Example Stump Speech #1 (2 minutes 30 seconds—a bit too short)
Adapted from http://www.esl-lab.com/politics/politicssc1.htm
Good afternoon, ladies and gentleman. My name is John Smith, and I am running for a seat in the congress of the
United States.
Our country has come to a crossroad, and now you have the power to change the political landscape of America. As I
have said time and time again, if you elect me to be your face in congress, there are several things I will do to ensure
that your needs are met day in and day out across this land.
First of all, I plan on proposing new legislation that will invest more tax dollars in our public schools, not only to meet
the needs of today, but also to encourage developing minds for the future. Such new funding would be used to hire
and retain good teachers, build and renovate new schools, and give appropriate tax breaks to classroom teachers. To
accomplish this, I am proposing no new taxes increases, but rather a rechanneling of our existing tax revenue to meet
these demands. Now, the incumbent and his staff have been talking about this for years with little progress. I plan to
change all of this legislation now.
Second, economic development is on the minds of most of you, particularly with regard to our downtown area. For
many years, economic prosperity has been neglected by current government leaders, and I plan to change all of that.
I am proposing a city center revitalization project that would promote new businesses, new residential areas, and
new open green areas to bring people back to the heart of our city. Current leaders have allowed the new city to die,
preferring to invest in sport arenas in the outlying areas.
And third, I am proposing the construction of a light rail train system, to be built over the next decade, to meet the
growing demands of better and more efficient transportation for years to come. My opponent and his administration
have lacked the vision of long-term solutions, preferring to take a look and see approach. Such a short sighted stance
fails to consider the needs of future generations . . . our children and our grandchildren. My generation doesn't want
to be remembered for a road we build today, but for a more visionary transportation system for our future.
And finally, my opponent has cited my inexperience as a reason why you shouldn't vote for me. However, I am not a
career politician who has lost touch with the everyday needs and concerns of day-to-day people. My work as an
educator and business owner has given me a unique perspective on the pains and challenges you face.
If elected, I promise to give my all to my elected position and make sure your issues and concerns are fully addressed
at the local and national level.
Thank you.
Example Stump Speech #2 (appx. 4 min)
A Time For Choosing by Ronald Reagan (1964) http://reagan2020.us/speeches/A_Time_for_Choosing.asp
Given as a stump speech, at speaking engagements, and on a memorable night in 1964 in support of Barry
Goldwater's presidential campaign. This version is from that broadcast.
1964
I am going to talk of controversial things. I make no apology for this.
It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison
said, "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government."
This idea -- that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power -- is still the newest,
most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we
believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little
intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There
is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream--the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or
down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would
sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, "The real destroyer of the
liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits."
The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew
when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a
time for choosing.
Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little
more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does
nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.
Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being opposed to their
humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us
share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we're always "against," never "for" anything.
We are for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we
have accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem. However, we are against those entrusted with
this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of
the program means that we want to end payments....
We are for aiding our allies by sharing our material blessings with nations which share our fundamental beliefs, but
we are against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the
world.
We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that
wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him....
But we cannot have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of
achieving changes in our social structure....
Have we the courage and the will to face up to the immorality and discrimination of the progressive tax, and demand
a return to traditional proportionate taxation? . . . Today in our country the tax collector's share is 37 cents of every
dollar earned. Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp.
Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to
family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the
doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients.
Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. If some among
you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize
that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he'll eat you last.
If all of this seems like a great deal of trouble, think what's at stake. We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind
has known in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. There can be no security anywhere in the free world if
there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States. Those who ask us to trade our freedom for the soup
kitchen of the welfare state are architects of a policy of accommodation.
They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but
there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. Winston Churchill said
that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world,
we learn we are spirits--not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time
and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth,
or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children
and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.
Example Stump Speech #3 (5 minutes—longer end of limit)
Excerpts from “The Third-Party Stump Speech We Need” by Matt Miller, published in The Washington Post:
September 25, 2011 http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-third-party-stump-speech-we-need/2011/09/22/gIQAjzx8wK_print.html
This is one columnist’s stab at what a candidate might sound like if he or she were trying to appeal to the majority of
voters in the middle of the electorate who feel both parties are failing us.
My fellow alienated Americans:
How’s this for something different? I want to raise your taxes, cut spending on programs you like, and force you to
rethink how we run our schools, banks, armies, hospitals and elections. And I want you to cheer when I’m done.
Because if you embrace the “decade of renewal” I’m calling for, we’ll emerge with a more competitive, sustainable
and just America — the kind of America we all want to leave to our children.
