The year 1976 was a special time to be in the White House, especially for one Cal State Long Beach professor.
The nation was celebrating its bicentennial and President Gerald Ford was busy giving speeches about the Revolutionary War and the greatness of the Declaration of Independence. Craig R. Smith had a front row seat to all the action as full-time speechwriter for the president.
“[President Ford] gave a speech that I wrote there and it was very moving for me to hear him talk about how the American Army survived at Valley Forge through that winter and went on to victory,” Smith said.
Smith, a communications professor at CSULB, has received numerous awards throughout his career, including outstanding professor from the National Speaker Association. Smith has recently been named the recipient of the Douglas W. Ehninger Award for lifetime achievement in the field of rhetorical studies.
“I have studied rhetorical theory for 40 years now, and to cap your career with an award like this makes it the most meaningful,” Smith said.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle defined rhetoric as finding, in any given case, the available means for persuasion. In communication studies, the concentration of analysis is on style, emotional appeal, credibility of the speaker, logical arguments, the evidence the speaker uses and the fallacies in reasoning, Smith said.
“I think the most important questions that we decide in our lives are based on probabilities,” Smith said. “So, we have to persuade ourselves and then persuade others to those things — anything from deciding to buy a car to getting married, or a nation deciding to go to war.”
Smith has published more than 60 articles on the subject and 15 books, the latest entitled “Rhetoric and Human Consciousness: A History.”
Smith’s job as speechwriter for President Ford allowed him to put what he teaches into practice.
“Working for the president of the United States is a high honor,” Smith said. “It is terribly intimidating, but it’s absolutely thrilling when the words you wrote for the president come out of his mouth to the nation.”
Smith also serves as the director for the Center for First Amendment Studies that he brought to CSULB in 1988. The center offers research papers on their website about First Amendment issues. They also work with local community groups to provide information about the First Amendment and they typically release a book per year on First Amendment topics.
“I think the First Amendment is the foundation amendment,” Smith said. “If you are not free to speak, you don’t have anything else. If you’re not free to write what you want, you don’t have anything else. If you don’t have freedom of religion, you don’t have anything else. Without it, democracies just don’t function.”
With all of these accomplishments under his belt, Smith is still hungry to explore new topics. He and his colleagues are writing a book about how the government silences opposition. Smith said the topic may be controversial.
He said, “There are a lot of things that people don’t know that the government has done to quash free speech and it is important for people to know these things so they don’t happen again.”
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