The Speechwriter by Martin McKenzie-Murray (best biographies to read TXT) 📕

I enjoyed physically touching history, none of these words explained where the Southern grifter’s will to power had gone, why Johnson — who had, without shame or exhaustion, lied, bitten, and schemed his way to high office — was relinquishing the presidency.

The best words I read weren’t by the President’s speechwriters. They were found in a letter sent to Johnson by a Nebraskan teacher, punched out on a typewriter after watching his resignation speech. I guess Johnson never read it. The note wished the President well, before saying: ‘Americans are a heavy-handed and vulgar people; impatient, impudent, and grasping. But we are also well-meaning, generous, and possessed of a conviction of national purpose. While we ignore our geniuses, butcher our saints, and vilify our leaders, we rush to give our lives, our sons, and our substance to just causes.’

Here was Demos, again. Passionate, sacrificial, imperfect. God, how I loved The People. In Canberra, I would refine, reflect, and amplify them.*

[* ‘It’s always in threes with you. Do you know that? Do you even know you’re fucken doing it? “Refine, reflect, and amplify.” This, this, and this. Gets fucken tired, mate.’]

Two days before Obama was sworn in, I was sitting alone on the back porch of my hostel, swaddled in goose-down and staring at the yard’s bare maples. It was morning, and gorgeously quiet. No-one else was up yet. I removed a glove, lit a cigarette, then checked my phone. And there it was: an email from the Department of Art, Innovation and Robots — phonetically rendered ‘DARE’. They were offering me the speechwriting role in Canberra. It wasn’t a political role, but that was okay — I’d be writing for a federal minister. A balladeer for our national project! A sweet and resonant voice of the government’s vision!

That evening, while I sat in my hostel room, John — DARE’s Director of Communications — Skyped me from Canberra to confirm my position. John was fat, bald, and radiated profound regret.

‘So you’re in Washington for the inauguration, hey?’

‘That’s right. It’s very exciting.’

‘So who is it this year? Cowboys, Steelers?’

‘What?’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about American football.’

‘No, I’m here for the inauguration.’

‘Yeah, you said.’

‘So not the Super Bowl. I think you’re thinking of the Super Bowl.’

‘So what’s this — baseball?’

This stung. I was silent for a while as I contemplated the gulf of knowledge between us. I had expected everyone in government to share my interests, to be similarly electrified by them.

I also expected to be intellectually intimidated by him. Was he not a director of communications in our new Camelot? I’d wanted to talk Teddy Sorenson with him, but instead I was explaining what a paywall was.

‘Toby?’

‘Sorry. Yes?’

‘We’ll see you next month. Enjoy the game.’

This did not bode well. Still, I could ignore it for now because pilgrims had tripled Washington’s size. On every corner, street vendors sold unauthorised POTUS swag from mats on the pavement. Alongside the Mall ran a mile of TV news vans, their satellites erect. From the doors of the National Archives snaked a line of people that extended around the block. The Lincoln Memorial was full, its gift shop overwhelmed, but from its marble stairs, from the spot that Martin Luther King declared his dream, you could look eastward over the whole Mall, over the reflecting pool and the distressed lawn, past the pilgrims exhaling vapour, down to the giant obelisk, pausing on the history being made and communing, vainly, with history past … and I could absurdly think, as a man of political letters destined for our own capital, that all of this was an extension of me, that I was an extension of it, that we were dreaming each other into existence.

Where eagles dare

I’d arrived at Canberra airport. My tears had dried, but I could feel the reservoir rippling again. Its lip would breach soon. I missed Rachel intensely.

Our goodbye was wordless. If we spoke we’d dissolve, so we shut our mouths and, through a veil of tears, communicated with the intensity of our embrace — broken only when the camera crew for Nine’s Drug Mules? became super intrusive.

I wept for most of the flight, and contrived an alibi by twice watching Free Willy. At the baggage carousel, I was sandbagging my eyes. I turned to one of the TV screens. The Prime Minister was speaking. Cheer up, I thought. I was in Camelot now.

We’ve reviewed the consensus and will entwine some unorthodoxy, if you don’t mind me saying. Which is to say, we’ve subjected this policy to independent analysis, some very rigorous analysis, which has upheld the orthodox view but left room for some discretionary manipulation, which is what I, as Prime Minister, and in collaboration with my cabinet, intend to exercise. Which is to say …

I knew it didn’t sound great. But back then, I thought the Prime Minister was a bashful nerd. A man embarrassed by his intellect, but reluctantly persuaded to apply it to our public life. Consider the anxious adjustment of his glasses; the nervous sweeping of his fringe. Consider his apologetic use of jargon — and his innocent mishandling of idiom.

A benevolent technocrat, a less-articulate Jed Bartlett. A man humbled by God, but respectful of evidence-based policy. A man who slept well and never swore. An honourable and serious man. A leader. A reformer. A man who would govern for a decade.

I called this man — or at least this idea of a man — the Mandarin Priest, and I thought he was entitled to sermonise on Good Governance even if he sounded like a pompous droid when he did. He would take us to the mountaintop, a place of coherent and evidence-based reform — so what if the press mocked his homilies? I was sure that public servants welcomed them as validating. Few in public life ever defended them. For the press gallery, Parliament House comprised government. Not the departments. When bureaucrats were noticed, it was usually as subjects of hostile caricature. Now, it seemed, they had the ultimate champion.

My