A good friend is leaving the House of Commons for a run at the B.C. legislature. Here’s her farewell speech from April 2; in it, you’ll find a lot of what made her such a great MP:

Ms. Dawn Black (New Westminster—Coquitlam, NDP):

Mr. Speaker, this might be my last opportunity to stand and speak as a member of Parliament since the House will adjourn tomorrow. I want to announce that I will be resigning my seat on April 13.

You and I were first elected, Mr. Speaker, in the 1988 election, although I must say I am rather envious of your win-loss record. I have had a couple of losses along the way and you have maintained your seat since 1988.

It has been an enormous pleasure and honour to serve the people of New Westminster, Burnaby, Coquitlam and Port Moody.

When I was first elected, Ed Broadbent was the leader of my party, and he remains a very close friend and confidante.

I was a member when my party elected the first woman to lead a national party in our country and was and still am so proud to have served with Audrey McLaughlin. She is a women of tremendous courage and determination. She has also continued to provide me with encouragement and support over the years.

I have been very honoured to be part of an NDP caucus, led by the member for Toronto—Danforth. His boundless energy, ability to think outside the box and to take the road less travelled has been an inspiration not only to me but also many Canadians.

I am proud of my record. I introduced a private member’s bill, which was adopted by the House, to declare December 6 a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.

I was part of a committee that I suggested do a groundbreaking study on all of the issues around breast cancer, which led to real changes in the treatment of women with that disease and their families.

I brought forward a private member’s bill on anti-stalking legislation, which the government of the day passed into law. That is now part of the Criminal Code of Canada.

I have a couple of other private members’ bills on the books right now on body armour and non-returnable warrants. I invite the government side to take them over and present them as its own legislation.

Hon. James Moore: Ask for unanimous consent.

Ms. Dawn Black: I may ask for unanimous consent.

The highlight for me of the 39th Parliament was an opportunity to travel to Afghanistan with the defence committee to meet with the men and women who were serving in the Canadian Forces there. I was very impressed by their determination, skill, high level of training and their commitment to Canada and the job they were being asked to do.

The defence committee wrote a report on the war in Afghanistan. I, it will not be a surprise to most members, presented a dissenting opinion on that report. I believe that dissenting report is as valid today as it was two years ago when I wrote it.

I mention these achievements because too often Canadians think there is no effective role for an opposition member of Parliament. Some think members in opposition cannot achieve anything. It is very important for Canadians to know that all of us in this place can and do achieve real results for ordinary Canadians.

Canadians only see question period reflected in the news cycle, so they can be forgiven for thinking that Parliament is a nasty kind of sandlot filled with testosterone-driven egos. The truth is that all of us on both sides of the House have more in common than what divides us. We disagree on some fundamental policy issues, and that is an important part of our democratic system.

I hold my values as a social democrat very strongly, just as others in this place hold different views. I only wish that we could debate these differences with a bit more civility.

I urge all my colleagues to tone down the insults and abuse. What has been hurled back and forth across the floor has often lacked wit and wisdom. This place has become less civil over the past few years and I believe that this is evident in the increasing cynicism all of us hear from voters when we go door to door. It is, ultimately, dangerous for our democratic system.

There is one other issue I must draw attention to, and that is the glacial rate of progress toward gender equality in this place. The first woman MP, Agnes Macphail, was elected in 1921. This was a breakthrough for my grandmother’s generation, my mother was not even born then.

Now in 2009, women represent just over 22% of the House of Commons. We have hovered around 20% for the last 15 years. At this rate of progress, and I have used the most up-to-date scientific calculations to determine this, it will take until December 4, 2100 to reach parity. That is darn near 100 years from now, and it is simply not good enough.

I urge all political parties in the House to get with it and nominate more women. After all, we are more than 50% of the population of our country. It is well past time. Our Parliament must more accurately reflect the Canadian population in every way.

I want to conclude with a few words of thanks. I am trying not to get emotional. I want to thank the Clerk, Audrey O’Brien, for all the assistance she has given me. It is a huge privilege for me to serve in a Parliament with the first woman to ever hold this prestigious and very important position.

I want to thank my staff in the constituency office, and all members know about this, because they are the front line people. They are the ones who face the sometimes angry constituents, the people who have issues around some of the government policies. They work so hard and I want thank them for all the work they have done for me over the years.

I want to thank to my staff on Parliament Hill, without whom I know I would not have been nearly as successful as I have been over the last few years.

I also want to thank some of the support people on the Hill: the drivers, the food services people, the postal workers, the messengers, the clerks, the interpreters, the security guards and the pages. All of these wonderful people make it possible for all of us to do our jobs. I know I could not have been nearly as effective without their help.

I want to thank my husband, Peter, who has sometimes taken abuse because of the road I have travelled and my choice to run for political office. I know at one point, while canvassing for me on the doorstep, one angry man said to him “What kind of man are you? How do you allow your wife to do such a thing?” I know that has been tough, and it has been hard to have me away. I appreciate his support all these years.

