How Old Must You Be To Write For A President?

When you know how to say what you have to say, it often does not matter when you have to say it. What matters is saying it as it ought to be said. Of course, it is always not very easy saying it exactly as it should be. Those who are able to string profound ideas together in very good and memorable sentences are usually great men and women who have perfected the art of public speaking and public relations. Often, they are communication specialists who have lived through time and experienced events as they unfolded. So when you hear that a 26 year old writes speeches for a presidential candidate, you are tempted to believe that he is a gem. And when that candidate happens to be Mr. Barack Obama, a phenomenon of on orator and a writer of two bestselling books, then you have every reason to believe that the 26 year old is a gem through and through. Jon Favreau is his name. Obama and others simply call the lad Favs.

Whatever the outcome of the November presidential elections in America, history has been made. It would either be a black man in the White House as president, or a white woman as vice president, lending a helping hand to a septuagenarian white president. History does just not happen; events make history, and there is a reason behind every event. Among several other things, what has catapulted Barack Obama to the very heights of American politics is his ability to deliver inspirational speeches. What brought him to the limelight was the 2004 speech he gave to introduce then Democrat presidential nominee, John Kerry. He penned that speech himself, the amazing writer that he is. After that, it has been one brilliant speech after another, making him the toast of a nation that is crying for answers. People cry when they hear him speak. Others only manage with a few goose pimples. Even very great journalists are awed by his words. There is something about him that you can’t easily digest, pundits have long established.

He is a great orator, no doubt. But the people behind the oratory are the greatest. At 26, Jon Favreau hasn’t walked the walk that great writers have done. He may not have read much. He may not even have a library. He reads Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King for inspiration. Indeed, when Obama asked him: “What is your theory of speech writing?” Favreau was honest: “ I have no theory.” Probably he didn’t even know that speechwriters need to have a certain theory on which their ideas are planked, in much the same way that a broadcasting house would have a broadcasting philosophy. He has basically learnt the art of speechwriting from the sidelines. He tells Obama: “When I saw you at the convention, you basically told a story about your life from beginning to end, and it was a story that fit with the larger American narrative. People applauded not because you wrote an applause line but because you touched something in the party and the country that people had not touched before. Democrats haven’t had that in a long time.” That got Obama thinking about the lad. He got onboard the Obama train after that.

“The trick of speech writing, if you will, is making the client say your brilliant words while somehow managing to make it sound as though they issued from their own soul”, Christopher Buckley, a former speechwriter for President Bush Snr, has said. That means you would have to be in the thinking of your client on almost all issues, and complete his thoughts. That is how the Obama-Favreau relationship works. Favreau puts it even more poignantly: “What I do is to sit with him for an hour. He talks and I type everything he says. I reshape it, I write. He writes, he reshapes it. That is how we get a finished product.” The youngster has mastered the way Obama speaks. He knows his favourite ideas and sentences. So when Obama wants to say anything, he calls Favs. “What would Obama say?” the New York Times asks. And I would add “without Jon Favreau.”

In fact, Favreau is so important that Google is quick is distinguish him from another Jon Favreau, a more popular actor and film director. The search engine giant puts the word ‘speechwriter’ after young Favreau. He had started writing for the John Kerry campaign four years ago. That means he was 22 or 23, a fresh graduate of the College of Holy Cross, a Catholic institution in Massachusetts. But he had guts, and above all he had some ‘audacity’. And he lived that audacity when he interrupted a speech that Obama was rehearsing during the 2004 convention. He pointed out a line that wasn’t captured properly in Obama’s speech and ordered that the senator rewrite that thought. Favreau says “He kind of looked at me, kind of confused- like ‘who is this kid?’” That audacity has today made him the chief speechwriter for a man who is chief in everything letters. So, perhaps, it is only fitting that Obama duly acknowledges Jon Favreau in his bestseller The Audacity of Hope, for “literally going beyond the call of duty.”

Now, let’s get back home. What could I do at 22? Well, I had completed university of Ghana at 23 years. Apart from the English degree that had been thrust upon me, I had nothing I could count on. Not that I was very proud of the degree; in fact, I couldn’t help thinking that I had merely been passed through the degree mill like a piece of sausage. I had left no memorable impression at the department of English, where I did my major. Professor Martin Owusu had penned his famous The Story Ananse Told when he was 23. Ama Atta Aidoo had written The Dilemma of a Ghost in her early twenties. She probably didn’t have the usual dilemmas that today’s female university graduates have to deal with. I had a lot of dilemmas at 23 – dilemmas born out of the sheer inability to do nothing. Three of us- Cephas Arthur, Maxwell Kotoka and me - had come together to write a play, but we couldn’t agree on a workable theme. We abandoned the idea and went our separate ways after the first scene of the first act. Who would have read our play anyway, we would later ask ourselves.

