# Any Politicians Who Still Write Their Speeches **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 8, 2011, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-politicians-who-still-write-their-speeches/577624 "2011-04-08T03:44:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-politicians-who-still-write-their-speeches/577624/1 "2011-04-08T03:44:38Z")
Are there any politicians who largely writer their own speeches rather than use speechwriters? ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-politicians-who-still-write-their-speeches/577624/2 "2011-04-08T11:02:04Z")
Yes, most of them do. Certainly at a local level, even state legislators do. (When they do speeches. Most of the time, local politicians are speaking extemporaneously.) It’s mainly at a Congressional or Presidential level that they might have speechwriters. I know that my Congressman either writes most of his own speeches, or writes an outline that he gives to a writer to complete. And my Senator, Al Franken – he made his living for years as a very successful writer – he is very much involved in writing his own speeches. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-politicians-who-still-write-their-speeches/577624/3 "2011-04-08T12:09:19Z")
During the 2008 campaign it was reported that Obama was very involved in his own speechwriting. I don’t know how much that has changed since he became president. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-politicians-who-still-write-their-speeches/577624/4 "2011-04-08T12:28:15Z")
We recently had the perfect example that many don’t write anything they say as our Prime Minister, obviously using briefing notes, pronounces hyperbole as hyper-bowl. [Julia Gillard’s ‘genuine mispronunciation’ turns hyperbole into hyperbowl](http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/julia-gillards-genuine-mispronunciation-turns-hyperbole-into-hyperbowl/story-e6frf7l6-1226035582372) What A Maroon! ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-politicians-who-still-write-their-speeches/577624/5 "2011-04-08T14:05:43Z")
> [@don\_t\_ask](#): > > We recently had the perfect example that many don’t write anything they say as our Prime Minister, obviously using briefing notes, pronounces hyperbole as hyper-bowl. > > [Julia Gillard’s ‘genuine mispronunciation’ turns hyperbole into hyperbowl](http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/julia-gillards-genuine-mispronunciation-turns-hyperbole-into-hyperbowl/story-e6frf7l6-1226035582372) > > What A Maroon! That, in itself, doesn’t prove she didn’t write it, although she apparently didn’t. One can understand what a word means, use it properly in writing, and mispronounce it because they’ve only seen it in print without ever having heard it spoken. I’m given to that myself, although I’d pronounce hyperbole correctly. I got called the other day on “pedant”, which apparently pronounced with a short e, not a long one. ---
**Author:** ![Keeve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f07891/32.png) [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2011, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-politicians-who-still-write-their-speeches/577624/6 "2011-04-08T14:47:29Z")
> [@yabob](#): > > One can understand what a word means, use it properly in writing, and mispronounce it because they’ve only seen it in print without ever having heard it spoken. Or you can see it in print, AND hear it spoken, but not in any context where you’d connect the two. For _decades_, whenever I audibly heard of something fashionable described as “chic”, I imagined the word to be spelled as “sheek” or “sheik”. I never connected it to the written word “chic”, which I thought would be pronounced as “chick”.