I want to thank my sons, Matthew, David and Stuart, their terrific partners and my seven very brilliant grandchildren.

There are some things I will not miss. I will not miss the weekly flights from B.C. I will not miss the jet lag. However, there is much I will miss here. I will miss my colleagues on both sides of the House. I will miss the work, especially at committee where great things are sometimes accomplished.

I wish all of my hon. colleagues in this place great wisdom and great compassion as they face the crisis that is affecting Canadians today. Finally, I want to thank the voters of New Westminster—Coquitlam for putting their faith and confidence in me.

At the very end of a post about professional public speaking (more about Tod’s public-speaking series of posts soon – they’re fantastic, and this one is actually hilarious), Tod Maffin offers a piece of advice that just about every Mac user should take to heart:

Mac machines by default make a chirping sound each time you hit a volume key. You can turn that off by going to System Preferences, then Sound, then uncheck “Play feedbackwhen volume is changed.” Really, the last thing you need is a speaker-destroying chirp that glues your audience to the ceiling. Lousy client relations.

It sounds pretty distracting and unprofessional in a client meeting, too. Or in the middle of a podcast recording (I’ve heard plenty of those). I’ve just made the settings change – I encourage you to go do the same if you’re the kind of person who takes their MacBook out in public.

Jokes are supposed to be a public speaker’s best friend. They break the ice, put the audience at their ease, and make you look a little more warm and human.

And so they do – when they work.

When they don’t… well, look at Sen. John McCain in last night’s presidential debate.

Discussing health insurance, McCain joked about gold-plated plans that cover hair transplants, suggesting he might need one himself. The joke bombed with the crowd (I expect to see the moment up soon on YouTube with chirping cricket sounds mixed in).

But what was really interesting was the reaction of those Ohio independent voters that CNN had rounded up, who were dial-testing the debate. (Dial-testing allows focus group participants to respond instantly to what they’re hearing, turning the knob up for things they like and down for things they don’t.) McCain’s score plunged, and it took a while to recover.

Why? Maybe partly the delivery – he stepped on any laughter the line might have received. But probably because for most people, health insurance isn’t about hair transplants; it’s about things like cancer screening, broken bones and whether you can afford to get your child the care she or he needs.

His joke trivialized something that is deadly serious to the audience he needed to reach. It widened the gap between speaker and audience – exactly the opposite of what it should have done.

So the lesson for speakers and speechwriters: not all jokes are created equal. And even the funniest hair transplant line McCain could have delivered would likely have been wrong for that moment. A successful joke has to be funny, relevant and appropriate – and you should cut any one-liner that doesn’t meet that test.

(I have a few more tips on jokes and speeches, especially the opening joke, over here. Sen. McCain, for the sake of bipartisanship and my aversion to cringing, you’re welcome to crib.)

Cliff Atkinson is one of the few reasons that I haven’t unleashed a presentation-software-deletion virus on the world (the fact that I lack the programming chops to pull it off is another one) (this free e-book is a third) (the lovely Keynote is a fourth). His book and companion web site are two must-reads for anyone hoping to break free of delivering boring, godawful slide shows.

Now you can get a little of that Cliff Atkinson goodness in a free one-hour webinar over at Microsoft’s site, starting at 9 a.m. tomorrow. You’ll need to register here:

Invite your friends and join me tomorrow for this week’s webinar, a special no-cost public event sponsored by Microsoft Office Online. The webinar takes place at 9am Pacific Time on June 12, 2008 and is titled “How to Create a 15-Minute Presentation (with Graphics!) in One Hour.”  Inspired by member webinars at BBP Online, here’s the session description:

If you are in a time crunch and have to get a presentation done, you need an approach that will get you results quickly. Join us for this advanced-level webcast with bestselling author Cliff Atkinson, and learn the tips and tricks you need to complete a Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 presentation in record time. As the clock ticks down from 60 to zero minutes, see how you can use Cliff’s book Beyond Bullet Points (Microsoft Press, 2007) to structure your story, identify your key points, and create the slides you need to get amazing results.

I’m going to save the screen capture I took of the Democratic Party’s home page a few minutes ago.

And the next time I read some columnist pontificating about how the outcome of an election is a foregone conclusion…or hear a talking head pronouncing someone’s victory to be “inevitable”…or talk to a campaign operative who tells me their candidate is absolutely assured of winning, and I’d better be on the victorious side…

…I’m going to pull this up on my screen, and laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

Nobody in politics has a crystal ball. And the people who prognosticate with the highest confidence, at the highest volume, are the biggest bluffers in the business.

Hurray for unpredictability. It’s a key ingredient of hope.

Back in the 1993 federal election, then-Prime Minister Kim Campbell was quoted as saying that elections are no time to discuss serious issues. (If memory serves, her comment was actually much more nuanced, but was dumbed down to that pithy, sensational and damaging phrase – which kinda proved her point.)

