Bush's Muse Stands Accused

TM Note: In the time I worked in the Bush White House, the SOP for a presidential speech was for Gerson's office to canvass the NSC staff for ideas well in advance of the speech itself. The staff responded with talking points and ideas, which Gerson (or his minions) then stitched together into a coherent outline. The outline was then circulated via e-mail for further comment. After comments were collected, Gerson & co. wrote out a full text, which in turn was also vetted one or more times with the entire staff via e-mail. After the staff agreed, Gerson massaged the verbiage into short punchy statements, the kind that Bush feels comfortable with. The political staff, including Rove, and cabinet secretaries then had their cut at it, which involved more changes. In short, a major speech is a lengthy, complicated undertaking, with many contributors. It is often hard to sort out who the actual author of any speech is, since there are usually many small contributors.

Speeches Weren't His, Colleague Says

By Peter Baker
Washington Post

He has been hailed as the best White House speechwriter since Kennedy's Theodore Sorensen, the muse behind President Bush's most famous phrases, the moral conscience of the West Wing. But now Michael J. Gerson is accused by a former colleague of taking credit for words he did not write.

According to Matthew Scully, who worked with him for five years, Gerson is not the bard of Bushworld but rather a "self-publicizing" glory hog guilty of "foolish vanity," "sheer pettiness" and "credit hounding." In Scully's account, Gerson did not come up with the language that made him famous. "Few lines of note were written by Mike," Scully says, "and none at all that come to mind from the post-9/11 addresses -- not even 'axis of evil.' "

Scully's blistering portrait of one of the president's most prominent former advisers in the new issue of the Atlantic touched off an intense pushback by the White House yesterday as top Bush aides jumped to defend Gerson as the victim of a jealous associate. But the internecine feuding may signal something broader than pride of authorship. Scully's 10-page indictment represents the sort of classic Washington tell-all once rare in an administration known for discipline and loyalty.

As Bush heads toward the final months of a presidency mired in troubles at home and abroad, onetime insiders increasingly have turned on people or policies they had supported. Matthew Dowd, Bush's chief reelection strategist, has disavowed him. John R. Bolton, his former U.N. ambassador, has led the charge against key foreign policy decisions. Kenneth Adelman, a close friend of Vice President Cheney, has denounced what he calls the worst administration in modern times.

The rest is here.