Presidential Speech-Writing: From the New Deal to the Reagan Revolution and Beyond.

• Author: Einhorn, Lois
• Position: Book Review

Presidential Speech-Writing: From the New Deal to the Reagan Revolution and Beyond. Edited by Kurt Ritter and Martin J. Medhurst. College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2003; pp. x + 231. $39.95.

"All the great speakers were bad speakers at first." Ralph Waldo Emerson

The above words from Ralph Waldo Emerson (1860) provide one reason that presidents use ghostwriters: they need help with their speeches. Speechwriters possess enormous influence, affecting the ideas and words of the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Famed speechwriter Theodore Sorensen said, "Between speechwriting and phrasing and shading and policy making there's a very thin line indeed. The man who controls the pen also has a great deal of influence over what ultimately becomes presidential policy" (p. 8).

Up until now, most information about speechwriting has come from scattered anecdotes. Presidential Speech-Writing: From the New Deal to the Reagan Revolution and Beyond offers thorough scholarship. The authors include respected scholars in Presidential rhetoric. It is a rare pleasure, indeed, to read a book written by multiple authors of such consistently high quality. The book begins with a chapter unmasking ten myths about ghostwriting, myths that Martin J. Medhurst, one of the editors, argues plague scholarship about the field. In my opinion, this chapter constitutes one of the best available pieces in scholarship about speechwriting. Medhurst also wrote the last chapter, "Enduring Issues in Presidential Speechwriting." His two chapters provide a unifying framework for the book.

The book's purpose is to "begin the process of understanding better the complex role of speechwriting in the modern presidency (p. 14)." The book achieves its purpose with each of the next eight chapters covering a single modern president. Chapter 1, "Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Rhetorical Politics and Political Rhetorics," discusses how Roosevelt the president, his speechwriter(s), and his speech worked together rhetorically and then politically to create policies. The second chapter, "Harry S. Truman: From Whistle-Stops to the Halls of Congress," focuses on the close relationship between Truman and his writers and how this relationship allowed the public to see Truman as both a president and a person. The third chapter is titled "Dwight D. Eisenhower: The 1954 State of the Union Address as a Case Study in Presidential Speechwriting." The chapter examines in detail how...