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Michael Gerson, Post columnist and Bush speechwriter on 9/11, dies at 58

Mr. gerson helped shape president george w. bush’s messaging after the 9/11 attacks and then moved to the washington post, where he wrote about politics and faith.

Michael Gerson, a speechwriter for President George W. Bush who helped craft messages of grief and resolve after 9/11, then explored conservative politics and faith as a Washington Post columnist writing on issues as diverse as President Donald Trump’s disruptive grip on the GOP and his own struggles with depression, died Nov. 17 at a hospital in Washington. He was 58.

The cause of death was complications of cancer, said Peter Wehner, a longtime friend and former colleague.

After years of working as a writer for conservative and evangelical leaders, including Prison Fellowship Ministries founder and Watergate felon Charles Colson, Mr. Gerson joined the Bush campaign in 1999. Mr. Gerson, an evangelical Christian, wrote with an eye toward religious and moral imagery, and that approach melded well with Bush’s personality as a leader open about his own Christian faith.

Mr. Gerson’s work and bonds with Bush drew comparisons to other powerful White House partnerships, such as John F. Kennedy’s with his speechwriter and adviser Ted Sorensen and Ronald Reagan’s with aide Peggy Noonan. Conservative commentator William Kristol told The Post in 2006 that in modern times, Mr. Gerson “might have had more influence than any other White House staffer who wasn’t chief of staff or national security adviser.”

“Mike was substantively influential, not just a wordsmith, not just a crafter of language for other people’s policies, but he influenced policy itself,” Kristol said.

As an impromptu speaker, Bush had a reputation for gaffes and mangling phrases, but Mr. Gerson provided him with memorable flights of oratory, such as the pledge to end “the soft bigotry of low expectations” in the education of low-income and minority students and the description of democracy — in Bush’s first inaugural address — as a “seed upon the wind, taking root in many nations.” As a Bush confidant and head of the speechwriting team, he also encouraged such memorable turns of phrase as “axis of evil,” which Bush used to explain the administration’s hawkish posture as it started long and costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the chaotic months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Mr. Gerson became the key craftsman articulating what became known as the “Bush Doctrine” — which advocated preemptive strikes against potential terrorists and other perceived threats. With his team of writers, he began shaping Bush’s tone and tenor, including addresses at Washington National Cathedral on Sept. 14 and to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 20.

“Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution,” Bush told Congress. “Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.”

Mr. Gerson and Bush found common ground in the use of religious themes of higher power and light vs. darkness, seeing such rhetoric as part of other historic struggles, including the abolitionist movement. “It is a real mistake to try to secularize American political discourse,” Mr. Gerson told NPR in 2006. “It removes one of the primary sources of visions of justice in American history.”

Opinion: Michael Gerson followed his faith — and America was better for it

Before the State of the Union address in January 2002, Bush’s speechwriters were instructed to link Iraq to the wider battles against terrorism — a sign that Bush and his inner circle, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, were gearing up for war.

Speechwriter David Frum said he came up with “axis of hatred” to describe Iraq, North Korea and Iran (even though Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was a foe of leaders in Tehran). Mr. Gerson tweaked it to “axis of evil” to make it sound more “theological” — a battle between good and evil — Frum wrote in his 2003 book on Bush, “The Right Man.”

“I thought that was terrific,” Frum wrote about Mr. Gerson’s change. “It was the sort of language President Bush used.” ( Writing in the Atlantic, another speechwriter, Matthew Scully, said that Mr. Gerson was caught up in his own mythology and that Frum and Scully were more actively involved in formulating “axis of evil.”)

Mr. Gerson also had a hand in pushing the Bush White House’s false assertions about Iraq — including debunked allegations of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction — that would be used to justify the 2003 invasion. More than eight years of war claimed the lives of about 4,500 U.S. service personnel and more than 100,000 Iraqi insurgents and civilians, according to monitoring groups . Some place the number of Iraqi deaths far higher.

Mr. Gerson never publicly expressed regrets for having helped sell the Iraq War. His 2007 memoir, “Heroic Conservatism,” declared that U.S. leadership is essential to fight terrorism and global poverty and disease. But he mostly sidestepped the many ethical and legal questions arising from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and such consequences as the waterboarding of prisoners, renditions to Guantánamo Bay and the thousands of civilian casualties.

After a heart attack in December 2004, Mr. Gerson stepped back from the stresses of speechwriting and took on policy advisory roles full time. He often lamented that the Bush administration’s humanitarian initiatives, such as AIDS prevention in Africa, became footnotes in a world changed by 9/11.

Mr. Gerson left the White House in 2006, with Bush’s backing, to pursue outside policy work and writing. The next year, he joined The Post and wrote twice-weekly columns that expanded his reach as a conservative distressed by populism and the politics of anger, and animated by the conviction that religion and social activism are powerful partners.

