Why do some politician often use flowery speech? originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus.

Why do some politician often use flowery speech? Having been a speechwriter for politicians and government officials of both parties, I’ve found over the years that the most effective speakers—those seeking to get a point across and influence opinions of their peers or the public—are not the ones using flowery speeches. But, first, let’s back up and try to define “flowery.”

I’m guessing the question seeks to separate an audience’s perception of words styled with overt flourishes—images appealing to the ear and heart—from words delivered from a base of intellectual substance—facts appealing to the rational mind.

A politician (or any speaker, for that fact) who relies solely on the former—speeches based on images shaped from lofty, hyperbolic, and not-always-factual phrases—is either insecure in his or her own grasp of the subject matter, or disparaging of his or her audience’s intelligence, or both. That approach to speech-making is often, but not always, flawed by it’s own disingenuous underpinning. The exception of late is Donald Trump, whose grand, great, huge, amazing, unbelievable, incredible speech style, if ever termed “flowery,” would be an insult to every species of flower with the exception, perhaps, of belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade.

But, seriously, there are sincere and intelligent politicians who, through their family upbringing, coupled with cultural, religious, regional, and educational influences, believe the best way to reach an audience may be in a fiery, pulpit-style of speech in the great traditions of inspirational preachers and evangelists like Martin Luther King, Jr., Billy Graham, and Harry Emerson Fosdick. Their assumption being that a mellifluous tone, paired with impassioned words rising on the winds of justice and falling like a thunderstorm of truth on the audience, will suffice to win the hearts, minds, and votes of thus-enraptured listeners.

See what I just did there? That last sentence, filled with emotionally-freighted words like justice, truth, hearts, impassioned, thunderstorm, winds, rising, and mellifluous, is a cheap trick, a mashup of intellectually-empty phrases employed by lazy speechwriters and even lazier speech-makers.

It wasn’t always that way, though. Such flowery styling was a norm for politicians well into the 20th century, though its use began to fall from favor when respected leaders like Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill grasped the hybrid power of the microphone and radio and leveraged those tools of audio broadcasting to reach global audiences.

To fully appreciate just what speakers like Roosevelt and Churchill accomplished in their willingness to make the transition from podium speaking to broadcasting, let’s go back to a seminal event in the mid-19th century for one of the most dramatic lessons in speechwriting and speech-giving: the Gettysburg Addresses. Yes, Addresses. There were two major speeches given on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863.

The first speech was given by the Honorable Edward Everett, a well-known and respected political figure whose oratorical style was cast in the tradition of epic story-tellers. Everett’s Gettysburg remarks began with,

“Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be performed;—grant me, I pray you, your indulgence and your sympathy.”

And continued on for another two hours, until he finally wrapped it up on this note:

“But they, I am sure, will join us in saying, as we bid farewell to the dust of these martyr-heroes, that wheresoever throughout the civilized world the accounts of this great warfare are read, and down to the latest period of recorded time, in the glorious annals of our common country, there will be no brighter page than that which relates the Battles of Gettysburg.”

President Lincoln followed Everett, and it is understandable that the public, having already endured 120 minutes and 13,607 words of grandeur and flowers from Everett, was gearing itself up for another drawn-out speech, filled with presidentially-elevated oratory. Even the newspaper reporters and photographers were confident they’d have some warm up time from Lincoln before he got to the salient points of his remarks. Boy, were they wrong.

Lincoln spoke for less than three minutes. His speech, ten sentences comprising 272 words, was given in the President’s Kentucky accent, not completely audible to the back of the crowd, and sometimes described as thin and reedy. And yet, what he said in those 272 words continues to impress and humble the most gifted speakers. There are no overtly flowery, or pandering, phrases. There is reverence to the dead, humility for the living, and a statement to carry on with the mission of democracy.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

For more than 150 years, politicians and other speakers—some gifted leaders (Churchill, Roosevelt, Kennedy, King, Reagan, Thatcher), some not so gifted leaders (Truman, Johnson, G.W. Bush)—have given or tried to give Lincolnesque speeches. I’m reminded of King’s I Have a Dream speech, and Reagan’s Challenger speech as but two examples of simple messages eloquently stated. There are obviously many many more to be found among the pantheon of the great speakers.

Where most other speakers fail to reach Lincoln’s heights is in their stubborn insistence on adding words were none are necessary—as if just one more note was needed to make the opening phrase of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony better somehow. Nope. The four opening notes are perfect just the way they are (and you’re hearing them as you read this). So, too, were Lincoln’s 272 words, led by what are perhaps the most famous six words of any American speech, “Four score and seven years ago…” although there are some folks who think Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” is pretty persuasive oratory.

Let me close with a final note on Churchill and Roosevelt. I put them in class of their own—acknowledging the influence of Lincoln and other speakers on their styles. They, like Lincoln, were wartime leaders and they were also, like Lincoln, addressing their respective nations under severe economic and social stress. But unlike Lincoln, Churchill and Roosevelt commanded the emergent power of the radio. Each man mastered the medium, Churchill, for example, with his May 13, 1940, Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat speech; Roosevelt with his First Inaugural Address (1933) “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” and his “Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy,” speeches.

Neither man needed flowery speech tricks (though both could go there, and did from time to time) to make their points. They did employ high emotion, strategic use of pauses, elegantly simple phrases, and powerful points of fact to capture their audiences’ imaginations and patriotic desires to take some action if properly lead. Most of all, they were credible, knowledgeable, and respectful of the intelligence of the people to whom they addressed their remarks.

When a politician makes a conscious decision to fertilize his or her speeches with extraneous words, catchy phrases, sound-bites, and otherwise useless imagery, they are trying to grow flowers in their remarks. That’s usually because the core words are sterile and incapable of nurturing the growth of important ideas. Great speakers come with the seeds of important ideas ready to grow not just in their speeches, but in the minds of their audiences.

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