State of the Union

Here it comes…the annual Presidential Display of Verbal Nonsense.

Yes, it is the State of the Union speech; and a speech that he didn’t write. He will stand in front of the nation and mouth the words that are prepared for him, all the while trying to impart some illusion of sincerity by appropriate facial expressions and the proper intonation.

The speech itself will have been written by a team, headed by (get this!-) a Director of Speech Writing. Those who do the writing are known as Deputy Directors of Speech Writing. And like all good bureaucrats, they have Senior Writers working for them.

Here are some comments from Matthew Scully, special assistant to the president and deputy director of speechwriting for President Bush until last August.

“I always like to explain things," President Bush reminded his speechwriters last year as we prepared to draft the State of the Union address. In the matter of Iraq, he said, as we went over the outline in the Oval Office, "We have to explain why we came to a reasonable conclusion." It was a demanding assignment, since our forces in Iraq had yet to find weapons of mass destruction.”

Scully further explains- “The first great challenge of a State of the Union address is common to every annual presidential ritual - to freshen it up-”
-In the case of the State of the Union, Mike Gerson (Senior Writer) could always be counted on to go off into the wilderness, and return with some intricate outline to vary the structure, and a fresh batch of big themes to carry us forward. Thanks in part to these visions; the president's major addresses present a running argument, each carrying forward the themes of the last. For instance, the central idea of the second inaugural address - that by spreading freedom we also spread peace - can be found taking shape in the speech to the joint meeting of Congress on Sept. 20, 2001.

You should visit the website (below) for a detailed explanation of just how this speech is written.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/02/opinion/02scully.html?oref=login&th

For myself, I will avoid the television tonight, as I am not a fan of forced drama and bad acting, followed by endless hours of theatre review, all provided by the “talking heads” of network television.

A thought: Am I asking too much of our president to ask him to write his own words?