“That’s a different kind of conservatism,” he told the PBS show “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly” in 2007, “a conservatism of the common good that argues that we need to orient our policies towards people that might not even vote for us.”

Mr. Gerson’s columns for The Post took many shots at President Barack Obama during his two terms, calling his foreign policy undisciplined and the Affordable Care Act — and its bid to move the nation toward universal health care — shambolic. With the rise of Trump, however, Mr. Gerson found himself outside looking in. He bemoaned the fact that many in the Republican Party — including fellow evangelical Christians — shifted allegiances to Trump despite his record of lies, infidelities and racist remarks. But he acknowledged that, for the moment, he was on the weaker side as a Trump critic.

“It has been said that when you choose your community, you choose your character,” Mr. Gerson wrote in an essay for The Post this past Sept. 1. “Strangely, evangelicals have broadly chosen the company of Trump supporters who deny any role for character in politics and define any useful villainy as virtue.”

Studied theology

Michael John Gerson was born in Belmar, N.J., on May 15, 1964, and raised in and around St. Louis by evangelical Christian parents. His mother was an artist; his father was a dairy engineer whose work included developing ice cream flavors.

He studied theology at Wheaton College, an evangelical school in suburban Chicago, graduating in 1986. He began his career as a ghostwriter with Prison Fellowship Ministries, run by Colson , a self-described “hatchet man” for President Richard M. Nixon during the Watergate crisis. Colson spent seven months in prison for obstruction of justice.

In prison, Colson said, he experienced a religious conversion that redirected his life. For the young Mr. Gerson, it proved a profound inspiration — and a first brush with someone who once had the ear of a president. “I had read many of the Watergate books, in which Chuck appears as a character with few virtues apart from loyalty,” Mr. Gerson wrote in The Post in 2012 . “I knew a different man.”

In the late 1980s, Mr. Gerson moved into politics as policy director for Sen. Daniel Coats (R-Ind.), and he later wrote speeches for Sen. Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.) during his 1996 presidential run. Mr. Gerson spent two years as senior editor at U.S. News & World Report before being recruited by Bush campaign strategist Karl Rove as a speechwriter for the Bush-Cheney ticket in the run-up to the 2000 election.

At first it was just the thrill of the political “high-wire excitement,” Mr. Gerson said. Then he found a kindred soul in Bush during a campaign stop in Gaffney, S.C., when someone in the crowd asked how to block undocumented migrants at the southern border.

Bush “took the opportunity to remind his rural, conservative audience that ‘family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande,’ ” Mr. Gerson wrote , “and that as long as ‘moms and dads’ in Mexico couldn’t feed their children at home, they would seek opportunity in America.”

Mr. Gerson’s 2010 book, written with former speechwriting colleague Wehner , “City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era,” is a call to action for evangelicals to use their influence for broader social and economic programs.

In 1990, Mr. Gerson married the former Dawn Soon Miller. In addition to his wife, survivors include two sons, Michael and Nicholas, and two brothers.

In his Post columns, Mr. Gerson wrote candidly about his battles with cancer and depression. “I have no doubt that I will eventually repeat the cycle of depression,” he wrote in February 2019. “But now I have some self-knowledge that can’t be taken away. I know that — when I’m in my right mind — I choose hope.”

David Shipley, The Post’s editorial page editor, called Mr. Gerson “the rare writer whose mind, heart and soul came through in equal measures in his work.”

In a holiday season column in 2021, Mr., Gerson quoted lines from a Sylvia Plath poem and examined his fight with cancer to arrive at a single uplifting thought: “Hope wins.”

Michael Gerson, Washington Post Columnist and Former George W. Bush Speechwriter, Dies at 58

Known for his speeches for Bush on 9/11, Gerson died at a Washington, D.C. hospital early Thursday

Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post, has died. The news came early Thursday out of a Washington, D.C.-area hospital. He was 58 years old.

Peter Wehner, a longtime friend and former colleague of Gerson, told the Post that the cause of death was complications of cancer. Gerson was diagnosed with slow-growing kidney cancer in 2013.

The political writer joined the Bush campaign in 1999. During his tenure as a Bush speechwriter, Gerson helped shape the former president’s messaging in the weeks following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Notable phrases coined by Gerson include “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” “the armies of compassion” and the “axis of Evil.” In 2006, Gerson left the Bush administration to pursue other writing and policy work.

He later joined the Post in 2007, where he wrote twice weekly columns about conservative politics and faith.

Gerson is survived by his wife, Dawn Soon Miller, two sons, Michael and Nicholas, and two brothers.

The Washington Post first reported the news.

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Meet the press now, michael gerson, former bush speechwriter during 9/11, dies at 58.

