A History of the Presidency

Presidents: A Reference History, (2002) by Henry F. Graff

The last president who wrote his own speeches was Woodrow Wilson, using a typewriter that he had used as a productive scholar in earlier years. Franklin Roosevelt leaned heavily on the poet Archibald MacLeish, the playwright Robert Sherwood, Judge Samuel I. Rosenman, and Harry Hopkins, who was often called the president's alter ego. Hopkins wrote FDR's third inaugural address. Still the many drafts of some of Roosevelt's speeches extant in the FDR Library at Hyde Park, New York, show how much the phrasing was in fact the president's. Roosevelt himself was the author of his powerful "day of infamy" speech delivered before Congress the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

Speechwriters often are the men and women who have the "passion for anonymity" that Franklin Roosevelt hoped to find in his intimates. Their identity becomes known, though, and deserves to be, for they are the makers in a substantial way of the nation's patriotic slogans and political maxims. Eisenhower, who was a superior writer himself, leaned nevertheless on several helpers including Edward Mead Earle, an historian who labored on Ike's first book, Crusade in Europe (1948), a memoir of the conquest of Nazi Germany. As chief executive, Eisenhower relied on a team, as all recent presidents have done. His included particularly Emmet John Hughes of Life magazine, and C. D. Jackson, a former editor of Time. Eisenhower's Farewell Address in January 1961 contained his memorable warning against the corrosive influence of the "military-industrial complex." The text was substantially the work of Malcolm C. Moos, a political scientist and newspaper editor, and a friend of Eisenhower's brother, Milton, then president of Johns Hopkins University. Theodore Sorensen, a Nebraska-born lawyer, was the principal author of some of President Kennedy's best speeches including his distinguished inaugural address. Kennedy's book, Profiles in Courage (1955), which earned him a Pulitzer Prize and was so influential in helping enlarge his reputation on the eve of his campaign for the presidency, was the product of skillful ghostwriting by Sorenson and others.

Richard Nixon was admirably served by William Safire, who later became a widely read political columnist for the New York Times. Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush used the talent of Peggy Noonan as their writer. Noonan was responsible most notably for Bush's promise not to raise taxes—"Read my Lips!"—that may have helped cost the president the election of 1992. George W. Bush has the services of Michael Gerson and Susan Hughes, who like their recent predecessors, have the ability to mesh their own style of writing with the speaking cadences as well as the thoughts of their principal.

Post-Presidencies

The country has been notably unable to make use of its former chief executives. The day a president leaves the office his executive power is gone and he becomes a has-been overnight. He reappears at the White House only at the invitation of the incumbent. The most publicized return of an ex-president followed Kennedy's call to Eisenhower to join him at Camp David, the presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland, after the failure of the ill-conceived Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. New in office, Kennedy was clearly hoping to have not only Eisenhower's counsel but also the prestige of one of the most popular presidents on his side. Herbert Hoover, however, did not set foot in the Oval Office throughout the twelve years that Franklin Roosevelt, his successor, occupied it. In 1945, when Harry Truman, who had succeeded FDR, invited Hoover, who happened to be in town, back to the White House, Hoover wept with amazement and pleasure.