Catherine Donaldson-Evans: The President's New Speech Writer

Catherine Donaldson-Evans, at FoxNews.com (5-10-05):

It's a White House job with an indisputable allure — one that didn't exist until the 20th century but has grown into a vital and respected position within the presidency.

Speechwriters are to the man in the Oval Office what screenwriters are to characters in a film. They're the ones who write the lines — in the appropriate voice, of course. After all, it's important to stay true to character or the words just won't sound right.

"The best bet is someone who understands the president and gives expressions that sound authentic in the president's voice," said historian Leo Ribuffo, a professor at George Washington University. "A good speechwriter finds a particularly eloquent way of saying what the president in his heart and mind wants to say."

Former Wall Street Journal editorial writer William McGurn (search) replaced Michael Gerson (search) recently as chief speechwriter for President Bush. Ever since McGurn was accepted into the administration for Bush's second term, White House watchers have been keenly looking for any changes in the president's presentations.

"My job is not the president's image. My job is to give him the words to explain his policy in his language, in his tone of voice, in his logic," McGurn said in an interview with FOXNews.com. "It's not my speech; it's the president's speech."

Over the years, much ado has been made about whether the speechwriter actually "makes the man" who sits in the Oval Office, in terms of creating his persona.

"In general, writers and journalists tend to overestimate the role that speechwriters play in shaping a president's image," said Jennifer Grossman (search), a former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush who is now director of the Dole Nutrition Institute.

Most experts agree that rather than the speechwriter making the man, it's usually the other way around — at least in the modern day.

"It's clear that the man makes the speechwriter," Ribuffo said. "The speechwriter is the employee and the president is the president. [The president has] the final say."...

Bush's predecessor was also very in touch with his own speeches, many of them done by top writer Michael Waldman (search). But President Bill Clinton was more inclined to make last-minute changes to his prose, and he was a master at improvisation, according to those close to him.

"He was incredibly adept at working through something very fast ... committing to memory the parts that he wanted to remember, and then extemporizing the other parts," one Clinton writer is quoted as saying in an Americanpresident.org article on the process.

Bush's father, on the other hand, was much more hands-off and distant. Grossman said she remembers the elder Bush reading one of her speeches — some remarks for a park opening — for the first time when he actually delivered it.

"He was not that involved [in the process]," said Grossman. "If it was Clinton, he would have been all over that."

The key to effective modern speechwriting, say experts, is not to pen literary prose but to write memorable catchphrases that will resonate.

"None of this is [Charles] Dickens and [Fyodor] Dostoevsky," said Ribuffo. "You come up with a decent line, you underscore points of emphasis."

Speechwriters and their craft are actually a fairly new trend, and presidents up through Woodrow Wilson — a historian and a writer by trade who was in office from 1913 to 1921— basically wrote their own remarks. The first official speechwriter was "literary clerk" Judson Welliver (search), who began working under President Warren G. Harding in March of 1921.

"Presidents didn't give many speeches until the early 20th century," Ribuffo said. "Wilson could be his own speechwriter not only because he was a writer but because he didn't have to give any speeches. Now it would just be impossible."...