And so it's all

26:56

in there, but it all feels like it's in there,

26:59

right? And one of the things we talk about in speechwriting

27:02

is a speech that's about everything. It's

27:04

a speech that isn't about anything. And

27:07

so it's trying to do a lot, and

27:09

it's missing a real moment

27:12

of emotional lift.

27:13

How did they find it? What did they do? So

27:16

Hillary had said in her convention

27:18

speech, you know, she's always been a public

27:20

servant. She's had a harder

27:22

time with the public part of that

27:25

than with the servant part of it. She

27:27

wasn't always sharing or revealing

27:29

herself, but one of the stories that she had been

27:32

willing to share was the really

27:34

difficult life of her mother. Her

27:37

mother had been abandoned by her parents, sent

27:39

across the country to live with her grandparents,

27:42

who basically rented her into

27:44

indentured servitude,

27:45

you know, as a housemaid and others. And

27:49

this had been one of the touchstones that in the

27:51

space of one generation, you're gonna

27:53

go from this very difficult life

27:55

to a daughter, a daughter who's

27:57

present in the United States. So

28:00

Hillary has been thinking about this

28:02

and talking about this. And

28:05

at the same time, when you're a speechwriter,

28:08

you get all sorts of unsolicited emails. They

28:10

come in left and right.

28:11

People saying, say this, say this. Say this.

28:13

If you just say this, it'll solve all your problems.

28:15

Like, I got the solution. It's this paragraph. And

28:18

so one that comes in is

28:20

from a poet, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet named

28:22

Jory Graham. And

28:25

Jory Graham basically says, you

28:27

know, if I was Hillary,

28:29

I would say this. And

28:32

it's this imagined conversation

28:35

where an adult Hillary

28:37

comes upon her mother at age

28:39

eight on this train cross country.

28:42

And she sits down next to her mother.

28:45

And it's just this beautiful, imagined conversation.

28:48

And at the same time, Hillary

28:50

is saying, maybe there's a new

28:52

version of the mother story I can tell.

28:56

And so it's this moment of

28:58

kind of convergent alchemy where

29:02

Hillary's instinct and this

29:04

beautiful poetic submission

29:07

link up. And let me read just

29:09

a little bit of it. Sometimes

29:12

I think about her on that train. I

29:15

wish I could walk down the aisle and find

29:17

the little wooden seats where she sat, holding

29:20

tight to her even younger sister, alone,

29:24

terrified. She

29:26

doesn't yet know how much she will suffer. She

29:29

doesn't yet know she will find the strength

29:32

to escape that suffering. That

29:34

is still a long way off.

29:37

The whole future is still unknown as

29:39

she stares out at the vast country

29:42

moving past her.

29:43

I dream of going up to her and

29:46

sitting down next to her, taking

29:48

her in my arms and saying, look

29:50

at me, listen to me. You

29:54

will survive. You

29:56

will have a good family of your own

29:59

and three children. And as

30:01

hard as it might be to imagine, your

30:03

daughter will grow up and

30:05

become the President of

30:07

the United States. I

30:10

am as sure of this as anything

30:12

I have ever known. America

30:14

is the greatest country in the world. And

30:17

from tonight, going forward,

30:20

together we will make America even greater

30:22

than it has been for each

30:24

and every one of us.

30:26

I mean, this is the speech she wanted to give, of course.

30:29

The speech she would have given if things had gone differently. But

30:32

the speech that she does give is

30:34

a concession speech. Can

30:36

you tell me a little bit about the concession speech

30:39

as a type of speech?

30:40

Rick Hertzberg in The New Yorker gives

30:42

this lovely list of what a concession

30:44

speech is supposed to contain. You know, an

30:47

acknowledgement of the pain of defeat, a message

30:49

of congratulations to the victor, a pledge

30:52

to close ranks behind the people's choice.

30:54

Right, you're like reading it like a laundry list. It's like

30:56

there's a little bit of a formula to them. Yeah. Does

30:59

Hillary's follow that or not?

