Wretch

I don't know if this is anything other than a failed attempt to bring out the humor in an incident that former Bush speech writer Mike Scully found funny. But it sounds to me like yet more evidence that the White House never took the idea of going to war seriously at all.

Even on the dreariest days—slogging through a tax, education, or Chamber of Commerce speech—Mike [Gerson] and John [McConnell] and I endlessly entertained one another, with all the running jokes and gags you’d expect three guys in a room to develop. Education speeches in particular—with their endlessly complicated programs and slightly puffed-up theories, none of which we could ever explain quite to the satisfaction of our policy people—were always good for a laugh. As John observed in late 2003, around draft 20 in the typically chaotic revising of an education speech, “We’ve taken the country to war with less hassle than this.”

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Comments

[JimPortlandOR]

Athough Gerson is portrayed as a completely unlikeable work associate who relentlessly self-promotes, Scully's craving to idolize Bush comes across as just more of the same.

As for the war-promotion speeches, they had an easy 'product' to sell (as Andy Card characterized it, waiting to get post-Labor day for the advertising to kick off.) Them Evil, We Good. We'll kick their ass.