I was the speechwriter once for a man who would become prime minister of Canada – and I learned a few things in that job.

First, you need to make the speech sound like the politician, not someone else.

“Mr. Kinsella,” Jean Chretien would say to me. “You write great speeches for John F. Kennedy. But I’m not John F. Kennedy.”

So I had to change how I wrote speeches.

Second thing I learned: appeal to hearts and minds. The speech shouldn’t be reason over passion, or vice-versa. It should be a mix of both, aimed carefully at the target audience.

Three: don’t play it safe. Be prepared to take a bit of a risk.

That’s what Chretien did – over my objections, full disclosure, when he sought my opinion – with his speech saying, “No,” when he courageously refused to support George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

That’s what Brian Mulroney did when he said “no” to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and he fearlessly went after South Africa’s apartheid regime. 

That’s what Stephen Harper did when he had the guts to say “no” to the conservative ideologues during the global economic collapse – and he and Barack Obama worked together to keep........

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