Bush’s inaugural speech today was effective enough in hammering away at its point (Bush thinks “freedom” is good for the world, so he used the word 27 times this afternoon) and emphasizing the president’s faith (allusions to God were frequent). And to be sure, Mike Gerson wrote a well-worded, if not altogether memorable, speech.
But it’s worth noting that in the coming months and years, it will no longer be Gerson’s hand guiding Bush’s rhetoric. The change will, as David Kusnet explained this week in The New Republic, likely be a president with a harsher, less-refined tone.
…Gerson is moving up to a policy position, and he’s being replaced by William McGurn, a former columnist for The New York Post, chief editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal, senior editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review, and Washington bureau chief for National Review. To borrow a phrase from Gerson, McGurn most likely will “change the tone” of Bush’s speeches.
Reviewing McGurn’s work, it doesn’t take long before one realizes that this is a wordsmith with an axe to grind. Where Gerson is mild-mannered, McGurn is combative. While Gerson chooses baroque rhetoric, McGurn strikes a simple, though argumentative, tone. Both are talented, almost graceful, writers, but McGurn’s selection reflects a White House intention to pick up where it left off — and kick things up a notch.
Gerson made Bush sound like a preacher, but McGurn made his name as a polemicist. He’s a Catholic conservative, with a distinctive intellectual pedigree. Liberal Catholics such as E. J. Dionne and even some conservative Catholics such as Pat Buchanan have criticized capitalism’s excesses for weakening families and communities. But McGurn favors free trade, opposes even the most basic regulations of corporate conduct, and has harsh words for an American labor movement that the Catholic Church has historically supported. McGurn’s allies appear to be the late Treasury Secretary William Simon and the theologian Michael Novak, both of whom thought the U.S. Catholic Bishops were too favorably disposed toward the government’s role in regulating the economy and assisting the poor.
Such an approach has led McGurn to target some interesting policies for harsh criticism — including the minimum wage, job safety standards, environmental protection, and American opposition to child labor overseas. He also has little use for public institutions like the post office and public schools. McGurn has even criticized his virulently anti-abortion Catholic Church for not emphasizing the issue enough.
Kusnet concludes that “Gerson’s rhetoric soothed, McGurn’s will singe.” In other words, I hope you enjoyed the pleasant tone of today’s inaugural; you may not hear it again for a while.