Michael John Gerson (May 15, 1964 – November 17, 2022) was an American journalist and speechwriter. He was a neoconservative

op-ed An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page", is a written prose piece, typically published by a North-American newspaper or magazine, which expresses the opinion of an author usually not affiliated with the publication's editorial board. O ...

columnist for ''

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'', 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 The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, mi ...

. He served as President

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

's chief

speechwriter A speechwriter is a person who is hired to prepare and write speeches that will be delivered by another person. Speechwriters are employed by many senior-level elected officials and executives in the government and private sectors. They can also be ...

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 The second inauguration of George W. Bush as the 43rd president of the United States took place on Thursday, January 20, 2005, at the West Front of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. This was the 55th inauguration and marked the be ...

, which called for

neo-conservative Neoconservatism is a political movement that began in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and cou ...

intervention and

nation-building Nation-building is constructing or structuring a national identity using the power of the state. Nation-building aims at the unification of the people within the state so that it remains politically stable and viable in the long run. According to ...

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

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Early life and education

Gerson was born on May 15, 1964, in

Belmar, New Jersey Belmar is a borough in Monmouth County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, situated on the Jersey Shore. As of the 2010 United States census, the borough's population was 5,794, and raised in an

Evangelical Christian Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being " born again", in which an individual exper ...

familyNew Yorker Magazine: "Letter From Washington: The Believer – George W. Bush's loyal speechwriter" by Jeffrey Goldberg
February 13, 2006 , ''"Gerson, whose parents were evangelical Christians (his last name comes from a Jewish grandfather)"'' in

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...

. He attended Westminster Christian Academy for high school. His paternal grandfather was Jewish. He attended

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

for a year and then transferred to Wheaton College in Illinois, graduating in 1986.

Career

Before joining the Bush Administration, he was a senior policy advisor with The

Heritage Foundation The Heritage Foundation (abbreviated to Heritage) is an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that is primarily geared toward public policy. The foundation took a leading role in the conservative movement during the presiden ...

, 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 A ghostwriter is hired to write literary or journalistic works, speeches, or other texts that are officially credited to another person as the author. Celebrities, executives, participants in timely news stories, and political leaders often h ...

for

Charles Colson Charles Wendell Colson (October 16, 1931 – April 21, 2012), generally referred to as Chuck Colson, was an American attorney and political advisor who served as Special Counsel to President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1970. Once known as P ...

. In early 1999, Karl Rove recruited Gerson for the Bush campaign. Gerson was named by ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' as one of "The 25 Most Influential

Evangelicals Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide Interdenominationalism, interdenominational movement within Protestantism, Protestant Christianity that affirms the centrality of being "bor ...

In America." The February 7, 2005, issue listed Gerson as the ninth most influential evangelical that year.

Speechwriter

Gerson joined the Bush campaign before 2000 as a speechwriter and went on to head the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. ...

speechwriting team. "No one doubts that he did his job exceptionally well," wrote

Ramesh Ponnuru Ramesh Ponnuru (; born August 16, 1974) is an American conservative thinker, political pundit, and journalist. He has been a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute since 2012. He is the editor of ''National Review'' magazine, a colu ...

in a 2007 article otherwise very critical of Gerson in ''

National Review ''National Review'' is an American conservative editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by the author William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. Its editor-in-chief i ...

''. 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 ''

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'' chief editor

William McGurn William McGurn (born December 4, 1958) is an American political writer. He was the chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush from June 2006 until February 2008, replacing Michael Gerson. Early life McGurn was born December 4, 1958, in San ...

Lines attributed to Gerson

Gerson proposed the use of a "smoking gun/mushroom cloud" mixed-metaphor during a September 5, 2002, meeting of the White House Iraq Group, in an effort to sell the American public on the nuclear dangers posed by

Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolution ...

. According to ''

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'' columnist

Michael Isikoff Michael Isikoff (born June 16, 1952) is an American investigative journalist who is currently the Chief Investigative Correspondent at Yahoo! News. He is the co-author with David Corn of the book titled '' Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Pu ...

The original plan had been to place it in an upcoming presidential speech, but WHIG members fancied it so much that when the ''Times'' reporters contacted the White House to talk about their upcoming piece bout aluminum tubes one of them leaked Gerson's phrase – and the administration would soon make maximum use of it.

Gerson said one of his favorite speeches was given at the

National Cathedral The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington, commonly known as Washington National Cathedral, is an American cathedral of the Episcopal Church. The cathedral is located in Washington, D.C., the ca ...

on September 14, 2001, a few days after the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...

, which included the following passage: "Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance, and love have no end. And the Lord of life holds all who die, and all who mourn." Gerson was credited with coining such phrases as "the soft bigotry of low expectations" and "the armies of compassion". His noteworthy phrases for Bush are said to include "

Axis of Evil The phrase "axis of evil" was first used by U.S. President George W. Bush and originally referred to Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. It was used in Bush's State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, less than five months after the 9/11 attac ...

