Word: hartmann
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...week before D-day ("Delivery" day), as Hartmann labeled it, Ford began practicing his presentation of the speech. First he read to an audience of three: Hartmann, his deputy Robert Orben and Media Consultant Don Penny, a former stand-up comic who played a key role in improving the President's pace and delivery. Then Ford started running through the speech before a camera connected to a video-tape recorder and played back the tape so that he could watch his own performance. His coaches managed to minimize some of his idiosyncrasies-stumbling over words, dropping his voice...
...President took his video-tape unit to Kansas City to continue rehearsing right up to the beginning of the roll call of the states on Wednesday night. Practice made perfect-or almost. Concluded a satisfied Hartmann: "If he had two weeks to work on every speech, they'd all be that good...
...Robert Hartmann, White House Counsellor and chief speechwriter, was given the assignment of collecting basic ideas from Cabinet members, senior White House staffers, campaign advisers, friendly Senators and Congressmen and old political pals like Melvin Laird and Bryce Harlow. Once the suggestions were compiled, Hartmann went over them with the President, who meanwhile had been studying every presidential acceptance speech since 1948 and jotting down ideas of his own on a yellow notepad...
...Hartmann and five speech writers on his staff shaped the raw material into six separate drafts. Ford read these and underlined in red pencil the passages he liked best. Those he picked went back into the typewriter and emerged as a new, amalgamated version. Only two copies were made-one for Ford, one for Hartmann-in order to prevent leaks and staff kibitzing...
...weeks before the convention, Ford and Hartmann began meeting several hours every day to sharpen the language and cast it to fit the President's oratorical style. Sentences were trimmed, syntax simplified, demanding rhetorical devices eliminated. On Sunday, Aug. 8, Hartmann spent a long working session with the President at Camp David...