Hey, I Wrote That! But the President Said It — Out Loud!
By CAROLYN CURIEL
New York Times
White House speechwriting is glamorous, filled with state dinners, Oval Office meetings and no shortage of opportunities to prevail in heated internal debates that save democracy. At least that’s what you might conclude from recent books, films and television shows written by a growing number of former White House speechwriters.
The job really is a plum, even with the long, anxious hours spent before blank computer screens, moments that usually get lost or airbrushed, even in nonfiction versions. But speechwriters are witnesses to power, not wielders of power, and when they pull back the curtain, they tend to show themselves in predictably favorable ways.
The temptation can be irresistible in Washington, which feeds on back pats and proximity-to-power anecdotes. As I discovered when I wrote speeches for President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997, speechwriters are expected to avoid the spotlight and few are completely successful at it.
Yet, there’s never been a speechwriter tell-all quite like the one in the current issue of The Atlantic. In 10 pages of grievances he might as well have nailed to the White House door, Matthew Scully, one of President Bush’s former speechwriters, seeks to set right the doling out of credit for the president’s speeches. His displeasure centers on the attention given to Michael Gerson, who was chief speechwriter before becoming a policy adviser and then a magazine columnist.
Americans certainly have craved more transparency from the Bush White House, but this isn’t what they had in mind. Mr. Scully portrays Mr. Gerson as a credit-mongering poser who did not write the lines assigned to him and perhaps to history. Remember the “axis of evil” — Iraq, Iran and North Korea? Not Mr. Gerson’s. It was one-third Mr. Scully’s (who says he suggested the word “evil” in place of the word “hatred”), with the other two-thirds going to David Frum.
Overlooking, for a moment, why anyone would want to claim a line doomed to be associated forever with spectacularly bad policy choices, the scribe smackdown is an amazing look inside the White House, and how individuals are trying to extract what little personal victories they can from their time there.
(Continued here.)
New York Times
White House speechwriting is glamorous, filled with state dinners, Oval Office meetings and no shortage of opportunities to prevail in heated internal debates that save democracy. At least that’s what you might conclude from recent books, films and television shows written by a growing number of former White House speechwriters.
The job really is a plum, even with the long, anxious hours spent before blank computer screens, moments that usually get lost or airbrushed, even in nonfiction versions. But speechwriters are witnesses to power, not wielders of power, and when they pull back the curtain, they tend to show themselves in predictably favorable ways.
The temptation can be irresistible in Washington, which feeds on back pats and proximity-to-power anecdotes. As I discovered when I wrote speeches for President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997, speechwriters are expected to avoid the spotlight and few are completely successful at it.
Yet, there’s never been a speechwriter tell-all quite like the one in the current issue of The Atlantic. In 10 pages of grievances he might as well have nailed to the White House door, Matthew Scully, one of President Bush’s former speechwriters, seeks to set right the doling out of credit for the president’s speeches. His displeasure centers on the attention given to Michael Gerson, who was chief speechwriter before becoming a policy adviser and then a magazine columnist.
Americans certainly have craved more transparency from the Bush White House, but this isn’t what they had in mind. Mr. Scully portrays Mr. Gerson as a credit-mongering poser who did not write the lines assigned to him and perhaps to history. Remember the “axis of evil” — Iraq, Iran and North Korea? Not Mr. Gerson’s. It was one-third Mr. Scully’s (who says he suggested the word “evil” in place of the word “hatred”), with the other two-thirds going to David Frum.
Overlooking, for a moment, why anyone would want to claim a line doomed to be associated forever with spectacularly bad policy choices, the scribe smackdown is an amazing look inside the White House, and how individuals are trying to extract what little personal victories they can from their time there.
(Continued here.)
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