San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Bush speechwriter an outspoken critic of Trump
Michael Gerson, who as George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter and one of his closest advisers composed many of the president’s signature addresses and wielded outsize influence on his domestic and foreign policies, and who later, as a regular columnist at the Washington Post, became a sharp critic of the Trump administration, died Thursday in Washington. He was 58.
Peter Wehner, a close friend and former colleague, said the death, at a hospital, was caused by complications of kidney cancer.
Like Bush, Gerson was an unabashed evangelical Christian who believed in the importance of faith in public life. And while the two men could not have been more different — Gerson was cerebral, reserved and fidgety; Bush was folksy, outgoing and relaxed — they shared an almost psychic connection, especially when it came to putting their shared values into words.
Rather than trying to bury Bush’s casual vocal mannerisms under flowery phrases, Gerson yoked them with concise, plain language, peppered with alliteration and religious references.
He wrote major speeches well ahead of time, often escaping the
bustle of the White House to write in a nearby Starbucks.
“People were in Washington passing by this guy who looks like a graduate student at George Washington, frantically scribbling on a pad and a pencil, and have no idea that he’s crafting words that will change the course of history,” Karl Rove, another of Bush’s closest advisers, said in a phone interview.
Gerson spent seven years with Bush, starting with his first presidential
campaign, in 1999. He wrote many of Bush’s most celebrated lines, like his 2000 denunciation of “the soft bigotry of low expectations” in education policy. When another speechwriter, David Frum, came up with the phrase the “axis of hatred” for the president’s 2002 State of the Union address, Gerson tweaked it to the more memorable “axis of evil.”
Gerson played an equally central role as a policy adviser, for which observers compared him to Theodore C. Sorensen, a speechwriter and close confidant of John F. Kennedy.
Before the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Gerson focused on domestic policy, in particular education and faith-based initiatives. After the attacks, he became more involved in foreign policy, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the push for democratic reform in the Middle East, as well as medical and economic assistance to Africa.
Gerson suffered a mild heart attack in December 2004, and although he was back on the job within two weeks, he decided to slow down.
He left the White House in June 2006. He wrote briefly for Newsweek before being named a twiceweekly columnist for The Washington Post, where he worked alongside one of his journalistic heroes, George F. Will.
Always a political centrist, Gerson was among Donald Trump’s earliest and loudest critics within the Republican Party. He used his column to unify fellow neverTrumpers and to excoriate those in the party who did not rise to his moral standard.
“Whatever his political future,” he wrote in June, Rep. Kevin McCarthy — who will most likely be the next speaker of the House —
“will be remembered as his generation’s most pathetic, unprincipled and contemptible political figure.”
Despite his Republican affiliation, Gerson was never much for partisan infighting, his political views often mixed ideas from the left and the right.
“I think the reality here is that scrubbing public discourse of religion or religious ideas would remove one of the main sources of social justice in our history,” Gerson told The New York Times in 2005. “Without an appeal to justice rooted in faith, there would have been no abolition movement, no civil rights movement, no prolife movement.”
Michael John Gerson was born May 15, 1964, in Belmar, N.J., to Michael Fred Gerson, and Betty (Buckler) Gerson, an artist. When Michael was 10, he, his parents and his brothers, Victor and Chris, moved to St. Louis.
His brothers survive him, as do his wife, Dawn (Miller) Gerson, and his sons, Michael and Nicholas.
His last column for the Post appeared on the morning of his death. In it, he reflected on the emotional pain of sending his younger son to college, and what being a father had taught him about life. “Parenthood offers many lessons in patience and sacrifice,” he wrote. “But ultimately, it is a lesson in humility. The very best thing about your life is a short stage in someone else’s story. And it is enough.”