Bush speechwriter on 9/11 and columnist
Michael Gerson — a speechwriter for President George W. Bush who helped craft messages of grief and resolve after 9/11 then explored conservative politics and faith as a Washington Post columnist — died Thursday at a hospital in Washington. He was 58.
The cause of death was complications from cancer, said Peter Wehner, a longtime friend and former colleague.
After years of working as a writer for conservative and evangelical leaders, including Prison Fellowship Ministries founder and Watergate felon Charles Colson, Gerson joined the Bush campaign in 1999. Gerson, an evangelical Christian, wrote with an eye toward religious and moral imagery, and that approach melded well with Bush’s personality as a leader open about his own Christian faith.
Gerson’s work and bonds with Bush drew comparisons to other powerful White House partnerships, such as John F. Kennedy’s with his speechwriter and adviser Ted Sorensen and Ronald Reagan’s with aide Peggy Noonan. Conservative commentator William Kristol told The Post in 2006 that Gerson “might have had more influence than any other White
House staffer who wasn’t chief of staff or national security adviser” in modern times.
“Mike was substantively influential, not just a wordsmith, not just a crafter of language for other people’s policies, but he influenced policy itself,” Kristol said.
As an impromptu speaker, Bush had a reputation for gaffes and mangling phrases, but Gerson provided him with memorable flights of oratory, such as the pledge to end “the soft bigotry of low expectations” in the education of low-income and minority students and the description of democracy — in Bush’s first inaugural address — as a “seed upon the wind, taking root in many nations.” As a Bush confidant and head of the speechwriting team, he also encouraged such memorable turns of phrase as “axis of evil,” which Bush used to explain the administration’s hawkish posture as it started long and costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the chaotic months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, . Gerson became the key craftsman articulating what became known as the Bush Doctrine — which advocated preemptive strikes against potential terrorists and other perceived threats.
With his team of writers, he began shaping Bush’s tone and tenor, including addresses at Washington National Cathedral on Sept. 14 and to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 20.
“Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution,” Bush told Congress. “Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.”
Gerson and Bush found common ground in the use of religious themes of higher power and light vs. darkness, seeing such rhetoric as part of other historic struggles, including the abolitionist movement.
“It is a real mistake to try to secularize American political discourse,” Gerson told NPR in 2006. “It removes one of the primary sources of visions of justice in American history.”
After a heart attack in December 2004, Gerson stepped back from the stresses of speechwriting and took on policy-advisory roles full time. Gerson left the White House in 2006, with Bush’s backing, to pursue outside policy work and writing.
In 1990, Gerson married the former Dawn Soon Miller. In addition to his wife, survivors include two sons and two brothers.
In a holiday-season column in 2021, Gerson quoted lines from a Sylvia Plath poem and examined his fight with cancer to arrive at a single uplifting thought: “Hope wins.”