Ever wondered how much of those speeches given at conventions and other official events are scripted, and how much are off-the-cuff?
Without a doubt it varies speaker to speaker, but one notable example of a president whose speeches are more off-the-cuff than others is former President Bill Clinton, who brought the house down with his speech at the DNC last night.
Turns out that rousing speech went far enough off the script that was handed to reporters, that TheAtlanticWire.com offered a very cool breakdown of what was written versus what was said, an excerpt of which is below. The origins of this document are, as the site explains, “Here is copy of the speech as it was written and provided to the media by the Democratic Party. Here’s a transcript of what Clinton actually said, (as compiled by The New York Times.) Our version below is based off the written text with Clinton’s insertions in italics and his deletions struck out. See what you think of his oratory skills.”
The written portion is in normal typeface, with the parts he omitted in red and the parts he added in green.
To read the entire speech, visit TheAtlanticWire.com.
Here’s the intro:
And here’s and interesting section where he really went out on his own:
