When it comes to aides, staffers, and high-ranking officials, the president has had a reverse Midas touch. People who had good reputations go to work for Bush, and then leave humiliated. Those with stature going into Bush White House, leave with none. It’s as if the president’s inner circle is some kind of credibility-sapping black hole.
The exception to this rule has always been speechwriter Michael Gerson, who I’ve long perceived as the only “loyal Bushie” to come out of the West Wing better off than when he arrived. Gerson developed a reputation as an excellent writer with a keen appreciation for policy. His speeches were deceitful and misguided, but that’s not the point — those speeches were well written. Upon his departure in June 2006, USA Today honored Gerson as “the man whose words helped steady the nation” Hyperbolic, to be sure, but testament to his popularity.
Gerson parlayed his White House tenure into a nice gig (columnist for the Washington Post) and enhanced reputation. He even has a new book coming out, “Heroic Conservatism,” which will probably enhance his stature even further.
This, of course, has apparently sent Matthew Scully, Gerson’s speechwriting colleague in the Bush White House, over the edge. Scully not only doesn’t recognize the man Gerson claims to be, he’s written a jaw-dropping piece for The Atlantic in which he seeks to destroy the Myth of Gerson entirely.
It’s hard to excerpt — you’ll really have to read the whole thing — but Scully’s portrait of Gerson points to a shameless self-promoter, who leaked fabricated stories about his exaggerated genius to the media in order to make himself look better. Gerson, Scully said, was a vain, borderline-plagiarist. Bruce Bartlett’s summary is spot on:
Judging by Scully’s account, no bigger phony than Gerson ever walked the corridors of the White House–and that’s saying a lot. Apparently, Gerson spent just about every waking hour trying to figure out how to take credit for anything good that came out of the West Wing and had any number of gullible accomplices in the press corps that were happy to oblige him in his effort … Another reason I’m grateful to Scully is that I could never understand why the Washington Post gave Gerson a column when he clearly has nothing interesting to say about anything. Apparently, it is payback for all the leaks Gerson was spilling to the Post all these years. Unfortunately, the Post erred by not also hiring the speechwriters who did all the work Gerson took credit for as well.
There’s one anecdote, though, that’s too good not to mention.
It’s not exactly about Gerson, but it offers an interesting insight into the White House operation.
It was a rare day when Karl Rove, Josh Bolten, Dan Bartlett, or someone else didn’t open the door to see what we were all howling about, or to add to the fun with their own routines and Hill Country antics. Even on the dreariest days — slogging through a tax, education, or Chamber of Commerce speech — Mike and John and I endlessly entertained one another, with all the running jokes and gags you’d expect three guys in a room to develop.
Education speeches in particular — with their endlessly complicated programs and slightly puffed-up theories, none of which we could ever explain quite to the satisfaction of our policy people — were always good for a laugh. As John observed in late 2003, around draft 20 in the typically chaotic revising of an education speech, “We’ve taken the country to war with less hassle than this.”
What a bunch of cut-ups. Ana Marie Cox translates the joke: “‘Ha-ha! Those idiots bought our war and we didn’t even work that hard on selling it!’ To be fair, I think they’d have had a much easier time hawking their education policy if Judy Miller had been on the beat.”
Anyway, read the article. I’d always bought into the notion that Gerson really was a gifted wordsmith, and Scully’s piece was a real eye-opener.