I didn’t have anything to do with his speech. Robinson and the other speechwriters put it to-gether, although The Man always put a lot of pure Halliday into everything he said. And he tied the speech into the afternoon press conference’s questions about the Iranian war in an ad-lib way that no speechwriter can prepare ahead of time:

“… the real issue is very clear. The basic question is survival. Survival for the way of life we have worked so hard to achieve. Survival for the democratic institutions that have made us a great and prosperous people. Survival for our children and our children’s children.

“We can no longer allow ourselves to be dependent on dwindling natural resources for the primary needs of our people. Nor need we be so dependent, when we have within our grasp—thanks to the dedication and perseverance of our nation’s scientists and engineers—new sources of energy that will eliminate forever the twin dangers that haunt us: resource depletion and pollution of the environment.

“It is my intention, and I am sure the Congress will agree, to push ahead for the development of new energy systems, such as the orbiting solar network and the laser-fusion generators, with all the vigor that we can command.”

They loved it. For the first time in their memories a President was treating them like an important national resource. It meant huge dollops of Federal money for the brainboys, sure. But more important to that audience on that night was the fact that the President, The Man himself, was saying to them, “We need you, we want you, we admire you.” They would have followed him anywhere, just as their fathers had followed Kennedy to the moon.

But he seemed stiff to me. Uncomfortable. He was reading the speech, something he almost never did. Only an insider would notice it, I figured, but he looked to me as if he weren’t really all that familiar with the speech.