Ex-White House writer accused of taking undue credit

Source: Houston Chronicle/Washington Post

Aug. 10, 2007, 11:47PM
Ex-White House writer accused of taking undue credit

By PETER BAKER
Washington Post

WASHINGTON — He has been hailed as the best White House speechwriter since Theodore Sorensen, the muse behind President Bush's most famous phrases. But now Michael Gerson is accused by a former colleague of taking credit for words he did not write.

According to Matthew Scully, who worked with him for five years, Gerson is a "self-publicizing" glory hog guilty of "foolish vanity," "sheer pettiness" and "credit hounding."

In Scully's account, Gerson did not come up with the language that made him famous. "Few lines of note were written by Mike," Scully says, "and none at all that come to mind from the post-9/11 addresses — not even 'axis of evil.' "

Scully's blistering portrait of one of the president's most prominent former advisers in the new issue of the Atlantic touched off an intense pushback by the White House Friday as top Bush aides jumped to defend Gerson.



Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5046143.html

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On edit, adding photo:

Michael Gerson

"Gerson has evolved into one of the most central figures in Bush’s inner circle, often considered among the three or four aids closest to the president. Beyond shaping the language of the Bush presidency, Gerson helped set its broader direction.” - The Washington Post

• Senior Policy Advisor to President George W. Bush
  
• Director of Presidential Speechwriting, 2000-2005
  
• Washington Post Op-Ed Columnist
  
• Senior Editor, US News and World Report

http://www.harrywalker.com/speakers_pitch.cfm?Spea_ID=970

Or at least I think he too credit for coming up with it on the WHYY/NPR show "Fresh Air" or TOTN in 2003 or so.

Same difference though, they are both Low-life POSs.

David Frum (he's Canadian, to my utter mortification) apparently did come up with that line. And his wife couldn't resist bragging about it.

They're all liars in my book.

Damn. Here's more.

-snip-

His renown landed him a senior fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations, a column in The Washington Post, a regular spot in Newsweek and a contract for a book on the future of conservatism. But Scully says it is an image puffed up by an unrelenting talent for self-promotion that ignored the contributions of two fellow speechwriters, Scully and John McConnell.

"The narrative that Mike Gerson presented to the world is a story of extravagant falsehood," Scully writes. "He has been held up for us in six years' worth of coddling profiles as the great, inspiring, and idealistic exception of the Bush White House. In reality, Mike's conduct is just the most familiar and depressing of Washington stories -- a history of self-seeking and media manipulation that is only more distasteful for being cast in such lofty terms."

-snip-

someone dishonest in the whitehouse inner circle. these guys would rape their own mother if they thought they could get blessed by the boy king

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200709/michael-gerson


Present at the Creation
(page 1 of 4)

The only person the speechwriter Michael Gerson made look better than President Bush was Michael Gerson. The shaping of a Washington reputation, as witnessed by a White House colleague

by Matthew Scully

...more...

This guy most certainly had to fit right in there. He seems so completely their kind of guy. Insanely self-centered, happy to overlook the truth at all times, driven only by seeking that which advances him.

Couldn't be more Republican.

Bush's '16 Words' Were False
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/35133/

Axis of evil? Fight them there so we don't have to fight them there? Stay the course? Turn the corner? Surge? These words, moronic catch phrases, are considered good, even great?

Good gawd, standards are even lower than I thought. Put this soft piece of dough boy to work out here in the West Texas oilfields for just one week. I can peel some of that poundage off his cheeks and teach him some real vocabulary.

A week, if he could do it without needing a pine box.

Muse? These stupid phrases compare with:

History will little note, nor long remember...

Ask not what...

Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts...

Open your polling places to all your people. Allow men and women to register and vote whatever the color of their skin...

We can no more and no less afford to condone evil in the man of capital than evil in the man of no capital...


OK, one more time. This little f**k is NOT a great speechwriter, even if he wrote every word that one of the most inarticulate, most unfeeling, most uncaring POSs to ever occupy the White House has uttered!

above the fold.

It must have even more significance than meets the eye.

The republican path to success: appearance over substance, and do whatever it takes to climb the power ladder. Screw those who do the actual work, and keep those bothersome facts well hidden from us. Does this dork look like yet another illegitimate rove offspring, or what?

Credit?

'Wash Post' Covers Blast at Gerson -- Man Behind Iraq's 'Mushroom Cloud'

By Greg Mitchell

Published: August 11, 2007 12:35 PM ET

NEW YORK Today's front-page story by Peter Baker in The Washington Post giving prominent play to an article in The Atlantic ripping a former Bush speechwriter might not seem so unusual except for the fact that the subject is now a columnist for that newspaper and sister publication, Newsweek. The Atlantic piece blasts Michael Gerson and was written by one of Gerson's former White House speechwriting colleagues, Matthew Scully.

The article suggests that Gerson took far too much credit for penning some of the most famous lines of the Bush presidency, but the Post does not mention that he apparently is still on the hook for one of the most egregious and influential phrases of all.

According to the recent book "Hubris" by Mike Isikoff and David Corn, Gerson played a central role in spinning one of the false “WMD scoops" in 2002 that The New York Times has tried to live down ever since. That article, by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, appeared on Sept. 7, 2002, six months before the invasion of Iraq, and was quickly cited by Vice President Cheney and other administration leaders.

Isikoff and Corn assert that it was Gerson who conceived the “sound bite” that Iraq’s alleged nuclear program could not be absolutely proven but “the first sign of a smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud.”

More:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003624790

He should be proud of his Republican PNAC triumphs.

It has been pure hell for everyone else.

in my view such phrases as 'axis of evil' are not things for which you 'take credit' in any case. You should take the blame for them.

Gerson writes those flowery, metaphorical passages that Bush likes because they make him seem thoughtful and statesmanlike. But Hughes knows that straightforward, simple phrases are less likely to trip Bush up when he's at the lectern. So she would go through the speeches and cross out Gerson's stuff ... then Gerson would try to get it put in again.

What got to me about all this, is that Bush seems so detached about his public face that he leaves it all up to others to decide what he's going to say. These are words that are supposed to reflect your sense of self, and the unique "voice" that each of us has. I realize that all politicans (and people in other lines of work, besides) rely on speechwriters ... but anyone who is educated, a decent communicator, and really cares about particular issues, should be at least able to put in a few words now and then. (If someone started out as a writer, like Gore, it's hard to keep him/her away from working on the drafts!)

* couldn't write a paragraph by himself if you gave him a month. He's completely ignorant. If he had to speak his own words he'd sound like Otis on Andy Griffith.