Well, not many people do very well at 23, especially in Africa. Apart from Uganda-born John Sentamu, Archbishop of York in Britain, who was 24 years when Idi Amin appointed him a judge, and Idi Amin’s son, who had some military titles at an age that he couldn’t hold a gun, we don’t have many stories of young gems on that continent. John Agyekum Kufour had served the Busia government as deputy foreign minister at 29 or thereabouts. And Jerry John Rawllings had become Chairman of the PNDC in his early thirties, after a bloody coup. There may be a few others in Africa who made their mark quite early in life but their successes may not have made the record books.

I was still a fresh face when I was 26. Well, not as fresh as Jon Favreau’s; he could pass for 19 because he has a baby face. But he is no baby; he heads a small team of speechwriters made up of Adam Frankel, another 26 year old, who had worked with John F. Kennedy’s speechwriter, Theodore Sorensen, and Ben Rhodes, 30, who helped Lee Hamilton to write the Iraq Study Group report. These are young brains behind big things in America. So, when Barack Obama delivered the first line of a powerful speech after his historic victory over Hillary Clinton in Iowa, a white neighbourhood, “They said this day will never come”, the crowd cheered at the candidate, and roared along with the inspirational rendition of that opening sentence. But behind the scenes Favreau and his team knew they had succeeded. Those words had come from Favs, but they were familiar words in the Obama dictionary. In the art of speechwriting, that is a big plus for Favs. He knows his master’s words; and he makes the words sound like his master.

America is a big place, and people believe in big things. So Favs has a big task measuring up and meeting the expectations of men. Can a small lad be the reason behind Obamamania, a phenomenon that is taking America by storm? Favreau admits: “There’s been a few times when people have said ‘I don’t believe you, that you’re Barack Obama’s speechwriter.’” To which I reply, ‘If I really wanted to hit on you, don’t you think I’d make up something outlandish?” So you know there is no make-belief here; Favs runs the show, and he gives it his all. He is too busy he would not have time for a girlfriend. He doesn’t need one. I guess that would wait until Obama becomes president.

Jon Fvreau appears a focused, decent-looking lad, who detected earlier in life what he was about. He didn’t waste time after completing college; he joined politics, writing speeches with no previous speechwriting experience at all. He had gone through the usual ‘vegetation’ that most young graduates endure. After the Kerry campaign ended with his failed bid for the presidency, Favs was effectively unemployed, “broke, taking advantage of all the happy-hour specials I could find in Washington.” But he did something unusual: he didn’t sleep too much. He lives the Shakespearean truism, that people who make it big are those who stay up and toil deep into the night when their compatriots are asleep. Favs goes to bed at 3am and wakes up at 5. Two hours must be enough for any serious man who wants to succeed. Bill Clinton has also said that watching too much TV is not good for any young person who wants to be great. He didn’t watch much TV as a young man, but he read much, even as governor and president.

I was the direct antithesis to Favs when I was 26. I had completed a graduate programme in communication studies, and had taken a copywriting job in advertising. I didn’t excel very much, perhaps because I slept too much and read nothing for a year. I had learnt the art of professional writing but had failed to write and speak the language of the consumer. I wasn’t surprised at that because at the communication school, our professor had asked us what each of us would like to do after graduation, and the entire class, made up of some mums and dads who were on study leave, had looked at the Prof’s grey beard and said nothing. “You don’t know what you want to do after a postgraduate programme? Why did you come here then?” the noble academic yelled, perusing his beard.

Well, a few of us have found something to do eight years from then. Cephas Arthur is deputy Public Relations Director for the Ghana Police service while Maxwell Kotoka is up north, working for the Volta River Authority, instead of critiquing films and novels on television. The tallest person in the class at the time owns a newspaper. Me? Can I write for a president at 34? If Obama becomes president, I would be happy for Jon Favreau.

Benjamin Tawiah

Email: btawiah@hotmail.com, quesiquesi@hotmail.co.uk