Michael Gerson, speechwriter to former President George W. Bush and a columnist at the Washington Post has died at the age of 58 due to complications from cancer, according to the Washington Post. Gerson helped craft President Bush’s remarks following the 9/11 attacks and was a frequent guest on Meet the Press. Nov. 17, 2022

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The Enduring Lessons of the ‘Axis of Evil’ Speech

Four core ideas from President George W. Bush’s most famous speech have survived as enduring foundations of U.S. security policy.

Twenty years ago today, President George W. Bush delivered a State of the Union address that would instantly become one of the most bitterly controversial in U.S. history. At its core were short indictments of the aggressions and human-rights abuses of North Korea, Iran, and Iraq.

Then the kicker:

“States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.”

I was part of the speechwriting team that drafted those words. We’d lived together through the trauma of 9/11: not only that horrific day itself, but the nerve-jangling aftermath. The trauma redirected the perceptions and the judgment of national leaders. Bush had won office in a period of seeming peace and prosperity. Now it felt as if death could strike anywhere, anytime. Would suicide bombers attack movie theaters? Would teams of terrorist gunmen open fire in shopping malls? It all seemed horribly possible.

Beginning September 18, packets of anthrax were received at political and media offices in Washington and across the country. At least 22 people were infected; five of them died. On November 12, 2001, a passenger jetliner leaving John F. Kennedy International Airport crashed into the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, killing all 260 people aboard and five on the ground. The crash proved accidental, but initially we had to wonder: Had al-Qaeda landed a second strike inside the United States? About that time, I doubled the life insurance I carried to protect my young family.

Before 9/11, terror threats had been an issue for specialists inside the national-security apparatus. Now they physically reshaped the government. The Eisenhower Executive Office Building occupies a block in Washington bounded on the west by 17th Street, a busy roadway. For fear of car bombs, all the offices on that side of the building were emptied. E Street, to the south, was closed to traffic, and before authorized cars could enter, they were elaborately searched: trunks popped open for inspection, a Secret Service mirror run under the chassis, a dog sniffing for explosives.

The fervid atmosphere in the country biased citizens and officials alike to overheat rhetoric and overestimate dangers. I succumbed to that temptation myself; more senior people in government were no more resistant.

Meanwhile, the news from the combat zone in the war provoked by the terror attacks was disappointing and frustrating. In December 2001, U.S. forces and Afghan allies had cornered Osama bin Laden in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Bin Laden completed a last will and testament dated December 14, 2001. Yet somehow bin Laden escaped. The year ended with the Taliban overthrown, U.S. or coalition forces in control of all of Afghanistan’s cities, but the prime mission for which the United States fought the Taliban unfulfilled.

America had suffered much. It feared worse ahead.

The 2002 State of the Union address responded to those fears. It tried to specify where the next danger might come from—and to offer plans to guard against it. Bush’s answers would instantly come under ferocious criticism. The criticism reverberates to this day. And yet four core ideas in the speech have survived as enduring foundations of U.S. security policy.

David Frum: The Iraq war was a failure. War with Iran would be worse.

The speech’s first key idea was that even after 9/11, the most important threats to the United States still came from hostile states . Terrorists could pose a first-degree threat to the U.S. only if supported by a government. The 2002 State of the Union address is known as the “axis of evil” speech. But those were not its most important words. The most important words of the speech were: “States like these, and their terrorist allies …”

In 2002, that seemed a radical thing to say. September 11 had supposedly changed everything. Violence between states was so 20th century, and to worry about it was to expose oneself as backwards-looking, out-of-date.

What was backward then is forward now. The Islamic State terror group overtook al-Qaeda as a security threat precisely because it occupied territory in Syria and Iraq and formed a state of its own. By 2019, that state had been destroyed, and although ISIS the concept and murder franchise still exists, it has dropped far down the list of U.S.-government security concerns.

A second idea was that these hostile states and their terrorist allies presented an overlapping threat. Again, this idea was much scoffed at in 2002. But in the years since, the commonalities have come to light: a Syrian nuclear reactor, ultimately destroyed by Israel, that was built with help from North Korea and, according to a defector, money from Iran ; Shiite Iran funding Sunni Hamas; Iranian–North Korean nuclear cooperation ; North Korea providing Syria with supplies that could be used to manufacture poison gas, as reported by United Nations experts. These episodes of cooperation were not acts of friendship or alliance. They were opportunistic deals among states and groups joined by their shared hostility toward the United States. The national-security threats facing America were not simply one damn thing after another; just as the United States tried to build collective security for its friends, so too could U.S. adversaries work together to build collective insecurity .

