We speechwriters have a phrase for those who, like Jon Meacham, are often credited with helping to 'craft' high-profile speeches. They are the dreaded 'men without pens.'
One reason is that Meacham seems to brazenly, almost reflexively, break the first rule of speechwriting: Don’t take credit. That’s the job. Speechwriters are, first and foremost, ghostwriters. The final product is a work of collaboration that, ultimately, belong to the speaker. If you want credit for the speech, run for office. Deliver it yourself.And as one former presidential speechwriter told me, “We’re not the knights of the roundtable or anything, but there’s an unwritten code we follow.
Of course, we can’t know for sure that Meacham is tacky enough to run to the Washington press corps whenever Biden calls him. But at the very least, he’s not doing much to downplay his involvement. In a speech about voting rights last January, Biden posed a rhetorical question to members of Congress: “Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”later reported that Meacham had said almost the exact same thing at an event the week before. When asked about it, Meacham replied, “I was involved in the drafting of the speech and was happy to offer that language for the President to use if he wished.
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