BOGEY WITHOUT BACALL:

Bush Gets a New Voice for Second Term: Michael Gerson, the chief speechwriter during the president’s first term, is expected to be replaced by William McGurn of The Wall Street Journal. How will the change impact the White House message? (Tamara Lipper, 1/05/05, Newsweek)

President Bush will start his second term with many of his closest and longtime aides by his side including chief of staff Andrew Card, senior adviser Karl Rove and Communications Director Dan Bartlett. Although the visual picture will largely look the same after Jan. 20, Bush's words may sound very different. Michael Gerson, Bush's chief speechwriter, who has helped craft nearly every one of Bush's speeches during his first term, is leaving his job. Gerson is expected to move into the policy arena and be replaced as head speechwriter by Wall Street Journal editorial-page writer William McGurn. Gerson's job change cements the breakup of Bush's speechwriting team that included deputies John McConnell and Matthew Scully.

Gerson is one of the best-known presidential speechwriters, on par with Ronald Reagan's Peggy Noonan or John Kennedy's Theodore Sorenson. One sign that he was no ordinary speechwriter is the fact that instead of being housed, as speechwriters usually are, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Gerson shared an office suite with Bartlett on the second floor of the West Wing. A Christian evangelical and a former theology student, Gerson shares his boss's brand of compassionate conservatism. His trademark has been the religious language and Biblical references that populate Bush's speeches. To those who believe the president uses his speeches to send signals to conservative evangelicals, Gerson is the master of the code. He was a major proponent of Bush directly confronting America's shameful history of slavery on a visit to Senegal's Goree Island in 2003. With the House of Slaves as his backdrop, Bush delivered one of Gerson's most memorable speeches that included the passage, "In America, enslaved Africans learned the story of the exodus from Egypt and set their own hearts on a promised land of freedom. Enslaved Africans discovered a suffering Savior and found he was more like themselves than their masters."

Bush's speeches will not only be missing Gerson's religious undertones. His move will radically alter the speechwriting process. Gerson, McConnell and Scully came together during Bush's 2000 campaign. Since their earliest days in the White House the three men sat in one room writing together entire speech texts from the opening "Thank you" to the closing "God bless America.” Bush even nicknamed the speechwriters "triune," a word that means three in one and also refers to the trinity. Scully, who left the White House late last summer, had wanted to leave earlier but was persuaded to stay on through the election to keep the team intact. According to a former administration official, the president has grown so familiar with the Gerson-headed speechwriting process he demands all of his prepared texts mirror that style, organization and tone.

Because the changes have not yet been announced, White House officials refused to comment on the record about them. But insiders think Gerson will stay on in an elevated role involving policy and message.

Hopefully he finished the State of the Union first.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 5, 2005 7:46 PM