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That's easy -- Toby Ziegler and Sam Seaborn write the president's speeches. Oh wait, that's on The West Wing. But the TV show is pretty accurate in that regard -- the president has a staff of professional writers to craft speeches for him. According to two former presidential speechwriters, Ray Price and Ted Sorensen, most U.S. presidents had help writing their speeches. Even George Washington sought editorial assistance from Alexander Hamilton. But Calvin Coolidge was the first president to hire an official, full-time speechwriter. Since then, every president has had an Office of Speechwriting. President George W. Bush's speechwriting
staff is comprised Director of Speechwriting Michael Gerson, deputy writers Matthew Scully and Peter Wehner, and David Frum, who specializes in economic speeches. Sometimes the president's other staff and advisors also have a say in speech texts. How much does the president contribute to his own speeches? That varies according to the president and the speech. Ray Price says his former boss, President Richard Nixon, didn't always use written speeches. Nixon was a seasoned debater and felt comfortable without a prepared text. President John F. Kennedy made Ted Sorensen's job easy because of Kennedy's own eloquence. Even if the president
doesn't write his own text, he influences the speech. As Michael Gerson said about one of the speeches he and his team wrote for Bush: "The entire speech has [Bush's] fingerprints. Our concern was not to write a good speech but to write a good speech that is also his speech."
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