," a phrase adapted from "axis of hatred," itself suggested by fellow speechwriter

David Frum David Jeffrey Frum (; born June 30, 1960) is a Canadian-American political commentator and a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, who is currently a senior editor at ''The Atlantic'' as well as an MSNBC contributor. In 2003, Frum a ...

but deemed too mild.

Criticism of Gerson's speechwriting

In an article by

Matthew Scully Matthew Scully (born March 30, 1959) is an American author, journalist, and political writer who has also written on animal welfare. Early life Scully was born in Casper, Wyoming and lived his childhood throughout Colorado, Ohio, and New Yor ...

(one of Bush's speechwriters) published in ''

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

'' (September 2007) Gerson was criticized for seeking the limelight, taking the credit for other people's work and for creating a false image of himself: "No good deed went unreported, and many things that never happened were reported as fact. For all of our chief speechwriter's finer qualities, the firm adherence to factual narrative is not a strong point." Of particular note is the invention of the phrase "axis of evil." Scully claims that the phrase "axis of hatred" was coined by David Frum and forwarded to colleagues by email. The word "hatred" was changed to "evil" by someone other than Gerson and was done because "hatred" seemed the more melodramatic word at the time. Scully also had this to say about Gerson:

My most vivid memory of Mike at
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is one I have labored in vain to shake. We were working on a State of the Union address in John cConnells office when suddenly Mike was called away for an unspecified appointment, leaving us to 'keep going'. We learned only later, from a chance conversation with his secretary, where he had gone, and it was a piece of Washington self-promotion for the ages: At the precise moment when the
State of the Union The State of the Union Address (sometimes abbreviated to SOTU) is an annual message delivered by the president of the United States to a joint session of the United States Congress near the beginning of each calendar year on the current conditio ...
address was being drafted at the White House by John and me, Mike was off
t a Washington D.C. Starbucks store T, or t, is the twentieth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''tee'' (pronounced ), plural ''tees''. It is deri ...
pretending to craft the State of the Union in longhand for the benefit of a reporter.

''The Washington Post'' columnist

After leaving the White House, Gerson wrote for ''

'' magazine for a time. On May 16, 2007, Gerson began his tenure as a twice-weekly columnist for ''

''. His columns appeared on Wednesdays and Fridays. Gerson, a neo-conservative, repeatedly criticized other conservatives in his column and conservatives returned the favor. One of Gerson's first columns was entitled "Letting Fear Rule", in which he compared skeptics of President Bush's immigration reform bill to nativist bigots of the 1880s. In October 2017, Gerson referred to

President Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...

's "fundamental unfitness for high office" and asked whether he is "psychologically and morally equipped to be president? And could his unfitness cause permanent damage to the country?" He cited "the leaked cries for help coming from within the administration. They reveal a president raging against enemies, obsessed by slights, deeply uninformed and incurious, unable to focus, and subject to destructive whims". In August 2019, Gerson wrote that it is a "scandal" that "white evangelical Protestants" are not in a state of "panic" about their own demographic decline in the United States.

Personal life

His wife Dawn was born in

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

. She was adopted by an American family when she was six years old and raised in the Midwestern United States. The couple, who met in high school, have two sons and resided in

Northern Virginia Northern Virginia, locally referred to as NOVA or NoVA, comprises several counties and independent cities in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. It is a widespread region radiating westward and southward from Washington, D.C. Wit ...

Health and death

Gerson suffered from

major depressive disorder Major depressive disorder (MDD), also known as clinical depression, is a mental disorder characterized by at least two weeks of pervasive low mood, low self-esteem, and loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities. Introdu ...

, for which he was hospitalized at least once. Gerson was diagnosed with

kidney cancer Kidney cancer, also known as renal cancer, is a group of cancers that starts in the kidney. Symptoms may include blood in the urine, lump in the abdomen, or back pain. Fever, weight loss, and tiredness may also occur. Complications can include sp ...

in 2013. He also had

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...

. He died from kidney cancer at a hospital in Washington, D.C., on November 17, 2022, at age 58.

Published works

* *

References

External links

A profile of Gerson
in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

''
Faithfully and Politically Present
''

Christianity Today ''Christianity Today'' is an evangelical Christian media magazine founded in 1956 by Billy Graham. It is published by Christianity Today International based in Carol Stream, Illinois. ''The Washington Post'' calls ''Christianity Today'' "evange ...

''
''The Washington Post'', "Biography: Michael Gerson"

* ttps://www.pbs.org/show/in-principle/ ''In Principle''at

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gerson, Michael 1964 births 2022 deaths 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers American evangelicals American male non-fiction writers American people of Jewish descent American political commentators American political writers Deaths from cancer in Washington, D.C. Deaths from kidney cancer George W. Bush administration personnel Missouri Republicans Neoconservatism PBS people People from Belmar, New Jersey People with mood disorders People with Parkinson's disease Speechwriters for presidents of the United States The Heritage Foundation United States presidential advisors Virginia Republicans The Washington Post people Wheaton College (Illinois) alumni Writers from Alexandria, Virginia Writers from New Jersey White House Directors of Speechwriting