The Speechwriter Read Online Free PDF Page B

written wasn’t right. “Again.”
    After experiencing a few seconds of what looked likeunbearable frustration, he summoned the words to explain what galled him. “I would never say, ‘the extent to which.’”
    â€œSo let’s say something different.”
    â€œBut my point is, you’ve got to know your audience. The mechanic in Greenwood doesn’t go around talking about things being ‘the extent for which.’”
    â€œThe extent towhich.”
    â€œWhatever. My point is, always know your audience. I’ll work on this tonight.”
    When the op-ed came back to us, it began, “As the old saying goes, the first step to getting out of a hole is to quit digging. I think this certainly applies to the mountain of debt now facing our country.”
    â€œIs it a hole, or is it a mountain?” I asked after the governor had walked out. I must have developed a reputation for pedantry over matters of language because Aaron asked me to shut up.
    It helped to tell my wife about these episodes. We laughed at them. But they made me unhappy.

4
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    MY LIST
    I sat at my desk, ready to hear about how another of my op-eds was all wrong. This time the governor himself didn’t tell me; Aaron did. He had just come from a “hand-off.” The governor would call senior staff into his office and “hand off” miscellaneous pieces of paper to them—articles ripped from newspapers, business cards, his own handwritten notes, drafts of letters or op-eds, sometimes nothing more than a tiny yellow sticky note. He had usually written something on each of them: “Show to R” or “When jobs #s?” or just “?” In the case of written products generated by our office, he would sometimes draw a ∆ at the top. This meant he wanted it changed but couldn’t say how or why. Once he gave me a shred of paper that looked as if it had been ripped from an envelope; he’d scribbled the words“kraut gdp” on it. This meant he wanted me to find an op-ed in which the columnist Charles Krauthammer discussed world debt relative to GDP, or something like that. Another time I saw him give Paul, the head of the policy office, a draft of a policy letter written by one of our staffers; across the top of it the governor had written the words “Written by 6 year old?”
    Staffers came out of hand-offs holding a pile of papers, trying to remember what the governor wanted done about each one. Aaron pulled from his pile an op-ed I’d written the day before. “He hated this. He said it was too strident, and he wants more ‘cool stuff.’ Sorry, man. Oh yeah, and he said he would never say—let’s see, where is it?—right here. He would never say ‘And it’s easy to see why.’ I don’t know why that hacked him off so bad.”
    I sat staring blankly at my draft—the governor had scrawled a giant question mark across the first page—wondering how dispensable I was. I had been there only a few months. Later in the day Aaron motioned for me to step into the conference room. It felt ominous. He asked me how things were going and other questions one might ask a fairly recent hire. Then he said, “The governor’s thinking of bringing in a new writer.”
    I just sat there trying to look placid.
    â€œIt’s not that you’re a bad writer.”
    â€œI know,” I snapped. Then, more slowly, “I know that I’m not a bad writer.”
    It was just that he wasn’t sure I could write like him. You might be a great writer, Aaron explained, but if you can’t write like he wants you to, you’re gone. He had told the governor to hold off and give me more time.
    â€œThanks, Aaron.”
    I brooded about this for a day or two and then discussed it with my wife. This time I gave real thought to her counsel to write badly. One of the governor’s op-eds published about this