The speeches that never got delivered and what they tell us about leadership
From the Cuban missile crisis to the election of Donald Trump, history has seen inflection points where alternative outcomes weren’t just possible, but actively planned for. So what can words that were never heard teach us about communication in a crisis? Asks speechwriter Jeff Nussbaum
There’s a joke in speechwriting circles about a speechwriter who dies and is offered the choice between heaven and hell. Being a good researcher, as all speechwriters must be, he first says, “A choice between heaven and hell – Let me see hell.” And there he is greeted by millions of speechwriters, typing away at millions of keyboards on deadline. His reaction? “That seems hellish – let me see heaven”. There again he is shown millions of speechwriters, pounding away on millions of keyboards, on deadline. The writer says, “but this is the same as hell”.
St. Peter replies, “Oh no, up here we use their stuff”.
For more than 25 years, I’ve written speeches for US presidents and elected officials, as well as those who hold positions of influence in the corporate world, philanthropy, sports and culture. My job has been to help leaders articulate their visions for the future and to put to paper the words and ideas to respond to events that nobody foresaw.
And sometimes the work involves recognising when as the kids say, “the vibes have shifted”. That certainly seems to be the case right now. During Donald Trump’s first presidency, I noted with some amusement that while many clients came to me hoping to sound more like President Obama, not one came to me asking to sound more like President Trump. While I still haven’t received that latter request exactly, there is certainly a tonal shift. I recently returned from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland where the journalist Liz Hoffman made an observation with which I wholeheartedly agree: many CEOs, who have lived wildly scripted professional lives are now seeing Donald Trump speaking freely, “saying the quiet parts out loud” and being celebrated rather than facing consequences for it. They are seeking their own rhetorical “unshackling.” Perhaps this portends a future where fewer thoughts go unspoken.
However, there will still be speeches that go undelivered – and my fixation with them and what they say about leaders in times of choosing and consequence endures. My obsession with these alternate drafts of history began on election night in 2000. I was in my first job, working as a junior speechwriter for Al Gore. We had three drafts prepared that night. A victory speech, a concession and a modification based on the expectation that Gore might win the Electoral College but lose the popular vote.
My obsession with these alternate drafts of history began on election night in 2000. I was in my first job, working as a junior speechwriter for Al Gore. We had three drafts prepared that night. A victory speech, a concession and a modification based on the expectation that Gore might win the Electoral College but lose the popular vote
Standing with those three undelivered drafts, none of which would be given, I started thinking: what are the other moments, and not just in politics, where divergent outcomes are so possible that those outcomes need to be planned for? And what can we learn from them?
I went searching and found them – in war and peace, times of social upheaval and even in pop culture.
As I accumulated, I also reconstructed these historical moments where one outcome was so possible, there was a draft prepared for that outcome.
If the United States had launched 800 airstrikes as planned on Cuba during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, against what the world later learned were already armed nuclear missiles. If Emperor Hirohito had resigned the Japanese throne and thrown himself at the mercy of the war crimes tribunal at the end of World War II. If, in 1936, King Edward had gone directly to the British people, asking to marry Wallis Simpson and held on to the throne, leaving Britain with a Nazi-sympathizing king at the dawn of World War II. And if, in 2016, Hillary Clinton had won the American presidency.
I set out to recreate the events – sometimes less known, sometimes forgotten – and share the actual undelivered speech.
The language of leadership
These experiences, combined with my time spent in executive offices – and oval offices – have allowed me to develop some thoughts on the language of leadership and the roles leaders play as events unfold.
Journalist Edward R Murrow famously said of Winston Churchill’s wartime speeches, that he “marshalled the English language and sent it into battle.” Leaders today still send language into battle. Look no further than Donald Trump’s inaugural address, in which he sent words into battle against inflation, immigrants, transgender people and Panama, to name a few. What will follow those words remains largely and chillingly to be seen.
But leaders use language to achieve other ends as well, namely, to preserve optionality and establish agency. A demonstration of the power of language to both preserve and help elucidate options occurred during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. President Kennedy’s team had been divided into two groups: one in favour of airstrikes on Cuba, and the other in favour of a blockade. Robert Kennedy, then the United States Attorney General, asked them to present their recommendations, and added one more item to the assignment: Each group’s recommendation had to begin “with an outline of the President’s speech to the nation”.
In many ways, it was President Kennedy’s inability to see himself giving the airstrike speech that allowed him to choose against the airstrike course of action.
Language also reveals and demonstrates agency. When I was writing Undelivered, I wasn’t sure if there was a thread that connected all of these historical examples, but then I found it in the chapter I wrote about President Eisenhower, who had prepared a speech in case the 1944 D-Day landings had failed.
It’s very short. It’s handwritten. And in his haste, Eisenhower misdated it. However, we see in his handwriting two edits. The first is that he crosses out the words, “The troops have been withdrawn,” and replaces them with, “I have withdrawn the troops”. He has, of course, switched from passive to active voice.
And then, in the final line, “If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone,” he has forcefully underlined the words, “mine alone”.
That switch embodied something that General Ulysses Grant, who led the union to victory in America’s Civil War and later became president said, “I am a verb”. Leaders are action takers.
General Ulysses Grant, who led the union to victory in America’s Civil War and later became president said, “I am a verb”. Leaders are action takers
While an acknowledgment of responsibility is the moral thing to do, one recent study indicated that leaders should never apologise; never take responsibility. Evidence shows that it emboldens your detractors and demoralises your supporters. Combine that with today’s fragmented media environment and shrinking attention spans, which allows outrage and attention to quickly migrate elsewhere, and we may have seen the end of the public mea culpa.
As one example, look at the evolution of Mark Zuckerberg. In 2016, he published an apology for the false and misleading information that appeared on Facebook, and strengthened systems to combat it. Fast forward to 2025, and his unapologetic announcement that he was removing these same systems because “fact checking had led to “too much censorship”.
One of Amazon’s 16 leadership principles, which its team members are expected to know and understand, calls for leaders to be, “vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing”. One wonders if that principle will soon be modified or jettisoned.
As we enter this more muscular, less reflective era of leadership communications, my fervent and perhaps naïve hope is that if there are to be fewer apologies, that leaders will endeavor to work in such a way that there’s also less to apologise for.
Jeff Nussbaum, a partner in the corporate affairs firm, Bully Pulpit International, is a former speechwriter to President Biden and the author of Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches that Would Have Rewritten History.