The Man Who Puts Words in the President's Mouth Defends His Style

[emad]

New York Times
The Man Who Puts Words in the President's Mouth Defends His Style
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: January 17, 2005

Michael Gerson, President Bush's 40-year-old speechwriter, had a mild heart attack in mid-December that put him in intensive care for two days. The timing could not have been worse for Mr. Gerson: it was the height of speechwriting season, and Mr. Bush's second Inaugural Address and 2005 State of the Union address were menacingly close.

So two short weeks later, Mr. Gerson was back in the office full time to deal with a boss who has never taken a hands-off approach to his speechwriters' prose.

As recently as late last week, Mr. Gerson said, the president was making significant revisions almost daily to final drafts of the Inaugural Address. Mr. Bush does not write large portions of his speeches himself, but he does like to aggressively prune and to second- and third-guess.

"He reads it in the evening and he'll usually have changes the next day," Mr. Gerson said in an interview on his cellphone on Friday as he paced the halls in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next door to the White House. "He will take out whole sentences that he thinks are repetitive or interrupt the flow when he's reading it aloud. And then he'll want some explanatory material added."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/17/politics/17letter.html

[no_hypocrisy]

1. "Elements of Style" by *:

1. No words over two syllables.
2. Must sound like a hard sell for cereal.
3. Can't appear more fancy than a speech in front of the Kiwanis.
4. One token word for mispronunciation in order to get the self-depreciating chuckle into the speech.
5. Not necessary that content is beyond comprehension.

[NYC]

2. Aggressively prune?

That means Bush cuts out the words he can't pronounce -- with the exception of "nuclear".

As for interrupting the flow, Bush has to leave room for all those "uh" and other valuable syllables.

He prunes sentences so that people can no longer decipher the meaning once the English grammar has been removed.

Edit: What others refer to as "blue pencil" must for Bush be "blue crayon".

[searchingforlight]

3. I believe this is a HUGE piece of fiction.

You know he takes it to someone for editing. We all know he doesn't like to read and we know the trouble he has with words.

[ComerPerro]

4. I could write Bush's speeches post-op and bed-ridden

I could do it in my sleep. They are terrible, and are so full of bullshit that it makes me want to vomit. All you have to do is take tired cliches and steal inspirational-sounding phrases from movies. Then, top it off by repeating a lie until it becomes true.

And, above all, pray to God that Bush doesn't decide to do some ad-libbing...