The presidential speechwriter is a delicate, hybrid creature. Torn between desire for glory, as promised by The West Wing, and the anonymity required by the job, their ambition is perpetually sublimated. Not only will they never receive spontaneous applause upon entering a room, but most people will never even know who they are.
Enter Jon Meacham, the historian who elicits groans and eyerolls from professional speechwriters (myself included). On Friday, Axios reported that President Joe Biden had tried to hire Meacham for a White House position.
This news was not exactly shocking. Whenever Biden delivers what is deemed a “major speech,” Politico reports that Meacham helped write it. In the lead-up to this year’s State of the Union, multiple news stories mentioned that Jon Meacham was among a handful of advisers who hunkered down at Camp David with the president to help him with his remarks. Indeed, the only surprise about Meacham’s involvement was that Politico missed the scoop—CBS News broke the news.
Why does this rankle those of us who do this for a living?
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.
And as one former presidential speechwriter told me, “We’re not the Knights of the Round Table or anything, but there’s an unwritten code we follow.”
Of course, we can’t know for sure that Meacham is tacky enough to run to the Washington press corps whenever Biden calls him. But at the very least, he’s not doing much to downplay his involvement.
In a speech about voting rights last January, Biden posed a rhetorical question to members of Congress: “Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?” Politico later reported that Meacham had said almost the exact same thing at an event the week before. When asked about it, Meacham replied, “I was involved in the drafting of the speech and was happy to offer that language for the president to use if he wished.”
That isn’t the flex Meacham may think it is. For one thing, it is simply unethical to “offer” someone lines you’ve used in another context, thereby embarrassing the speaker and forcing a situation where you’re compelled to reveal yourself. But then again, Meacham is more comfortable with cribbed lines than the average speechwriter; he frequently uses a phrase from President Barack Obama’s second inaugural address—“from Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall”—without attribution.
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.
There is a rather astonishing guilelessness to his manner. What kind of speechwriter uses lines he gives to someone else—and then tells the press about it? What kind of speechwriter assists with a speech and then praises that speech on MSNBC—creating a blatant conflict of interest that will cost him his contributor contract?
Well, perhaps a non-speechwriter, that’s who. Meacham would probably be the first person to say he’s not a speechwriter, but rather another fraught title—historian. He can’t take a job at the White House—he’s too busy writing yet another biography of yet another Great Man.
But this is semantics. If you’re “involved in the drafting of the speech” and “happy to offer language,” then for all intents and purposes, you’re a speechwriter.
Another reason Meacham may not have taken the job, by the way, is that he doesn’t actually do the job. I’ve long suspected that, despite the coverage, Meacham is among the “men without pens” dreaded by all real speechwriters. These are the (often well-meaning) advisers who sit in speech meetings late in the process. They offer all kinds of ideas which, depending on their clout, might become directives from the president. When the meeting ends, the “men without pens” look at the speechwriter and say, “You got that? You good?” And then they walk out with a perfectly clear conscience and a free night, while the speechwriter is left to actually write the thing.
One senses this is the case with Meacham, based on the vagueness with which his contributions are described. In the press, it is often said that Meacham helped “craft” the speech, as though it’s a dreamcatcher made out of popsicle sticks. And, indeed, when I raised this with one former White House speechwriter, the response was unequivocal: “Meacham has leaked more stories about his speechwriting involvement to Politico than he’s written actual speeches.”
I don’t begrudge Biden’s relationship with Meacham. There must be some psychological comfort in having a presidential biographer as your ersatz hype man. He nods gravely at your predicament and, in his baritone drawl, offers overwrought lines comparing this moment to the gauzy past. He throws around pablum about how we’ve been here—wherever here is—before, and we can do this—whatever this is—again.
And perhaps the sum total of the Meacham package alleviates the awesome, awful weight of running the United States.
But there is a cost. While it’s hard to pinpoint his contributions, the ones that obviously came from him are at best unhelpful and at worst counterproductive. When Biden asked if legislators wanted to ally with Bull Connor by ignoring voting rights, Republicans clutched their pearls, shocked that Biden would liken them to a notorious racist. But they were, in fact, being let off the hook. Meacham—and, by extension, Biden—was eliding how racism was a force in the modern Republican Party long before Donald Trump came on the scene. The battle for the soul of America is not one-on-one combat between sanctified heroes like Dr. King and flashy villains like the KKK. It takes place at the level of systems and the many people who run them.
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. For decades, so-called mainstream Republicans, including Meacham’s own heroes Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, were complicit in allowing the worst elements of their party to gain power. Any understanding of the modern GOP must, at the very least, acknowledge this.
Despite Meacham’s shortcomings, and the disdain with which he is held by my speechwriting circles, he seems untouchable in Washington. Even serious historians seem to limit their critiques, probably because his book blurbs are worth their weight in gold. He has amassed a rather troubling amount of authority, becoming the kind of Washington fixture one hesitates to antagonize. It’s a good story—one about a flawed man who wields enormous power, one that Meacham himself might even write.