The Speechwriter (17 page)

I don't say any of this to demean politicians. It takes an able and industrious person to do what they do, and many of them are capable of courage and honorable conduct. But the same can be said of traveling salesmen; it does not follow that we should trust them. The brutal reality is that politicians gain power by convincing us that they are wise and trustworthy. What they do isn't in fact very different from the classical arts of rhetoric or oratory. Most modern politicians, and certainly the one I worked for, are not orators in the common sense of the word, but they use language, timing, and images to win electoral and legislative victories, just as the Sophists did in the fourth and fifth centuries
BC
. In Plato's
Gorgias
, Socrates reviles rhetoric as a form of “flattery,” sometimes translated as “pandering”: “the ghost or counterfeit of a branch of politics.” Flattery “pretends to be that which it simulates,” says Socrates, “and having no regard for men's highest interests, is ever making pleasure the bait of the unwary, and deceiving them into the belief that it is of the highest value to them.” Rhetoricians, in other words—politicians—please the masses not by actually doing wise and virtuous things with state power but by making the masses believe that that's what they are doing, or that that's what they want to do, or that that's what they would do if more power were given to them. We could press Socrates on whether he really believes it's all a matter of pleasure, but there is an undeniable kind of pleasure to be had in a politician's expression of a message we approve of, or of any powerful person's enunciation of our own views. When the governor speculated that the administration in Washington was attempting to create a “savior-based economy,” the effect had an almost aesthetic quality to it, like reading a line of poetry that encapsulates a thought you didn't even know you had until you read it.

The problem was that the governor wanted to be a savior himself. His ideas were sound, his views genuinely held, and at crucial times he showed great courage in holding to them—the kind of defiant fearlessness we long for in politics. But he was a politician, and so he had a direct personal interest in others believing these things about him. Acclaim and attention were his highest aim—just as they are every determined politician's highest aim: the praise, the fawning, the seriousness with which people take their remarks, the gaze of audiences, the way a crowded room falls silent when they enter. When we revere a politician and give him our vote, we do so because we believe his most fervent desire is to contribute to the nation's well-being or to make the right decisions with public money. That may be
a
desire, but it is not what drives him. What drives him is the thirst for glory; the public good, as he understands it, is a means to that end. So when a great statesman accomplishes a laudable goal by sagacity and bravery, we're right to give him the praise he craves. But when we're surprised and disgusted because the man we lauded has humiliated himself and disgraced his office, we haven't just misjudged a man—we've misjudged the nature of modern politics.

In the office, amid the empty walls and taped-up boxes, I stood there watching the governor for another minute or two. He didn't move for a long time but sat staring at a shuttered window. Perhaps he was thinking of what he would do next or whether greater things lay ahead.

I backed quietly out of the room and went home.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

© Yevette Shaver

Barton Swaim, a South Carolinian since age three, attended the University of South Carolina and the University of Edinburgh. From 2007 to 2010 he worked for Mark Sanford, the state's governor, as a communications officer and speechwriter. He lives in Columbia with his wife, Laura, and three daughters, and writes regularly for the
Wall Street Journal
and the
Times Literary Supplement
.

www.SimonandSchuster.com

authors.simonandschuster.com/Barton-Swaim

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Interior design by Lewelin Polanco

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Swaim, Barton, 1972–

The speechwriter : a brief education in politics / Barton Swaim. — First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition.

pages cm

1. Sanford, Mark, 1960– 2. Sanford, Mark, 1960– —Friends and associates.

3. South Carolina—Politics and government—1951– 4. Swaim, Barton, 1972–

5. Speechwriters—South Carolina—Biography. I. Title.

F275.42.S26S94 2015

328.3'3092—dc23

[B]

2014047506

ISBN 978-1-4767-6992-9

ISBN 978-1-4767-6996-7 (ebook)