I’m running for president as an independent because we need to change the debate if we’re going to change the
country. Neither of our two major parties has a strategy for solving our biggest problems; they have strategies for
winning elections, which isn’t the same thing. Democrats and Republicans will tell you, as I do, that they want to
make America competitive again, keep faith with our deepest values of fairness and opportunity, and fix our broken
political system. But the Democrats’ timid half-measures and the Republicans’ mindless anti-government creed can’t
begin to get us there. Both parties are prisoner to interest groups and ideological litmus tests that prevent them from
blending the best of liberal and conservative thinking. And neither party trusts you enough to lay out the facts and
explain the steps we need to take to truly fix things — in fact, their pollsters tell them that if they do, you’ll vote them
out.
Well, I’m happy to take on that job. I won’t give you the usual commentary about how we’re going to “save the
American Dream” or restore our supremacy as the sole superpower. The loss of our economic dominance was at
some point inevitable. We’ve had quite a run since World War II, when we were the only economy left standing, and
others were bound to start catching up.
We can make this an era of opportunities, not threats. But only if we think differently. When the changes reshaping
the global economy are dramatic, incremental responses won’t suffice. We need a bold agenda equal to the scale of
our challenges.
I believe that it will take several big domestic initiatives to get America back on track.
1. Fix the economy. Our economy is working off a massive hangover of debt that makes this recession and recovery
different from those we’ve gone through before. That means we need to make major moves to get jobs and growth
back to anything like what we think of as normal. It also means that, for a couple years, worries about the budget
deficit have to take a backseat to spurring growth. Fix the economy, and it’ll be easier to fix the budget.
2. Fix education. We’ve been tinkering at the edges when it comes to school improvement, because we’ve ignored
the most important question: Who should teach? While the world’s highest-performing school systems — those in
places like Singapore, Finland and South Korea — recruit their teachers from the top third of their graduating class,
we recruit ours from the middle and bottom thirds, especially for schools in poor neighborhoods. This “strategy” isn’t
working. Up through the 1970s, the quality of our teacher corps was in effect subsidized by discrimination, because
women and minorities didn’t have many other job opportunities. All that’s changed, but as career options have
multiplied for those who used to become teachers, salaries haven’t kept pace to attract top talent.
I see an America where our most talented young people flock to the classroom, not to Wall Street. They should see
teaching as the most exciting profession in the country — with top teachers and principals able to earn $150,000 a
year or more. To get there will take federal investment. We’ll need to stop condemning millions of poor children to
schools that can never get great teachers and principals because they’ve been shortchanged by a 19th century
system of local school finance that’s rigged against them. This investment should also help to fund universal
preschool from age 3, and longer school days and years, where we lag our major economic competitors.
3. Fix health care. We need to make sure every person in America has basic health coverage that doesn’t break the
bank. To achieve that, Democrats must accept a private insurance industry and Republicans must accept that some
people can’t afford decent policies on their own. This “grand bargain” is about liberals agreeing that innovation
shouldn’t be regulated out of U.S. health care and conservatives agreeing that justice has to be regulated into it. The
50 million uninsured may seem invisible, but today their ranks are equal to the combined populations of 25 states.
Would America turn its back on these 25 states if they all lacked basic health coverage? That is what we’ve been
doing for decades.
4. Rein in Wall Street. The banking system is now more concentrated than it was before the financial crisis. There are
two ways to avoid the “too big to fail” threat that still exists. We can limit the risks these big banks take — though
regulators don’t have a great track record of getting this right. The most important thing we can do, therefore, is
make sure big banks have enough capital to absorb any conceivable losses.
5. Fix our broken political system. We’ll never get where we need to go unless we deepen our democracy. I have
several proposals that go beyond the usual “small ball” in this terrain, so please keep an open mind.
Let’s enter everyone who votes in a national election into a lottery. Prizes could range from $10 million for a winner
to dozens of $1 million runners-up. For a modest cost, this would lift turnout from today’s pathetic 60 percent in
presidential years, and one-third in off-years, closer to 100 percent every time. Unorthodox? You bet. But we need to
shake things up.
Also, let’s lower the voting age to 15. From debt to schools, and climate to pensions, the distinctive feature of public
life today is a shocking disregard for the future. Yes, politicians blather on about “our children and grandchildren” all
the time – but when it comes to what they do, the future doesn’t have a vote. We should give our elected leaders a
reason not simply to praise children but to pander to them. A crusade to amend the constitution to lower the voting
age would inspire a generation that’s being robbed by the adults in power to enter the arena and raise its voice.
Can we win with this message and this agenda? That’s up to you. Republicans and Democrats have a longtime lock on
things. They’ve rigged the system when it comes to getting on the ballot and raising money.
In the end, in a democracy, we get the government we deserve, and I’m wagering most of us think we deserve
better. That iron law of politics still holds: Politicians will scramble to lead any parade that forms. Let’s get busy
organizing the right parade, and together we might just save the country.
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