This article brings together and contextualises some ostensibly disparate ‘readings’ of political speeches from
Australia and the United States, both good examples and not-so-good examples, to examine a characteristic that prevails in all public communication, and which is especially noticeable in politics. That characteristic is the nexus between the poetic and the political in all public language. In this case, it is grounded in a distinction
between political speakers-as-performers and the advisors who script many of their performances for them. The dynamics of this relationship are critical influences on the
more publicly explicit relationship between speakers and their audiences. Consequently, these dynamics are critical to our understanding of political discourse, and of
public communication more broadly.