Public Speaking Tricks Politicians Use (And How You Can Too)

Politicians are very well trained to sustain fire, heavy fire. They're trained to answer questions under pressure, so it's a joy to watch them.

Politics is all about rhetoric. Cicero said: “There's nothing sufficiently impossible that cannot be made possible through rhetoric.” What do they do very well? Because they're masters of rhetoric. They practice nonstop. Obama 8 years, 4,000 speeches. The second thing they do very well is they have a very, very clear message. The message is that one thing you want them to remember many years from now,

if you have a clear message, the chances of voters voting for you are going up. Like Tony Blair in the UK: The third way. What's the third way? It's like a mix between capitalism and socialism. Obama: Yes, we can. Trump: Make America great again. Kennedy: We choose to go to the moon. He said it three times in that famous, very famous moon beautiful speech.

Cicero: “Leave Rome.” He was saying to Catiline. You condense everything you're telling them in that one thing. And the other thing they do very, very well is they have a very clear structure. For instance, there's a very famous one used by everyone from Martin Luther King to whoever spoke last week: which is, first

you describe the problem that we have, then how are you going to solve it? Then you describe the situation with that solution, so you visualize, and then actions to get there. It's called the Monroe Motivated Sequence. And there's one thing they do very, very well, which is they use emotions in their speeches.

Emotions move people to action. Facts, we need to process, emotions just fly. And they use stories. They name individuals in the audience, like happens in every State of the Union speech in the U.S. now. They bring guests and they ask them to stand up and then they cheer them. They're using emotions. And emotions are very much linked to totemic words,