The American Spectator today includes an article which wonders if Peggy Noonan has gone a bit wobbly of late. Among her sins is an article in which she expresses her concern that there are not enough forces of deletion arrayed against the forces of insertion in the Administration’s speechwriting give-and-take.
In truth, she may well be right. I once wrote that editors ‘haunt the writer’s Eden’, but if there was ever a place where editors should outnumber writers it is in the White House. Since the presidential speech by definition must be rhetoric wedded closely to policy, the flights of literary fancy that the scrivener classes adore should very rarely be flown by Air Force One.
