The stuff that speeches are made

Virtually all who have issues with Buhari’s recent state broadcast after his last return from medical vacation, say that it either lacked ‘depth’ or it lacked ‘length’ -or both.

Many of those may have hoped that if only Buhari had spoken a little ‘deeper’ or maybe a little ‘longer’, he just might have said that one ‘thing’ –whatever it was- that they had always wanted to hear. And for those who wanted him to have resigned, it would not have mattered if Buhari had given a one-sentence, ten-words, five seconds speech. You bet that would not have been too ‘short’ a speech -provided it contained his resignation. In fact, they would suddenly have become connoisseurs of great speeches in history and would have happily praised its pristine brevity.

And for those who had looked forward to an exposé of the gory details concerning Buhari’s health –for reasons we all know- it would not have mattered if he had read a book that day -for a speech. Nothing would have been too ‘lengthy’ –provided every word of it had dripped with the tragic tale of a malignant condition meriting the President’s removal or impeachment. Truth is Buhari’s offence was not that he gave a ‘short’ or ‘shallow’ speech.

It was that he refused to make it a resignation speech, or at the very least to raise his personal affliction above the affliction of the state.

Concerning what is an acceptable ‘length’ to a ‘good sentence’, an author of a book of grammar I cannot now recall, said that when Abraham Lincoln was asked ‘how long he thought a man’s legs should be, he said “long enough to reach the floor”-inferring that a ‘sentence’ should be long enough only to make a ‘sense’. Or that a ‘sentence’ is only as ‘long’ or as ‘short’ as the ‘sense’ that it makes. Just as a ‘speech’ too, should be only ‘long’ enough to convey the message intended by its maker. The ‘size’ of a speech is not necessarily responsible for what it contains or what it does not contain. The maker of the speech decides what to or what not to put in there, notwithstanding the size of the material. Thus the shortest speech is not necessarily the shallowest. Nor is the longest speech necessarily the most profound.

The shortest message was said to be a ‘question mark’ (?) sent by an author to his publishers; and which they understood to mean: ‘how is the book doing?’, ‘are we doing well?’, ‘will we smile soon to the bank?’. And they replied in like manner, with an ‘exclamation mark’ (!), which he too understood to mean: ‘yes, the book is doing great!’, ‘we’ll definitely smile to the bank, soon.’

And although a humorist had said that a speech should be like a woman’s night gown: Long enough to cover ‘everywhere’ but transparent enough to reveal ‘everything’, it is still the prerogative of the maker of it to decide what to ‘cover’ or what to ‘reveal’. The object of a speech is not to be ‘long’ or ‘short’; or to be anything in between. It is to effectively communicate the intended message of its maker. Just as the secret of ‘success’, would be different concerning different situations and concerning different goals. To a personified ‘calendar’, ‘the secret of success’ will be always to ‘keep up to date’; and to the ‘refrigerator’ to ‘keep cool’; or to the ‘hammer’, to ‘drive hard’; or the ‘knife’ to ‘be sharp’ or ‘glue’ simply to ‘stick to it’! The goal of every ‘speech’ is ‘to communicate’ the intended message of the communicator.

It is said that any material will be unnecessarily ‘long’ if it is written ‘from a desert of ideas and a flood of vocabulary’. But that every material should be written ‘from a plenitude of ideas and economy of words’. Said H.G. Bohn, author of ‘Handbook of Proverbs’: “Deliver not your words by number, but by weight.” Which is not necessarily an indictment of lengthy speeches. A speech should be lengthy if it has to be lengthy. And it is the reason lexicographers say that writers must not be contented with meager dictionaries. For as they ask, rhetorically, “why starve when we have the lord’s plenty?”

