The Moderate Voice encourages weblogs and websites to do original interviews. We’ve run a batch of them from several websites on various issues. And now here’s a fascinating one — from The Ripon Society, a moderate Republican organization.
It’s an interview with Landon Parvin that touches on a host of timely and fascinating issues. Here’s the intro and a quote or two:
Landon Parvin is a ghostwriter for political and corporate leaders. He has written for three U.S. presidents, three first ladies and four foreign prime ministers, in addition to governors, senators, cabinet officers and other public figures.
Parvin served as a writer for both Ronald and Nancy Reagan during the Reagan Administration. In 1984, he left the White House and moved to London to serve as the Executive Assistant to the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. Upon returning from London, Parvin became an independent writer.
He helped Ronald Reagan, after leaving office, put together his book of speeches called Speaking My Mind. He co-produced the documentary film, Carnuaba: A Son’s Memoir, in which a son retraces his father’s 1935 expedition to Brazil and discovers himself. In 2003, Parvin spent two months in California working with Arnold Schwarzenegger in his successful bid for governor. He is also widely recognized for the jokes and humorous skits that he has written and developed over the years for political leaders.
Parvin received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois, where he graduated with high honors, and then a master’s degree from Cornell University. He lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia, with his wife, Alice, and son, Maxwell.
RF: Why do words still matter in politics at a time when pictures and images seem to count for so much?
Parvin: Well, words still matter if they mean something. Unfortunately, political speeches are too often empty clichés with no intellectual or emotional content. You can see the true power of words, however, when someone articulates an unarticulated truth, such as when Reagan called upon Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.� It was so obvious but no president had ever said it. The logic of its truth was unassailable.
RF: Republicans have been struggling in the polls this entire year. Is that because they’ve been using the wrong words to sell their product, or because they are trying to sell a product the public no longer wants to buy?
Parvin: It’s because they don’t have a product. When the Contract with America passed, I helped Newt Gingrich with the only prime time address to the nation that a Speaker of the House had ever given. The networks put extra lights on the Capitol that night. I remember there was such excitement in the air. Where is the excitement of Republican ideas today? My ironclad rule of speechwriting, which is based on painful experience, is that the speechwriter is the first to know when a campaign has nothing to say because he is the one who has to put it down on paper. I think that’s why we are struggling.
There’s a lot more on his views on the upcoming elections and other subjects. So read it all.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.