Last week, Barack Obama challenged that idea – with a scope and, yes, audacity that was nothing short of breathtaking – in a speech that seemed entirely out of place in a North American election. Chances are you’ve heard or read excerpts, but as a speechwriter, I can’t urge you strongly enough to read and watch the whole thing.

This was not a speech made for sound bites, although it has one or two choice ones. (“I can no more disown him than…”) Instead of rejecting nuance, this speech embraces it – as any honest, positive contribution to the conversation about a complex and highly charged topic must.

There is a passage of particular interest to communicators, where he delivers a challenge that may prove even more difficult to meet than that of America’s racial divide: a call for a civil, mature discussion of the issue.

We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

And he continues, suggesting that the dialogue can be about issues that actually make a difference to people – and that this is what Americans really want.

Heady stuff. Heady enough that I wondered if commentators in the media – who are usually quick to condemn the politics of sound bites and cheap attacks, while consigning any politician who fails to deliver them to thorough obscurity – would rise to it.

The early metrics aren’t promising. Those fine folks at TechPresident used online service TagCrowd to create tag clouds of Obama’s speech and of the “editorial responses of the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal“.

Here’s Obama:

And here are America’s flagship newspapers:

Micah Sifry concludes the TechPresident post this way:

At a first glance, it seems as if our editorial guides can’t help but view the speech as a political ploy, first and foremost. Considering how rarely politicians choose to grapple in depth with hard and divisive issues like race, it’s hard to see how that is the best frame through which to view it. But that is the frame our media system uses to evaluate political speeches, no?

Personally, I think Obama’s speech is a great test of the following question: Are we still living in the age of sound-bite politics, where the sharp attack line, even taken out of context, can become the “truth” of an event or a person thanks to the amplifying and distorting effects of broadcast media? Or are we entering the age of sound-blast politics, where a 37-minute speech can actually be watched, read, and digested by millions of people (a million views already on YouTube!) using the abundant spaces of the internet–and the themes and meanings they encounter and absorb will be not about the “politics” of a speech, but its actual content?

In other words, are we entering an age when politicians can be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character?

Maybe, and I really want to think so – but that age is going to take a while to arrive. I don’t expect a single speech, no matter how great, to change decades of ingrained behaviour. It will take a determination by politicians to consistently respond with courage, substance and integrity to challenges such as the one Obama faced with Rev. Wright’s comments – and a willingness by leaders in the media to stop complaining about politicians who lack substance on Monday and punishing those who don’t on Tuesday.

But when the week starts with Fox News asking if Bill Richardson is playing the race card by growing a beard, the situation doesn’t look all that hopeful.

Hey, y’all: my speechwriting page on Squidoo has just been named Lens of the Day!

Drop by and have a gander – I’ve added a bunch of tips there, including tip#7, “Talk about the squirrel”:

I used to work as a tour guide in Ottawa. Busloads of seniors would come in from south of the border, and I’d show them the sights… including Rideau Hall, the residence of Canada’s Governor General.

The first few times I did it, I’d be waxing rhapsodic at the front of the bus about the Governor General’s role in Canadian politics, and how the stone fence surrounding Rideau Hall was a public works project during the Great Depression… and not a person would be listening.

Instead, to a person, the tourists’ noses and cameras would be pressed against the windows on the opposite side of the bus. They were oohing and aahing over something completely different.

Black squirrels.

Apparently, the squirrels where my tourists came from are all gray. A black squirrel? That was something to write home about… and a lot more interesting than my disquisition on 1930’s-era employment policy.

The first few times this happened, I tried to chivvy my audience back to the other side of the bus. A few folks were kind enough to tear themselves away so as not to hurt the feelings of the nice young man with the microphone, but even they kept sneaking looks at the rodents.

Eventually it occurred to me that I should actually talk about the damn squirrels. At first I just joked about them, trying to redirect my audience’s attention, but ultimately I had to actually address the squirrel itself – to tell them about how this was a particular strain of the eastern gray squirrel they were used to, and how they tend to be found mainly in cities, where there are fewer predators.

Chances are your audience has a squirrel on its mind, too. If you want to keep their attention, you need to address it (even if it’s just a passing reference so they won’t keep wondering if you’ll ever talk about it).

Speechwriting: Writing to be heard on Squidoo

In the midst of this great GuideStar piece on writing fundraising letters comes a sentence that galvanized me:

• Beginning sentences with “and”- one of my favorite connectors that encourages readers to keep reading (actually “listening” because that’s the way we talk with friends).

Listening. That’s why conversational writing, be it in blog posts, speeches or direct mail, has such power. It’s the way you offer to be heard as – if not a friend – then at least as someone closer than an anonymous behind-the-scenes copywriter or marketer. And when people choose to accept that offer, they’re opening the door to a closer relationship.