Matthew Scully’s article in the current issue of the Atlantic, which I cited in my last post, also contains a rather endearing glimpse of President Bush trying to laugh his speechwriters out of their self-importance.

According to Mr. Scully, when the speechwriting team presented him with a draft that was particularly overwrought, Mr. Bush responded by reading it aloud with “the exaggerated solemnity of Edward Everett Hale or some other 19th-century orator, to laughter all around.”

I think Mr. Scully meant to say Edward Everett, rather than Edward Everett Hale. The latter was a Unitarian clergyman, best remembered as the author of the short story, “The Man Without a Country.” The former was one of America’s leading orators; the man who gave the “official” Gettysburg address in 1863.

It is often forgotten that Edward Everett was the principal speaker at the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery. President Lincoln had been invited to deliver just “a few appropriate remarks” after Everett had finished.

The people were expecting a major address from Everett, and they got one. He spoke for two hours.

It is my opinion that fledgling speechwriters should be required to read the whole of Everett’s speech –- and then read Lincoln’s, even if they’re already familiar with it. Such an exercise would teach them more about effective speechwriting than any book or seminar. At the very least, it would teach them to curb their literary pretensions before they made themselves ridiculous.

On second thought, maybe reading the whole of Everett’s address is unnecessary; it may even count as cruel and unusual punishment. But at the very least, they should read the first paragraph:

Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our poor brethren beneath our feet, it is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature. But the duty to which you have called me must be performed; grant me, I pray you, your indulgence and your sympathy.

Had enough?

Everett was a brilliant and cultivated man –- he was, in fact, the first American to receive a Ph.D. degree. He served as president of Harvard, minister plenipotentiary to Great Britain, governor of Massachusetts, and secretary of state under President Millard Fillmore. He was an old man, full of years and honors, when he spoke at Gettysburg.

Lincoln’s “few appropriate remarks” eclipsed his own exhaustive oration, and he knew it. Yet he was gracious enough to write to the president the day after, "I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near the central idea of the occasion in two hours, as you did in two minutes."

And Lincoln was gracious enough to reply: “In our respective parts yesterday, you could not have been excused to make a short address, nor I a long one. I am pleased to know that, in your judgment, the little I did say was not entirely a failure.”

It was an age of propriety, and Everett and Lincoln were both gentlemen. Still, their modesty and courtesy towards each other is a refreshing contrast to the unseemly squabble currently raging among President Bush’s speechwriters over who deserves credit for writing what. Mr. Bush should have chided them for their pomposity more often.