Today’s New York Times carried a story about the travails of chief White House speechwriter Bill McGurn and his fellow scribes as they labored long and hard on the text of President Bush’s State of the Union Message.
Naturally, I sympathize with the frustrations and long hours that White House speechwriters must endure, but I have to say that I laughed out loud at the article’s penultimate paragraph, which declared:
“For his part, Mr. McGurn is a bit tired after a month of 12-hour days and 6:45 a.m. phone calls, and in need of a decent meal. In one eight-day stretch after Christmas, he and fellow writers ate breakfast, lunch and dinner every day in the White House mess, except when it was closed, as it was for dinner on New Year’s Day.”
So –- one can’t get a decent meal at the White House mess? Is that what the Times reporter is saying? I never had any complaints about the menu any time that I was lucky enough to dine there. Perhaps the quality of the food has gone down since then.
Must be tough, having to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner every day at the White House mess!
Bush’s speechwriters should be glad that they are working for the younger rather than the elder George Bush. One of the first things the elder Bush did on becoming president was to revoke the speechwriters’ mess privileges. And this was done not only publicly, but ostentatiously. The Bush team wanted to emphasize the break with the previous administration. Ronald Reagan was the “great communicator;” George H.W. Bush was going to be the “great administrator.” Henceforth, speechwriters were to be regarded as supernumeraries.
Ironically, after making such a show of downgrading the speechwriters, the Bush team later tried to blame the failure of Bush’s reelection campaign on the hapless wordsmiths. Irony indeed: the speechwriters never suspected that they were so important until they were scapegoated.
I don’t know if Bill Clinton’s speechwriters had mess privileges or not. I do recall hearing one of them tell how Mr. Clinton once introduced him to a visitor as “the man who typed my State of the Union message. So I don’t imagine that speechwriters got a lot of respect during the Clinton years, either.
Yes, the hours are long and the frustrations are many for White House speechwriters. But I’m not going to feel too sorry for them –- even if they have to rough it at the White House mess.
