Prose for the Presidents: Robert Schlesinger

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TRYING TO WRITE A BOOK that covers nearly 80 years of presidential history in a single volume, while also ensuring that it's readable and engaging, seems like it would be a troubling task.

But Robert Schlesinger, son of the late historian and John F. Kennedy presidential aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr., has tackled that puzzle by relying on a voice — or rather, several voices: "White House Ghosts" tells the story of the speechwriters who served in every presidency from Franklin D. Roosevelt through George W. Bush.

Detailing the genesis of major and minor speeches in a presidency, Schlesinger's book — his first — also gives a brief synopsis of each president's term and the major historical events that defined a presidency.

Whether it's retelling stories from Harry S. Truman's 1948 whistle-stop train campaign across the country or the work that went in to writing Ronald Reagan's address at the Berlin Wall, Schlesinger provides quotidian details that provide deeper insight into how policy is made and expounded through speeches.

"In a way, each chapter is a mini-history of each presidency, using the speeches and speechwriting as the prism through which you look at it," he said.

Schlesinger said the book's creation was a three-year effort, but the notion of writing just such a work was planted long before that. His father was a member of the Judson Welliver Society for former presidential speechwriters and he would take Schlesinger to the group's dinners.

"Speechwriters from every administration dating back to Truman would get up and tell their 'war stories' — what it was like to work for their president and their experiences at the White House. ... After a few days of hearing these fascinating, entertaining stories, it occurred to me that somebody could write these down. And then it occurred to me — wait, I could write these down," Schlesinger said with a laugh.

While his original intent was to gather these stories and put them into print, as Schlesinger researched and wrote, he said, "It evolved into using the speechwriters and their stories as a way to give a deeper look into how presidents approach speeches and the bully pulpit, and how well they understand the importance of it."

As Schlesinger gathered information, he said he was often surprised by details he unearthed.

"I don't think there's anything in here that's controversial in that 'gossipy' sense, but I think there will be a few things in here that certainly surprise people."

One of the most unexpected was the origin of a pivotal line in George W. Bush's post-9/11 speech on Sept. 20, 2001. The president said, "Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done."

"The origin of that, which I think was revealed for the first time in 'White House Ghosts,' is it secretly came from a Clinton speechwriter, and [Bush] didn't know that — I think most people in the White House didn't know that," Schlesinger said.

The research Schlesinger had to undertake to unearth such little-known facts was monumental. Canvassing about 90 speechwriters, and the occasional high-level presidential aide, Schlesinger amassed 120 hours of interviews. He visited 10 presidential libraries, culling around 30,000 pages of documents in the process, and used the memoirs of individual speechwriters, including Peggy Noonan and William Safire, as well as modern mass media.

But one of the more personal discoveries Schlesinger made wasn't contained in the documents he found but rather in finding the documents themselves.

"My father was an historian and he wrote many more books than I could ever hope to, and did it much better than I could ever hope to, but talking to him about what he would do — he would have to go into the presidential library and get a document and literally copy it out by hand, whereas I would go in and have my digital camera and take a picture of the document and go to my laptop computer," Schlesinger said.

Considering the relative ease of writing his book using a computer, and the ability to search online archives for major newspapers and magazine, Schlesinger added, "I stand in awe of the work my father and other historians have done because there is so much that I was just able to do sitting in my house, typing away on my computer."

After dedicating three years to the study of presidential speechwriters, and his father's role as a Kennedy speechwriter, it begs the question, Has Schlesinger considered pursuing the profession, too?

"I wouldn't call it an aspiration, but I think any American citizen, if given the opportunity to work for a president — especially if a president came along that you particularly believed in — you'd have to give it a long, hard thought."

» Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW, Wed., 7 p.m., free; 202-364-1919. (Van Ness)

Written by Express contributor Katherine Silkaitis
Photo by Dominique Nabakov