31:01

Well, so this is an interesting thing, which

31:03

is Hillary had

31:05

sort of a cursory, your

31:08

generally friendly concession

31:10

speech prepared. But late

31:12

that night, when she realized that the election

31:15

wasn't going to go her way, she saw the draft that

31:17

did all those things and just felt that it wasn't

31:19

up to the task that a

31:22

normal concession in normal times

31:24

makes normal sense. But she

31:26

had been involved in an abnormal candidacy.

31:29

And so she wanted to go a little deeper and not

31:32

just congratulate the winner, but basically

31:35

say like, we'll be watching and we'll be holding you to account.

31:38

So she toughened it up in a lot of ways. And

31:41

she also did something that speaks

31:43

a little bit to gender. She's the

31:45

first presidential candidate to say,

31:47

I'm sorry, in a concession speech.

31:50

This is not the outcome

31:52

we wanted or we worked so hard

31:54

for. And I'm sorry that

31:57

we did not win this election for

31:59

the values.

31:59

we share and the vision we hold for

32:02

our country.

32:08

I want to pull back for a minute now.

32:11

One thing that really strikes me that must have struck you

32:13

a million times as you were working on this project

32:16

is that like these speeches do feel

32:19

like they're kind of artifacts from an alternate

32:21

reality, you know, like you can feel

32:23

in each moment, wow, Nixon

32:26

almost did not resign. He was just

32:28

one person making that decision and he could have

32:30

made the other decision and D-Day

32:33

could have failed. Like the weather

32:35

was the thing, you know, you can't control

32:37

the weather. And I guess like, I don't

32:40

know, it's interesting to me because when

32:41

I'm interviewing historians, I

32:44

often want to ask them to play around

32:46

with like alternate versions of reality.

32:49

And they hate doing it. They hate it, right?

32:51

Exactly. They never want to. They're like, we don't

32:53

know, we can't know. And so I

32:55

want to ask you because you've lived in some of those

32:57

alternate realities, the sort of what what

33:00

might have changed if this had gone differently. What

33:02

do you think we can learn from that? Like, what have you learned

33:04

from doing that? So

33:05

I also had a similar

33:07

experience because I spoke to a conference of historians

33:10

and one of the historians raised their hand and said, are you worried

33:12

that you're writing an alternative history? And

33:15

I said it never occurred to me to worry

33:17

that I was doing that because I'm

33:19

actually not really writing a counterfactual

33:22

history. What I'm showing is

33:24

like sort of shining a flashlight,

33:26

the first steps down an alternate path.

33:29

It's an alternate path that the people who

33:31

were in charge of blazing that trail

33:34

had to imagine themselves and

33:36

ultimately my takeaway, because there are

33:38

other chapters in this book, like John

33:40

F. Kennedy announcing airstrikes on Cuba

33:42

during the Cuban Missile Crisis or Emperor

33:45

Hirohito at the end of World War Two,

33:48

apologizing for the war and throwing himself at

33:50

the mercy of the war crimes tribunal. There

33:53

are massive life and

33:55

death events,

33:56

history changing events, history

33:58

making events. And we

34:01

think that things happen in

34:03

retrospect because that's how

34:05

they had to happen. That's how they were going to happen.

34:08

And the thing I realized as I was writing this

34:10

book is that that's not how it

34:12

works. In the moment, history

34:15

really does rest on a razor's edge. And

34:18

it's people, hopefully, of competence

34:20

and good faith using the positions

34:23

they have to make the best decisions

34:25

they can that affect outcomes.

34:28

And those outcomes can be for a community,

34:32

or a country, or a company, or

34:34

in many cases in this book, the world. And

34:37

so the lesson I take

34:38

away from the book and that I share with folks

34:40

who ask about the book is, don't

34:43

forget that, that history often

34:45

hangs in the balance. And it's people

34:47

of good faith who often nudge

34:50

it in ways that make a meaningful difference

34:52

in the outcome.

34:54

Jeff, thanks

34:55

so much for being with us. Oh, it's

34:57

such a pleasure. This has been really fun.

35:09

Thanks for listening to History This Week.

35:12

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35:31

thanks to our guest, Jeff Nosbaum, author

35:34

of Undelivered, the never heard speeches

35:36

that would have rewritten history. This

35:39

episode was produced by Julia Press. It

35:42

was story edited by Jim O'Grady, fact-checked

35:44

by Nate Barksdale, and sound designed

35:46

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