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It's an election year
so in an effort to help speech givers
everywhere rise to the occasion, I've put together everything you need to know about
giving a great political speech. Hello, I'm Mikey Gleason. In third
grade, I once gave an award winning speech on salamanders. Trust me. I know what I'm talking about.
The best way to start any speech is to go with what they call in wrestling "the
cheap pop." It's good to be here in fill in the blank of your location. Or if you want
to steal a page directly from the Rock, you could go with "Finally, Barack (or whatever
your name is) has come back to Sheboygin. Nothing wins a crowd over faster than mentioning
exactly where they are. By the way, it's great to be back here on the internet.
It's always good to mention a local landmark whether it's a famous street or a
restaurant. And if you can drop in a little local vernacular, even better.
For example, if I was in Philly, I'd say something about driving down Broad
Street or stopping at Pat's for a cheese steak wit. Or in Valporaiso, Indiana I'd mention
stopping by the Strongbow Inn for a delicious turkey dinner and chocolate chip pecan pie.
Or if I was in Oklahoma, I'd mention Burger King or something.
If you're not sure where you stand on an issue, agree with the people you're
talking to. You can always change your mind after they vote you into office and at that
point they can't even get rid of you for at least 4 years - 6 if you're a Senator.
When possible build your speech around a fable or a story that everyone knows.
It makes it easy to get your point across, and even better, it gives you a point. People
love a lesson, especially a lesson they learned when they were six. The Giving Tree is a good
one. Chicken Little, Three Little Pigs,
Teen Wolf. All good options. If you find yourself really
struggling, reference a famous speech. People love hearing about MLK's dream or how we have
nothing to fear but fear itself. It makes it look like you know a thing or two about
history, when in reality your speech writer is just a lazy sack of potatoes. AMERICAN
potatoes. This brings me to my next point. If you want people to applaud,
mention America or being American or Made in America. If you want to rile the crowd
up, mention their jobs going to overseas countries like China, India, and Canada.
Feel free to make up statistics. No one will call you on it and even if
they do, it'll probably be press that you can label as biased or a rival candidate you
can then accuse of being an elitist for knowing "real-facty-type" things.
By all means, mention your humble beginnings, no matter how humble or un-humble
they were. Everyone has eaten Ramen noodles at some point in their lives. The audience
relates to this. They don't need to know you ate them off the *** of a really expensive
*** in Thailand. Now, I hate to bring this up, but
occasionally, you're going to lose. This brings us to the concession speech.
The key to any good concession speech is making the suckers who just busted
their butts for free in support of your great "cause" feel like it was all worth it. If
you run for office again, you're going to need these schmucks. Begin by thanking your
family. I don't care how much you hate your wife and how soon you plan on cheating on
her after her Cancer treatments end. Llooking at you Edwards), your family is very important. Next, thank
the rich people. They're technically more important than family, but it looks bad if
you thank Cornelius Moneybags before you thank your kids.
Good luck with your speech, whatever your speech might be. And remember
when the going gets tough out there, the tough have a campaign aide pull the fire alarm and
then they unleash attack ads. Now, get out there and win slash steal an election.