"Pulling A Gerson," Indeed

As noted here, Bushco adviser and speechwriter Michael Gerson (center in photo) has come under fire from colleague Matthew Scully for claiming speechwriting credit where it wasn’t deserved; Scully’s article in the September issue of The Atlantic claims as follows…

The narrative that Mike Gerson presented to the world is a story of extravagant falsehood. He has been held up for us in six years’ worth of coddling profiles as the great, inspiring, and idealistic exception of the Bush White House. In reality, Mike’s conduct is just the most familiar and depressing of Washington stories—a history of self- seeking and media manipulation that is only more distasteful for being cast in such lofty terms.

This Washington Post article, the headline piece from last Sunday, of course claims that Scully is flat wrong (after providing background on Scully’s charge - registration required, I think), noting the following…

The Scully article prompted a counteroffensive by Gerson allies. Peter Wehner, a former White House director of strategic initiatives who worked closely with Gerson, posted a defense of his friend on National Review Online and cited several instances when Gerson publicly credited (John) McConnell and Scully. He also quoted several citations from Gerson's upcoming book that praise the two writers. "The idea of Mike as a press-hungry, glory-claiming monster just doesn't square with reality," Wehner said by telephone.

White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove both called unsolicited yesterday to offer testimonials to Gerson's character. "In all my dealings with the speechwriting team," Rove said, "I saw a close-knit group of close friends do a fantastic job together, and Mike Gerson was one of the first always to . . . call attention to the contributions and skills of his colleagues."

Bolten said everyone in the White House understood that the speeches were joint products. But he noted: "Mike's role was a little bit different than the other two guys'. For one thing, he was the head of the team, and so the head of the team tends to get more of the credit. . . . Mike's role was unique and particularly strong because he served as a kind of counselor to the president as well."

I have to admit that, if I were seeking a testimonial defending myself, Karl Rove is the last person I would contact.

I realize that, when all is said and done, this is nothing but a Beltway hissy fit, but I think it is instructive in that it reveals Gerson as yet another opportunist masquerading as some holier-than-thou keeper of Bush’s alleged conscience (“alleged” being the operative word here).

One thing I absolutely have to agree with Scully on, though, is the fact that Gerson is portrayed by Bob Woodward as the one and only person calling the shots in the speechwriting department. This comes through loud and clear when you read “State of Denial” and witness the almost maddeningly deferential treatment Woodward gives to Gerson, as well as the supposed agonies by Bush’s counselor as he struggled to capture the most perfect possible prose, particularly for Dubya’s second inaugural speech (I sincerely wish I still had my copy of “State of Denial” so I could present Woodward’s account of the speech’s origination and its aftermath, with Henry Kissinger, among others, claiming at first to hate it, though he later embraced it).

This highly detailed post by the blogger Corrente utterly dissects the speech and notes the following, among many revealing points…

When I referred to the president's writers cooking up this inaugural address, I meant to suggest something more than flippant disrespect for their concotions; many of the points given to the President were carefully derived to answer specific persistent criticisms of George W's foreign policy, without having to mention any of them. So, in answer to the many critiques of the Bush neo/con policy of waging preventive wars, the president noted on Thursday that the task of spreading freedom around the world will not be primarily the "task of arms," and to preempt the likely and often made charge that the neocon/Bush vision is an imperial one that embraces a Pax Americana to be imposed on the world, ready or not, Mr. Bush asserted, "America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way." And how will this be accomplished?

We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.

Well, that's mighty white of you, Mr. Bush, but really now, when has any American post-WW 2 administration ever made such a pretence. Yes, America has often looked the other way when faced with the depredations of human rights carried on by allies deemed necessary at the time, often wrongly, but pretend the oppressed welcome their oppression? Who does this president think he is? Noam Chomsky? Howard Zinn? The closest I can come to such an attitude actually being expressed was that part of the human rights policy of the Reagan administration defined by Jeanne Kirkpatrick, which posited that traditional authoritarian rulers, like Somoza in Nicaragua, or the Argentine junta, were tolerable in the context of the cold war because such leaders, while not democratic and sometimes despotic, were a bulwark against Marxist insurgents, who would bring a far worse kind of anti-democratic regime than these ancient ones. But now I'm making an observation historical in nature, like the copious warnings about Bin Laden's desire to strike on American soil were historical in nature, according to our new Secretary of State to be (Rice), and we know what this administration does when faced with anything "historical." (The correct answer, "nothing." )

It’s important to point all this out, though, because the lofty words concocted by Gerson (or, more likely, the team of Gerson, Scully and McConnell) put lipstick on the proverbial pig in the sense that it masqueraded the intentions of our ruling criminal cabal behind lofty phrasing invoking patriotism, freedom, religion, self-reliance and justice.

And for that, not only Gerson, but Scully and O’Connell have much to answer for as traitors to their craft (though they are hardly alone on that score).

Update 8/17: Wank on Gerson, wank on (h/t Atrios).