News Editor John O’Connor sits down with Steven Kelly, Vice President Kamala Harris’s former Chief Speechwriter to discuss the realities of speechwriting in today’s political climate.
“Theatre was the other aspect to it,” Mr. Kelly told the University Observer, reflecting on where his interest in speechwriting first began. “The thing about theatre and politics and speech writing is that in theatre, you're spending your time thinking about how something goes from the page to stage and that is a similar focus of speech writing.” He continued, “At the end of the day, when you are a journalist, your final product is the thing that you are writing. It gets polished, it gets edited, it gets finalised, and then it gets published in a newspaper. In speech writing, the speech draft, the thing on the paper, is really just a means to an end. The end is the actual delivery in the room. The script is not the show. The show is the show. So, that's how I got interested in it.”
For Mr. Kelly, who served as Kamala Harris’s Deputy Director of Speechwriting before becoming Chief Speechwriter in 2023, a role he held through Harris’s presidential campaign, speechwriting is as much about understanding the person themselves as it is about crafting a strong message or constructing effective prose. As Harris’s speechwriter, Kelly learned early on that the key to writing effective speeches wasn’t just capturing someone’s voice, it was capturing how they thought and fundamentally who they are as a person. The challenge, he explained, is not merely in the words, but the alignment between the message and the speaker’s own mindset and perspective, saying: “One of the big things you learn early on when you're writing for other people is that when someone holds up a draft and says, this doesn't sound like me, really what they're saying is this doesn't think like me. So most often when a draft misses the mark, it's not because of the words on the paper [...] They can always make whatever edits they want. It is their speech, but a speech is a collaboration.”
Mr. Kelly’s most significant collaboration to date has been with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Kelly told The Observer about a particular speech he and Harris collaborated together on in Selma, Alabama, a town known for its pivotal role in the civil rights movement, and discussed how their collaborative process began. “A few days before that event, I would give a draft to the Vice President. She would review that draft and make edits, and then we would have a meeting. We would meet about every speech that she delivered and talk it through. The Vice President was a very thoughtful and intentional editor and was not one to just read the words off the page. She wanted to make sure that they were fully hers.”
On the day of the speech Harris would “make edits while she was on Air Force Two, the vice president's plane. She would make edits in the motorcade to the event. We'd arrive at the event, and we'd make some final tweaks. And then the speech writer, myself in this case, would rush off to the teleprompter. So, it was an exciting time until [Harris] stepped off stage. And as soon as she stepped off stage, it was on to the next one. The Vice President's schedule was incredibly busy.”
Many of the former Vice President’s speeches garnered widespread media attention over the years, with many of Harris’s speeches aiming to strike a unifying tone, appealing to a nation grappling with division and uncertainty. Mr. Kelly’s philosophy in writing such speeches is rooted in clarity, discipline, and the power of simplicity, often favoring simplicity over flourish. “Coco Chanel, she had a saying about fashion, which is you should get dressed and then take one thing off,” he told the Observer. “A similar rule applies to speechwriting; you should write your draft and then take one thing off. The process of cutting almost always improves the draft, because I've been in the audience for a lot of speeches, and I have never once heard someone say, ‘That was a wonderful speech, I just wish it was longer.’”
Another particularly memorable moment for Mr. Kelly was crafting a speech for the 50th anniversary celebration of hip-hop, hosted by the Vice President at her official residence. The event brought together legendary artists from across five decades “everyone from, Too Short to Lil Wayne,” as Mr. Kelly recalled. Harris was scheduled to open the event with a ten-minute speech reflecting on the meaning of hip-hop and the role the music movement has played in her own life.
“I like hip-hop,” Kelly said, “but I am by no means a hip-hop expert and I’m especially not an expert in the 1970s and ’80s hip-hop scene in San Francisco, California, which is her experience of Oakland.” To prepare, Kelly began to research, including conversations with hip-hop historians and Harris’s childhood friends from California who could speak to what music she listened to, the clubs she went to, and her college experiences tied to hip-hop.
“We put together a draft, and while the Vice President is heavily involved in all of her speeches, this one was an especially deep collaboration. She had a lot of thoughts about what hip-hop was and what it meant. She did an incredible job and she made some last-minute tweaks that really helped the speech sing… or rap, I suppose.”
Speeches today, such as this one, must not only reflect a leader’s identity, but also resonate with a broader cultural moment. Yet even with thoughtful and impactful speechwriting the nature of political communication is changing. Do political speeches still hold the same power they once did? In a time where voters are increasingly reached through viral videos and algorithm-driven content, traditional speeches are no longer the sole, or even primary, tool for persuasion and engagement. Politicians like New York Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani and California Governor Gavin Newsom have embraced platforms like TikTok to connect with constituents in more casual and immediate ways. The shift reflects a broader trend in American politics: messaging now unfolds in real time behind the screen, rather than behind the podium.
When asked about the role of speeches in today’s political climate, Mr. Kelly offered a candid assessment. “I think [speechwriters] are less influential than speechwriters assume […] I think the era of one big speech, changing everyone's minds, is gone. If it ever existed in the first place. I think we live in a much more fractured, much less cohesive information environment. And for that reason, speeches, while so important, are not as influential as perhaps they once were.” However, Mr. Kelly said that despite this “I think [speeches] are still incredibly important for a variety of reasons. Mainly because speeches are often a vehicle for internally building consensus and clarifying thought. So, I think speeches do play, of course, an important, although perhaps a slightly less important or slightly less central role in shaping public discourse. I think they play an incredibly important role in the development of strategy and messaging internally. Speeches are the way an organization talks to itself.”
Mr. Kelly approaches speechwriting as a craft and act of service, not to his own voice, but to a leader’s vision and the public’s understanding. It’s clear that through his work with the former Vice President, Mr. Kelly’s contribution to speechwriting goes far beyond mere words on a teleprompter, helping to restore a sense of hope and unity at a time of deep national uncertainty.