Willam: General Dwight
Eisenhower prepared remarks -
and an apology - if d-day had
failed.
National security advisor
condoleezza rice planned to give
a foreign policy speech on
September 11, 2001, but scrapped
it when America was attacked
.
President John F. Kennedy
planned to offer America a
warning in Dallas, Texas, but
was assassinated before he could
arrive at his destination.
Amna nawaz recently spoke with
president Biden's former senior
speechwriter Jeff Nussbaum, who
examines those speeches and many
others in his new book,
"Undelivered: The never-heard
speeches that would have
rewritten history".
>> The author, Jeff westbound
joins us now.
Welcome to the newshour.
You've been chasing down some of
the speeches for years.
Why the obsession?
Jeff: The session began election
night 2000.
I was a kid speechwriter for Al
gore.
We had three speeches -- a
victory, concession, and
strangely enough, if you win the
electoral college but lose the
popular vote.
And that night, he gave none of
those speeches.
This set me on this question
find where are the other moment
in American history where the
outcome is so in doubt, not just
elections, but with the outcome
rests on a razors edge that both
outcomes had to be envisioned?
And I started finding them in
all sorts of different places.
Amna: There are so many
wonderful stories in this book.
You tell the story about why the
speeches weren't delivered.
There is the speech of John
Lewis and his original speech
for the August 1963 March on
Washington.
That it was quite militant -- he
wrote we will March through the
south through the heart of Dixie
the way Sherman did.
We shall pursue our own scorched
Earth policy and burn Jim crow
to the ground, nonviolently.
He was talked out of using that
language.
What happened here?
Jeff: In retrospect, in his
later years, we started to see
John Lewis as almost a warm,
fuzzy fighter.
We sanded the rough edges of
what he was in his youth.
He was the voice of the young
angry activists civil rights
movement and that is what he
wanted his role at the March on
Washington to be.
He was very clear, I want this
to be a March on Washington, not
a March in Washington.
Other organizers were hoping to
have an event that was more
approachable by the vast
majority of Americans.
They wanted it sanctioned by
that captioned -- by the
catholic church, they wanted
press Kennedy to see they could
work with the civil rights
community to pass a bill and
John Lewis wanted to say I
cannot support the civil rights
bill.
It is too little, too late.
So out of desperation, the
organizers said John, please
tone it down.
He kind of got his back up
against the wall and resisted
and resisted.
Then finally, the March
organizers basically said
please, John, we've come this
far together.
Let us stay together.
He retreated under the Lincoln
memorial and worked and reworked
his speech to the point it was
acceptable.
And still it was the most fiery
speech of the day.
Amna: Just incredible.
You also share words that were
never spoken because the person
didn't live long enough to
deliver them.
And there's one example I want
to ask you about. You tell the
story of a speech that president
Kennedy intended to deliver in
Dallas.
He planned to address the rise
in right wing misinformation
campaigns and he planned to call
out, as you quote him, voices
preaching doctrines wholly
unrelated to reality, which
really hits home right now.
Your book says that some of
these words, if delivered, could
have rewritten history. What do
you think would be different if
Kennedy had spoken these words?
Jeff: This is a really
interesting one.
Because to the extent people
remember it, they think of it as
a foreign policy speech.
They remember that he said,
we're the watchman on the walls
of world freedom and that it
was. However, if you read the
speech carefully, he also says
that watchmen shouldn't just be
looking outside the walls of the
us, has to be looking inside as
well to these voices wholly
unrelated to reality.
And so I think several times in
this book, we find examples of
warnings made in their moment of
time that resonate even more
clearly today.
Amna: It's not all politics and
policy, though. You do include
the story of director Barry
Jenkins, the man behind the 2017
film moonlight.
I think everyone remembers that
academy awards ceremony where
they announced the wrong film
had won best picture. The wrong
staff and cast went up there.
Then they said, no, really, it
was moonlight.
Barry Jenkins had intended to
deliver a powerful speech about
that film that he never got to
deliver because the moment was
lost to the flub.
Jeff: Exactly.
Here we have this moment and he
was going to talk about what the
wind meant and he was going to
talk about something he
experienced on the set that
brought it home for him.
He tells the story of how in
filming the movie in liberty
city, Miami, they had to come in
and bring in lights so they
could film at night.
And in a lot of poor
neighborhoods like this one in
which he grew up, there wasn't
light. And bringing in the light
brought out the children.
And at one point during the
filming, he looked over to video
village, where all the monitors
and editing equipment were. And
he sees a young man wearing his
headset who's just planted
himself in the chair. And in
that moment, he said, I saw in
this child the possibility,
which I hadn't believed I could
ever see for myself.
Amna: You know, I have to ask
you, you have you've now left
the white house where you were a
senior speechwriter for
president Biden. You've been
writing for him and with him for
a while, though, right? Yes. How
has that changed over the years?
Jeff: That's a great question.
He has always been who he has
been.
I've described writing for
president Biden as like being a
session musician in a band
that's already released two
greatest hits albums.
It's not so much about the new
track it's about applying the
, values that he's espoused his
entire career to the moment. And
so that's that's what's really
changed, is that his optimism,
his desire to find consensus,
it's still about finding ways
for those things to take root,
but it's about recognizing that
he's trying to get them to take
root in much rockier terrain
today than they had to earlier
in his career.
Amna: The book is undelivered --
the never heard speeches that
would have rewritten history.
The offer -- the author is Jeff
Nussbaum.