The bookshelves of his West Wing office were bare as Michael Gerson, best known as the author of President Bush’s most memorable speeches, satdown to reflect on his last day at the White House.
Asked on Wednesday to name his favorite presidential address, he said without hesitation, “the cathedral speech.” He was referring to the National Cathedral in Washington, where Bush gave a speech on Sept. 14, 2001, that began: “We are here in the middle hour of our grief.”
“There are a few times, not many, but a few times that it’s really clear that the words matter to the country,” Gerson told The Examiner. “Because if we’d done a bad job, it would have hurt the country.
“We had a kind of difficult task, which was to comfort, inspire and inform — all at the same time. You know, telling people about an entirely new kind of war that we found ourselves suddenly in the middle of. Starting to preview what was going to come next and how difficult it was going to be.
“The cathedral was a speech that was done while there were still people with pictures of loved ones walking around New York. Their wounds were unbelievably raw. And so that’s where we start the speech, ‘in the middle hour of our grief.’ ”
To this day, whenever Gerson returns to the cathedral, he remembers exactly where he sat as Bush delivered the speech during a solemn service that also included an emotional rendition of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
Gerson and his fellow speechwriters at the White House only had a single day to draft the speech, with Bush’s help. But there was even less preparation for what would become perhaps the president’s most iconic utterance at Ground Zero later on Sept. 14.
“I can hear you!” Bush called out to New York City hard hats who were struggling to dig survivors from the rubble of the World Trade Center. “The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”
It was a searing memory for Gerson.
“For me, that was emblematic of something very important about presidential communication,” he said. “It was a revelation of presidential character. It was entirely spontaneous.”
Taken together, the remarks in Washington and New York were the president’s best-remembered utterances.
“Both of them were really important,” Gerson said. “The eloquence of the words at the cathedral really mattered for the country. But then he went immediately that afternoon and said they’re going to hear from us all.
“And that’s why I think he will be remembered as a tremendously inspiring and effective war president,” Gerson said.
The terrorist attacks transformed Gerson’s life.
“For months after that — it’s hard to remember now — but almost every presidential speech was televised live,” he recalled. “We had completely thrown out the presidential schedule. Everything was done one day or two days ahead. And we were running on pure adrenaline.
“And then, a couple months later, I just remember feeling how tired I was, how emotional I was. I remember crying for the first time. You know, when all of a sudden there’s a little more space to reflect a little bit.”
There were other memorable moments, including a seminal address to Congress on Sept. 20, 2001, the so-called “axis of evil” speech, delivered as the 2002 State of the Union address.
But perhaps more lasting will be the president’s second inaugural, which Gerson began drafting just days after Bush defeated Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in the presidential election of 2004. Outsiders expected Bush to trim his rhetorical sails and sound a note of humility that would reflect the ongoing difficulties in Iraq.
But Bush had other ideas.
“Immediately after a Cabinet meeting, the president came over to me and said we’ve got to start working on the second inaugural and I want it to be the freedom speech,” Gerson said. “And he very much wanted to swing for the fences.”
As a result, Bush surprised many by audaciously announcing a “goal of ending tyranny in our world.”
“That speech was the culmination of the foreign policy approaches and doctrines that developed after 9-11,” Gerson explained. “The president wanted it to be kind of the Bush Doctrine written in stone.”
Though public approval of Bush has declined during his second term, Gerson said history will judge him more kindly with the passage of years.
“I think the president’s going to be seen as one of the most important historical figures of modern times,” he said. “And I think it’s because of the era of new threats that the president is taking seriously, even at some political cost.”
Though Bush often jokes about his own tendency to mangle the English language, Gerson said he has “a very sophisticated knowledge of presidential rhetoric.”
“He really understands the power of words in leadership,” he said. “When we’re working up a major speech, he has a lot of early input; he’s very hands-on; he edits vigorously. We go into TelePrompTer practice and he’ll edit in that process, because things won’t sound right, or they’re not good for the ear.”
Gerson said other presidents have treated speechwriters as mere “advertising copy writers” who had no say in policy. Bush, by contrast, has made Gerson one of his closest advisers on such issues as eradicating AIDS, malaria and genocide.
“For me, that’s been a great thing,” he said. “It’s brought me close to the center of things because he takes the words so seriously. It’s been a great privilege to be a part of that.”
Gerson said he’s leaving now because he’s been with Bush since 1999 and wants to try something different. He will take some time off, perhaps join a think tank and write a book.
“You know, Henry Kissinger talked about how the White House is a place where you expend intellectual capital and not accumulate it,” he said. “And so I want to accumulate a little intellectual capital.”
