When you’ve been in politics some 40 years, as Carter and I have, you’ve heard a few great speeches and many bad ones. And written some of both (we like to think). Which must be why the N&O’s John Drescher turned to us for his column on “what makes a good speech.”

John was reacting to a great speech at a Triangle YMCA by football-player-turned-farmer Jason Brown and an awful one by physician Paul Farmer at Duke’s commencement. John wrote, “Farmer spoke for about 40 minutes. It seemed longer.”

Well, there’s your problem. Nobody gives a good 40-minute speech. Of course, there is an exception that proves the rule: Bill Clinton.

Carter and I reviewed the basics: brevity, clarity, knowing your audience and talking to them, not reading at them. Carter had a real insight into what distinguishes a great speaker: an authentic voice. “It’s an ephemeral thing to describe. Reagan had a voice that was all him. When you hear one, you know it. Churchill was the same way. A great speaker has a voice like a writer does.”

Asked to name the three best speakers among North Carolinians, Carter named Senator Jesse Helms, Billy Graham and Ira David Wood. My three were Governor Jim Hunt (you can tell who we worked for), Jim Valvano and Betty McCain.

Why McCain? Because she had the single best line ever in a commencement speech, to my daughter’s graduating class at St. Mary’s: “You think this is a small school? The high school I went to was so small we had to use the same car for driver’s ed and sex ed.”