Sometimes I love it when I’m wrong, especially when something far more powerful and exciting happens.
I was wrong in my prediction that Kamala Harris would make another cameo on Day 3 of the DNC, but so what. Far more important was that we saw evidence of what I’ve been arguing separates the second-string from the all-star players in the world of inspirational leadership communication. VP nominee Tim Walz earned MVP on the field tonight.
As I've said from the beginning, a convention is the political world's version of a pep rally, intended to galvanize the team, the fans, and everyone else involved. It's not meant to be a standard speech or lecture; it needs to be heartfelt, relatable, persuasive, and most of all, inspiring.
The speech given by Walz was reminiscent of Al Pacino's famous locker room speech, “a game of inches,” in the 1999 movie Any Given Sunday. (If you haven’t seen it, you really must!)
In that scene, Pacino, playing an NFL coach, delivers a rousing halftime speech to a team that’s losing a championship game and feeling hopeless. I’d stake a bet that Walz modeled much of his speech after that scene—and if he did, it was a brilliant choice, because it worked on every level.
This was Walz’s first time giving a speech on such a massive stage, using a teleprompter, and addressing a nationwide audience. Yet, despite these challenges, he drew from his own background as a successful high school football coach—a role where knowing how to lead a pep rally is second nature—and brought the convention crowd to life. They picked the right person for the job.
His whole speech was very good, but it was the last two minutes and 15 seconds where he truly shined, driving home his points and catalyzing the kind of passionate crowd reaction that conventions are made for – and most speakers only dream of achieving.
Walz was 100% in the zone, fully present, and congruent in his words, voice, and body language. There wasn’t a shred of doubt that he believed and felt every word with his heart, mind, body, and spirit. The crowd fed off his energy, and by the end, they were completely hooked.
Here is the complete text of those last two minutes and 15 seconds, along with my commentary, to deconstruct what worked and why:
First, he assigned everyone a collective role:
“You might not know it, but I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this. But I have given a lot of pep talks. So let me finish with this, team.“
The audience immediately got into it, chanting “Coach! Coach! Coach!” Then he set the scene to help everyone imagine themselves in the role, feeling it, and sharing his vision, weaving the football metaphor through to the end:
“It’s the 4th quarter! We’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense, and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field. And boy do we have the right team.”
This primes the listener to look for reasons why they have the right team. Walz then filled in that information using the first syntactic refrain of his speech – and as we all know from Dr. King’s “I have a Dream” speech, refrains are one of the most powerful rhetorical devices available:
“Kamala Harris is tough. Kamala Harris is experienced, and Kamala Harris is ready.”
Next he helped the audience to see themselves as necessary team members and active participants in what needs to happen collectively to win the game. To do this, he used concrete imagery, and seamlessly connected the metaphor to real-world action steps, and used Refrain #2:
“Our job … for everyone watching, is to get in the trenches and do the blocking and tackling. One inch at a time. One yard at a time. One phone call at a time. One door knock at a time. One five-dollar donation at a time.”.
He then established the urgency:
“Look, we’ve got 76 days, that’s nothing. There’ll be time to sleep when you’re dead. We’re gonna leave it on the field.”
Then he paints the purpose, the reason, the ultimate vision of WHY they all need to do this work. He does this with Refrain #3:
“That’s how we’ll keep moving forward. That’s how we’ll turn the page on Donald Trump. That’s how we’ll build a country where workers come first, health care and housing are human rights, and the government stays the hell out of your bedroom. That’s how we make America a place where no child is left hungry. Where no community is left behind. Where nobody gets told they don’t belong. That’s how we’re gonna fight.”
Lastly—taking a page from Michelle Obama's playbook the night before—he built a crescendo in the roar of the crowd and closed with the final refrain #4, whipping the crowd into the kind of frenzy every keynote speaker—and Kamala Harris herself—should have been doing so far but didn't.
His final refrain, using the official campaign slogan, was (finally!) done as a true rally cry, Call-Response style with the audience (the audience’s response is in ALL CAPS):
“And as the next president of the United States always says, When we fight: WE WIN! When we fight: WE WIN! When we fight: WE WIN! Thank you, God bless!”
Michelle Obama herself would have been proud. Let’s see if Harris takes notes (I certainly did!), because that’s how it’s done, and she has one shot to deliver the whole thing tonight in Night 4’s finale.
Well done, Coach Walz. Well done!
