Is It Time for Politicians to Quit Giving Stump Speeches?

Let’s chat about political stump speeches. Writing for the conservative website Rasmussen Reports, Ted Rall calls for the end of the political stump speech. He notes that many liberal candidates complained that Donald Trump got more press coverage than the other candidates during the 2016 presidential campaign. I have not looked at the figures, but I suspect he’s right. Rall writes:

Donald Trump, WH portrait

“Trump rallies are freeform jazz. Anything could happen. Quality varies, but give the president this: No two performances are the same.” He continues: “While Trump delivered the extemporaneous devil-may-care thrills of a candidate who doesn’t expect to win, Clinton and Trump’s primary opponents dutifully trudged the land delivering that deadliest of ought-to-be-deceased propaganda formats: the stump speech.”

Rall continues: “There was Hillary reading from a Teleprompter in Columbus, Ohio, every word scrupulously stripped of life by her army of staffers, consultants and attorneys. There she was again in Atlanta: same words, same cadences, same gestures and facial expressions.” Who could blame the media for not reporting her speeches? What was the headline going to be? “Hillary Clinton Repeats the Same Speech That She Just Gave 20 Times Last Week?” What kind of a headline would that be? Who would buy the newspaper?

The idea of a stump speech is that the candidate gives the same speech over and over to different audiences, often presenting the exact same speech at three or four different rallies on the same day. They got the name "stump" because old-time politicians stood on tree stumps in various towns and villages. Robert Redford parodied the stump speech to great effect in the 1972 movie The Candidate. His character, running for United States Senate, gave the same speech so often that he became sick of it and blubbered loudly when he practiced it in the car while rushing to the next rally. The stump speech lets the candidate recite proven lines to different audiences without any additional preparation. The stump speech’s drawback is that it only receives attention in the local press, while the national press ignores it: the national press corps has heard it dozens of time before, so why should they report it again?

I heard Hillary Clinton give a stump speech in Akron Ohio when her husband was running for president many years ago. She did a good enough job, but it sounded pretty stale. I’ve also heard live stump speeches by Nikki Haley and Mitt Romney. They were superficially loud, fast, and excited, but the speeches were as musty as moldy bread and the speakers cared not one bit about what they were saying. Nor did I sense that any of those speakers connected with their audiences.

Ronald Reagan, official portrait

Some politicians have used the stump speech with effect. Ronald Reagan toured the country for years giving a speech that is often called “A Time for Choosing,” but which reporters instead called “The Speech.” They called it that because Reagan gave it so many times for so many years that it needed no other name. “The Speech” laid out the basis of movement conservatism: Reagan complained about federal spending, budget deficits, and social programs while warning darkly about a vague threat to freedom. Reagan did change his stump speech a little bit from time to time. He sometimes added juicy tidbits or dropped his more ridiculous examples or statistics when the press protested about their inaccuracy. All the same, “A Time for Choosing” propelled Reagan to the presidency.

Let’s harken back to the 1896 presidential campaign, which I analyzed in my book From the Front Porch to the Front Page: McKinley and Bryan in the 1896 Campaign. Liberal Democrat William Jennings Bryan toured much of the country by train, giving about 600 speeches at local venues, and, in some cases, from the railroad platform or the back of the

train car. Some of Bryan's speeches were short and some were quite long. Every speech was completely different. He talked about issues in much more depth than any 21st century candidate. Republican William McKinley gave hundreds of mostly very short speeches, almost all of them delivered from his front porch in Canton Ohio. The railroads brought audiences from around the country to hear McKinley speak, while a newspaper reporter recorded all of the speeches in shorthand. They could then be printed and distributed by wire service across the country to be published in local newspapers and campaign booklets.

Much the same thing happened during James A. Garfield’s, Benjamin Harrison’s, and Warren D. Harding’s front porch campaigns. The point is that every speech was different and so every speech could become a news event. These candidates understood how to work the news business to their advantage.

So, of course, did Donald Trump in 2016. Most of the things that Trump said in his rally speeches were ridiculous and offensive, but his silliness and offensiveness became part of the story and got him more attention. In contrast, Hillary Clinton’s stump speeches rarely got news attention because she said the same nice, safe things in the same nice, safe words over and over and over and over. After the first time, her speech wasn’t worth reporting.

American presidential campaigns have always depended on getting attention in the news. Most voters never meet a presidential candidate or hear a live political speech. If they get information at all, they get it from the news. I think that Ted Rall has a point: stump speeches are not always newsworthy. News reporters are primed to report events that are new and to ignore events that are already familiar. Stump speeches don’t always get the job done.

If a tree falls in an empty forest and no one hears, does it make a sound? If you give a political speech but it doesn’t get in the news, is it still a political speech?