In His Candidate’s Voice
The speech lit a fire. Meet Obama's editor.
By Richard Wolffe
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 7:22 PM ET Jan 6, 2008
Jon Favreau has the worst and the best job in political speechwriting. His boss is a best-
selling author who doesn't really need his help, having written the 2004 speech that catapulted
him onto the national stage. At the same time, the same boss also happens to be capable of
delivering a speech in ways that can give his audience the goosebumps.
But Barack Obama is more than a little busy campaigning across Iowa and New Hampshire right
now. So it was Favreau who led the team that wrote Obama's victory speech in Des Moines last
week—a moment that prompted the TV pundits to drop months of skepticism about Obama's candidacy
to make breathless comparisons with the Kennedy era.
For Favreau, a 26-year-old jean-clad staffer (who is no relation to the comedian of "Swingers"
fame) who worked in Obama's senate office, the contrast with the 2004 election could not be
starker.
Back then Jon Favreau had one of the worst jobs on the Kerry campaign. He was the kid who put
together "the audio clips"—the bundle of overnight stories that helped the campaign's senior
staff get up to speed on the latest radio news. A graduate of Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass.,
he had interned in Kerry's senate office and joined the campaign right out of college.
When Kerry's campaign showed signs of imploding—before recovering again in Iowa—Favreau was one
of the few people left in the office when they needed a new speechwriter. "They couldn't afford
to hire one," he recalled. "And they couldn't find anyone who wanted to come in when we were
about to lose to Dean. So I became deputy speechwriter, even though I had no previous
experience."
When Kerry lost in 2004, Favreau thought he was finished with politics. "After the Kerry
campaign, after all the backbiting and nastiness, my idealism and enthusiasm for politics was
crushed," he said. "I was grateful for the experience I got, but it was such a difficult
experience, along with losing, that I was done. It took Barack to rekindle that."
Obama's communications director, Robert Gibbs, called Favreau after Kerry's defeat and asked
him to talk to the newly installed senator. "We're looking for a speechwriter," Gibbs told
Favreau.
"Why?" asked Favreau.
"If there were 48 hours in a day, we wouldn't need a speechwriter," Gibbs said. "But he needs
to work with someone."
Favreau met with Obama and Gibbs in the Senate cafeteria in the Dirksen office building on
Capitol Hill on the senator's first day in his new job. Obama didn't want to know about
Favreau's résumé, but he did want to know about his motivation.
"What got you into politics, what got you interested?" he asked.
Favreau told him about the social service project he started in Worcester, defending the legal
rights of welfare recipients as the state tried to move people off the rolls and into work.
"What is your theory of speechwriting?" Obama asked.
"I have no theory," admitted Favreau. "But when I saw you at the convention, you basically told
a story about your life from beginning to end, and it was a story that fit with the larger
American narrative. People applauded not because you wrote an applause line but because you
touched something in the party and the country that people had not touched before. Democrats
haven't had that in a long time."
The pitch worked. Favreau and Obama rapidly found a relatively direct way to work with each
other. "What I do is to sit with him for half an hour," Favreau explains. "He talks and I type
everything he says. I reshape it, I write. He writes, he reshapes it. That's how we get a
finished product.
----read more----
URL:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/84756http://www.newsweek.com/id/84756/output/print