[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on GEORGE W. BUSH
GEORGE W. BUSH is a strong, clear-minded president one of the strongest and clearest-minded we have ever had. Why can't a great president give a great speech? (Bush, George Walker Encyclopedia article; The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2004)
The president's second inaugural address was fine and generous, a big speech with sweeping views in all directions, and a speech Americans can be proud of. But the language did not always rise to the level of the ideas. There were many good phrases, a few superb ones, and a brilliant ending. There were also weak phrases, a few unclear ones, and one absolute stinker. On the whole it was very good. It should have been better.
Granted: Poking holes is easy and fun. Turning blank pages into finished speeches for nagging critics to poke holes in is not so easy and no fun. Besides, any sane person will choose beautiful ideas over beautiful writing any day. But why can't this president have both? He deserves both. (Martha Joynt Kumar, Volume 34, 2003)
But, before we begin, it's important to understand that loads of people work on big presidential speeches, some of them perfectly willing to override good prose in the interest of fine-tuning the political implications of every last syllable. The real writers, left alone, would unquestionably have produced better writing. In these comments I criticize the words, not the wordsmiths.
And one last caveat, in a way even more important. Inaugural addresses deserve to be pored over because they are monumentally important and will be reread for as long as the nation exists; possibly longer. But no other writers in the world have their prose so mercilessly dissected. Inaugural-address writing is not for the fainthearted. A few years of fighter pilot experience probably helps. (Richar Brookhiser, pg 48, 2003)....
