can one great speech heal a nation?
IMAGINE writing a speech that the country’s been waiting for. That’s one phone call I’m glad I didn’t get. Imagine everyone with their arms folded, looking at you with either high expectations or deep scepticism. Big speeches matter. This one matters more than most. I read Bringing Them Home in 1997. It was a late education. I remember breaking the news to people at work that the man who was in the prime minister’s job had said there would be no such word as “sorry”. The story stopped in my throat and the room froze. It seemed such a pointless cruelty. There was no vocabulary of tenderness. It snaps your brain shut to think of how that petty refusal added sadness to sadness. There is a responsibility that attaches to the words said at big occasions. Stating the obvious is important. It’s why we have to say at funerals that someone is dead; it’s why we sing Happy Birthday. Politicians are busy people so the job falls to speechwriters, who approach different subjects in different moods.
