Matthew Scully's long, bitter takedown of Michael Gerson, his former boss in the White House speechwriting shop, is a great read. The portrait of Gerson as a credit-hogging, manipulative climber is fun enough, but the article is more interesting for providing such an extended tour of the craft of speechwriting is carried out. Bureaucracy is fascinating, dammit!
But where Scully is furious with Gerson's constant attempts to court glory and befriend reporters, I think Scully gets closer to the truth towards the article's end, when he writes:
Harder to explain than one man's foolish vanity is the gullibility of those who indulged him. Mike had the benefit, I suppose, of presenting an easy positive story to reporters generally hostile to President Bush. If only to keep up appearances or reward a faithful source, reporters had to find a happier angle on the administration. They needed something nice to say, and some color to go with it, and why not start with the bookish evangelical?
If Michel Gerson did not exist, the White House press corps would have had to invent him. Gerson appeared to possess the qualities that the Bush White House laid claim to, but jarringly lacked. He is genuinely devout. Heart-on-his-sleeve compassionate. Eloquent. Thoughtful. And reporters who wanted to construct a narrative of decency at the core of this administration had to search beyond Rove's role as the cynical tactician, or Cheney's profile as a malevolent alarmist, or even Bush's role as a disengaged idealist. They needed Gerson, whispering in the president's ear, and demonstrating the character values that, for so long, the press corps let stand in for good governance. Gerson may have been a climber, and he may have courted the press, but his campaign only succeeded because his profile was so perfectly suited to the media's needs.
Why they were so desperate to invent this Michael Gerson character to justify the actions of a bad administration is, sadly, an article that has yet to be written.