Nonetheless, comparatively-speaking ‘short’ speeches are preferable always to ‘long’ ones. When you write speeches, said former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Be sincere, be brief”; or as the French writer and poet Jean de la Fontaine said “the shortest works are always the best”; or the Spanish writer Baltasar Gracian, who said “Good things, when short are twice as good”; or the U.S. born British writer and critic Henry James, who averred that “In art economy is always beauty”. Or the mightiest of them all, Shakespeare who said “Brevity is the soul of wit”.
Besides, those who are in the business of writing -whether as professional speech writers, or as speech makers who write their own speeches- know that it is easier to write long speeches than to script short ones. Good, short speeches although they are not made by many words, they are made by many man hours. To have to say so much in so short a time, or to have to cram so much in so small a space, will require a certain amount of ‘inspiration’ and ‘perspiration’. In answer to an invitation to make a speech, Woodrow Wilson said “It is easier to talk for longer period than to talk briefly. If you want me to talk for ten minutes I’ll come next week. If you want me to talk for an hour I’ll come tonight”.

someone said that “Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests”. That famous Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy”, (referring to the day the Japanese attacked America’s Pearl Harbor), was contained in a 517-word, two minutes speech to Congress as America prepared her entry into the Second World War. Should Roosevelt have used a wartime speech-making occasion to elevate his own personal affliction over the affliction of the state?

Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s similar address to the British Parliament a year earlier on the same subject, was a 15-paragraph, 626-word, three-minute speech in which he was to say to a war-nervous nation, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”. Churchill who had described the German threat as “a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime”, could not have used a wartime speech-making occasion to discuss personal afflictions over the afflictions of the state.

Queen Elizabeth’s 1588 famous speech which inspired a timid English army to defeat the “invincible Armada” of King Philip II of Spain, was a one-paragraph, 331-word, one minute affair. It was the speech in which the spinster Queen whose rejection of the marital overtures of the Spanish King resulted in a threat of war, said “I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king.” And as she affirmed her faith in a “famous victory”, saying “Let tyrants fear” because “I myself will take up arms; I myself will be your general”, the occasion evidently was inauspicious for the elevation of personal afflictions over the afflictions of the state.
About a thousand five hundred years ago, a three-paragraph, 182-word, one-minute speech delivered extempore by the Roman Empress Theodora, saved the life and throne of her husband, -a timorous Emperor Justinian- who was ready to flee to avoid massacre in an impending rebellion. A stubborn Theodora had said in that speech “Those whose interests are threatened by extreme danger should think only of the wisest course of action.. . Flight is not the right course, even if it should bring us to safety. It is impossible for a person…not to die; but for one who has reigned, it is intolerable to be a fugitive. If you wish to save yourself My Lord, there is no difficulty… (but) reflect for a moment whether, when you have once escaped to a place of security, you would not gladly exchange such safety for death.” The royal train stayed back; and the rebels were slain.

A flight to safety would have elevated personal affliction over the affliction of the State. And as martyrdom was the occasion for this speech, Theodora said she chose the ‘royal purple as the noblest shroud’. Which is the same as saying: “A crown or else a glorious tomb”.

As the ‘speech’ defines the ‘occasion’, and as the ‘occasion’ also defines the ‘speech’, great moments of decision making are not to be attended with the distractions of unmerited anecdotes.

Buhari had ‘occasion’ to address matters touching on the survival of the state itself. He would have done great disservice to the ‘occasion’ if he had bored the nation with the details of his health condition. He would vainly have elevated his personal affliction over the affliction of the State. Such inanity, –at that material time- would have availed neither him nor the tribulated State. Nor would Buhari have made the desired impact if he had delivered his ‘words’ that day, lengthily by ‘number’ and not briefly by ‘weight’ -like he did.”

That historic 1863 speech of President Abraham Lincoln in which the Union’s commitment to the Principle of freedom was re-dedicated at Gettysburg, was a two-paragraph, 266-word, two minutes affair widely recognised till today as ‘one of the best short speeches since the Sermon on the Mount’. The renowned orator, Edward Everett who also spoke at the occasion, wrote Lincoln a day after to commend the speech’s all-encompassing succinctness and to say that even he (an orator) could not have come “as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours” as the President did “in two minutes.” And to which Lincoln replied saying “In our respective parts yesterday, you could not have been excused to make a short address, nor I a long one.”

Lincoln was referring to the accepted fact that ‘length’ in speech is to orators not a vice, and that it is to everyday speech makers like the President, that ‘brevity’ is a virtue.

Nigeria’s President Muhammau Buhari