Workaday White House Speechwriter vs. Credit-Hogging Dilettante Historian

My old man used to say to his self-conscious teenagers, “You wouldn’t worry so much about what people thought of you if you realized how seldom they do.”

That came to mind when I read former President Obama speechwriter Sarada Peri’s Slate piece Friday, on now “annoying” professional speechwriters find it when the historian Jon Meacham indiscreetly or even perhaps somewhat boastfully lets leak his contributions to some of President Biden’s speeches.

On the list of most people’s problems, “annoyed speechwriters” ranks pretty low.

But as the executive director of the Professional Speechwriters Association, not low on mine.

So let’s see what’s got Peri perturbed.

“Why does this rankle those of us who do this for a living?” she asks rhetorically. “One reason is that Meacham seems to brazenly, almost reflexively, break the first rule of speechwriting: Don’t take credit. That’s the job. Speechwriters are, first and foremost, ghostwriters. The final product is a work of collaboration that ultimately belongs to the speaker. If you want credit for the speech, run for office. Deliver it yourself.”

That’s an old-school attitude that I respect, but don’t entirely subscribe to myself. I tend to think speechwriters should be exactly as quiet about their contribution as their client wants them to be and, as they think it benefits the public dialogue for them to be. I must say I was surprised at Peri’s strictness on this count, coming as she does from an Obama White House speechwriting office that has begotten several memoirs, most recently Obama chief speechwriter Cody Keenan’s deeply detailed blow-by-blow of the drafting of several important Obama speeches. Peri promoted that book enthusiastically when it came out last October, tweeting that it’s “a gripping, intimate look at life inside the White House.”

It seems to me Peri’s more genuine compliant about Meacham lies in this graph: “While some recent presidential speechwriters may have amassed an air of glamour, the life of a real presidential speechwriter—or any speechwriter, really—is rather workmanlike. It is grueling, often thankless work, vacillating wildly from dispiriting to exhilarating at any given moment. Which is why Meacham, gliding about Washington with an above-the-fray arrogance and the gumption to hoard credit, chafes.”

Well, OK, but Peri’s envy is not Meacham’s problem, is it? Just as it’s not Peri’s nor her fellow White House speechwriting alums’ fault that every non-White House speechwriter in the world has vastly less status than they do. Write three speeches in the West Wing, and you’re more in demand than someone who has written extensively for three Fortune 50 CEOs, a Governor and a Secretary of State. That’s nonsense, but it’s reality. And I’ve never heard a speechwriter complain about it.

I would say that speechwriters publicly complaining about their powerlessness and relative obscurity is not a good look, if I thought anyone other than speechwriters was actually looking. This is insider stuff, for speechwriting conferences, and hotel bars.

Hey: I agree that Jon Meacham is annoying. And I imagine that White House speechwriters resent his contributions. In my preview of the making of last month’s State of the Union Address, I quoted The New York Times on “the historian Jon Meacham, who is called upon to add historical heft, usually toward the end of the proceedings.” My comment: “Oh, brother.” What fun it must be to White House speechwriters who have been hammering away at the speech for months to have Meacham come in with a shovel of “historical heft.” I also can’t believe Meacham himself doesn’t see the absurdity in his commenting on the historical import of Biden presidential rhetoric that he himself helped write. As one speechwriter tells me, “Meacham should keep his mouth shut.” Yes, he should. 

But ultimately, the only person whose feeling about all this that matters is Joe Biden, who doesn’t seem to lament Meacham’s loose lips. And I do understand why Biden might be leaning on Meacham  for his special understanding of how oratory has influenced American history. Have you heard Meacham’s podcast, “It Was Said,” which breaks down famous speeches from history—by context, intent, execution and impact? Peri doesn’t mention it in her piece, but it’s pretty great, and it separates Meacham from other historians. 

Peri’s broadest complaint is that Meacham’s “mawkish binary of history as a fight between our darker impulses and ‘the better angels of our nature’ doesn’t accurately describe the moment we’re in.” Perhaps not, but then President Biden—like his 45 predecessors—does not usually set out, in his speeches, to “accurately describe the moment we’re in.” He sets out to portray the current moment as a fight between our darker impulses and the better angels of our nature. And so it makes a lot of sense that he’s turning to a historian like Meacham for extra ammo.

And the speechwriters of the world? They’ll get over it. In fact, this is the first that many of them have heard about it.