WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 — Most Americans think of President Bush as the commander in chief. His speechwriters have another name for him: the editor in chief.
“He always wants it to be logical and straightforward,” William McGurn, the chief White House speechwriter, said in a hurried telephone interview on Friday, just four days before the State of the Union address. “That’s his big obsession. I always say I’ve been edited by Bill Buckley at the National Review, Bob Bartley at The Wall Street Journal. And the president is the strictest editor, the most line by line.”
Mr. McGurn, a former Journal editorial writer, and his team of about a half-dozen writers and researchers have had more than their usual exposure to presidential editing this winter. The address on Tuesday comes 13 days after Mr. Bush’s prime-time speech on his new strategy in Iraq, one that even some Republicans have criticized as uninspiring, a rhetorical dud.
For the people who get paid to put words in the president’s mouth, the pressure is on.
“My job is to explain the president’s policy and put it forward, to state his priorities in his voice,” Mr. McGurn said. “So we do what he wants, not what someone may say on the cable news.”
I find this rather ironic, considering how badly the president is now polling with both today's WaPost poll, and the January 20, 2007 Newsweek poll. How much more does the President Bush have to explain his policy? The American people already know President Bush's policies, and they have soundly rejected his policies--as reflective of his sinking poll numbers. No amount of PR-spin from McGurn, his staff writers, or even the Editor-in-Chief is going to convince the American people that the president is right. It is not going to help him with the poll numbers.
Then again, the SOTU speech is not for the American people. It is really for President Bush himself--to keep his surge plan going, to keep the Iraq war going so that Bush can drop the entire mess on the 2008 president and preserve his legacy. This speech is for the 30 percent of radical right-wingnuts who will blindly follow Bush over the cliff as their drinking spiked Kool-Aid. This speech is for the PNAC neocons, who still dream of American imperialism in the Middle East. This speech is for the Religious Right, whose dream of outlawing abortion, forcing intelligent design to be taught in American science classes, demand that school prayer be held in public schools, outlawing gay marriages, and a whole host of radical, religious, conservative values, are to be shoved down America's throat. This is a partisan speech--a divisive speech--to be delivered for the most selfish reasons.
What do you expect from a spoiled brat?
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