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Michael Gerson
Michael John Gerson (May 15, 1964 – November 17, 2022) was an American journalist and speechwriter. He was a neoconservative op-ed columnist for The Washington Post, a Policy Fellow with One Campaign, a visiting fellow with the Center for Public Justice, and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as President George W. Bush's chief speechwriter from 2001 until June 2006, as a senior policy advisor from 2000 through June 2006, and was a member of the White House Iraq Group.
Gerson helped write the inaugural address for the second inauguration of George W. Bush, which called for neo-conservative intervention and nation-building around the world to effect the spread of democracy to third world countries.
In 2018, Gerson and commentator Amy Holmes co-hosted In Principle, a politically conservative-oriented television talk show that ran for eight episodes on PBS.
Gerson was born on May 15, 1964, in Belmar, New Jersey, and raised in an Evangelical Christian family in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended Westminster Christian Academy for high school. His paternal grandfather was Jewish. He attended Georgetown University for a year and then transferred to Wheaton College in Illinois, graduating in 1986.
Before joining the Bush administration, he was a senior policy advisor with The Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy research institution. He also worked at various times as an aide to Indiana Senator Dan Coats and a speechwriter for the presidential campaign of Bob Dole before briefly leaving the political world to cover it as a journalist for U.S. News & World Report. Gerson also worked at one point as a ghostwriter for Charles Colson. In early 1999, Karl Rove recruited Gerson for the Bush campaign.
Gerson was named by Time as one of "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals In America." The February 7, 2005, issue listed Gerson as the ninth-most influential evangelical that year.
Gerson joined the Bush campaign before 2000 as a speechwriter and went on to head the White House speechwriting team. "No one doubts that he did his job exceptionally well," wrote Ramesh Ponnuru in a 2007 article otherwise very critical of Gerson in National Review. According to Ponnuru, Bush's speechwriters had more prominence in the administration than their predecessors did under previous presidents because Bush's speeches did most of the work of defending the president's policies, since administration spokesmen and press conferences did not. On the other hand, he wrote, the speeches would announce new policies that were never implemented, making the speechwriting in some ways less influential than ever.
On June 14, 2006, it was announced that Gerson was leaving the White House to pursue other writing and policy work. He was replaced as Bush's chief speechwriter by The Wall Street Journal chief editor William McGurn.[citation needed]
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Michael Gerson
Michael John Gerson (May 15, 1964 – November 17, 2022) was an American journalist and speechwriter. He was a neoconservative op-ed columnist for The Washington Post, a Policy Fellow with One Campaign, a visiting fellow with the Center for Public Justice, and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as President George W. Bush's chief speechwriter from 2001 until June 2006, as a senior policy advisor from 2000 through June 2006, and was a member of the White House Iraq Group.
Gerson helped write the inaugural address for the second inauguration of George W. Bush, which called for neo-conservative intervention and nation-building around the world to effect the spread of democracy to third world countries.
In 2018, Gerson and commentator Amy Holmes co-hosted In Principle, a politically conservative-oriented television talk show that ran for eight episodes on PBS.
Gerson was born on May 15, 1964, in Belmar, New Jersey, and raised in an Evangelical Christian family in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended Westminster Christian Academy for high school. His paternal grandfather was Jewish. He attended Georgetown University for a year and then transferred to Wheaton College in Illinois, graduating in 1986.
Before joining the Bush administration, he was a senior policy advisor with The Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy research institution. He also worked at various times as an aide to Indiana Senator Dan Coats and a speechwriter for the presidential campaign of Bob Dole before briefly leaving the political world to cover it as a journalist for U.S. News & World Report. Gerson also worked at one point as a ghostwriter for Charles Colson. In early 1999, Karl Rove recruited Gerson for the Bush campaign.
Gerson was named by Time as one of "The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals In America." The February 7, 2005, issue listed Gerson as the ninth-most influential evangelical that year.
Gerson joined the Bush campaign before 2000 as a speechwriter and went on to head the White House speechwriting team. "No one doubts that he did his job exceptionally well," wrote Ramesh Ponnuru in a 2007 article otherwise very critical of Gerson in National Review. According to Ponnuru, Bush's speechwriters had more prominence in the administration than their predecessors did under previous presidents because Bush's speeches did most of the work of defending the president's policies, since administration spokesmen and press conferences did not. On the other hand, he wrote, the speeches would announce new policies that were never implemented, making the speechwriting in some ways less influential than ever.
On June 14, 2006, it was announced that Gerson was leaving the White House to pursue other writing and policy work. He was replaced as Bush's chief speechwriter by The Wall Street Journal chief editor William McGurn.[citation needed]
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