Bush’s third big idea in the 2002 speech was to downgrade the importance of Afghanistan to the United States. A major question after 9/11 was how deeply the U.S. and allies should commit to Afghanistan. In many eyes, Afghanistan was “the good war,” the security project that should have first claim to U.S. resources. Against that view, Bush treated Afghanistan as one theater in a war on terror that would probably be decided elsewhere. Any large U.S. force in Afghanistan would have to be supplied either by road from Pakistan or by rail through Russia or through Russian-influenced Central Asian republics. Building a stable replacement government would depend on Afghan elites with agendas of their own, agendas that included massive self-enrichment. The deeper the U.S. commitment, the more expensive the ultimate U.S. failure would be. It would take almost 20 years before President Joe Biden would agree that the time had come to call it quits in Afghanistan. By then, the former good war looked more like the most hopeless of all the post-9/11 conflicts.

The fourth core idea in the speech was a determination to regard terrorism as a tool of power. Previously, some policy makers had an instinct to treat terrorism as an almost impersonal result of huge and abstract social problems. Compress enough poverty, grievance, and despair together, and terrorism would result. By this light, terrorism becomes almost a predictable consequence of social conditions, an involuntary, even mechanical, response, like an electric shock or the collapse of a bridge. In this view, the terrorist or terror agent is barely an agent of history at all. The political choices have been made by others, notably the terrorist’s victims and targets. Bush’s speech, by contrast, presented terrorism instead as a strategic choice that could be accepted or refused. “My hope is that all nations will heed our call and eliminate the terrorist parasites who threaten their countries and our own.” He argued that American action could alter the strategic calculus that enabled terrorism. “Some governments will be timid in the face of terror. And make no mistake about it: If they do not act, America will.”

Almost from the day Bush delivered the speech, his critics have blamed him for creating the problems the speech attempted to describe. Iran would have been friendly if Bush had not called it names ! Yes, Iran had clashed with the Taliban in the 1990s, and was certainly glad to see the United States drawn into a fight against them. But it didn’t want to see the U.S. win that fight, and establish any kind of stable pro-Western regime next door to Iran. Iran was never going to stop backing its main terrorist proxy, Hezbollah. Iran began building a new enrichment site in the city of Natanz, north of Isfahan, in 2001, before the “axis of evil” speech. The site was revealed to the world by an Iranian resistance group in August 2002 , just after the speech.

Dominic Tierney: America keeps accidentally helping Iran

Iran’s support for terrorism proceeded nonstop too. It might not much care for al-Qaeda. But Iran was more than willing to outfit other Sunni terrorist groups, and to offer supervised sanctuary to bin Laden relatives. In January 2002, a ship carrying 50 tons of arms and explosives was intercepted at sea by Israel, which accused Iran of sending them to Gaza. Hezbollah was present and operating inside the United States, according to testimony to Congress by the FBI in February 2002.

Bush’s speech is now remembered as a major milestone on the path to war in Iraq. But in January 2002, the president had not yet declared a decision to topple Saddam Hussein. Even now, it’s still not clear to me when Bush made that decision. From the fall of 2001 through the spring of 2002, war in Iraq was always discussed as a possibility, a hypothetical. That’s how the speechwriting team got the assignment that led to the State of the Union address: If the president wanted to talk about Iraq, what might he say?

The journalist Robert Draper painstakingly reconstructed the timeline of the decision to invade Iraq in his 2020 book, To Start a War . Draper’s reporting depicts Bush as deeply hostile to Saddam Hussein from the start, but uncommitted to any single policy against the Iraqi dictator until late into the summer of 2002. In an April 5, 2002, interview with Trevor McDonald of Britain’s ITV, Bush said , “I’ve made up my mind that Saddam needs to go.” That very evening, Bush had dinner with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and told him that he had not yet decided when or how Saddam would be made to go.

Yet well before the summer of 2002, the preparation for war had acquired a momentum of its own. The previous February, Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley organized a series of meetings to study the issues that might arise from an Iraq war. Hadley himself was not at all an ardent advocate of war against Iraq. But by some fateful impetus, the attempt to think through the war before it started only accelerated the decision it was meant to ponder. “By institutionalizing such discussions, Hadley had … created bureaucratic locomotion for a policy that had yet to be debated, and in fact never would be,” Draper observed.

By the end of the summer of 2002, the moment of decision—once assigned to an unspecific future—had somehow shifted into the unrecorded past. In September 2002, Bush addressed the UN and presented the Iraqi regime with a sequence of ultimatums that closed almost all his own exits . Yet he still had no real plan for what would happen if Iraq refused the ultimatum. The Pentagon wrote a deployment plan to get Americans into Baghdad. Nobody inside the administration had clear responsibility for planning for the day after the Americans arrived.

The January 2002 State of the Union speech had cited Iraq as only one danger among many. But over the months ahead, those other dangers would be displaced by the singular focus on Iraq. North Korea would stage a first nuclear test in 2006, then a second and more successful test in 2009. Iran too was closing in on a bomb around that time, a threat that the Obama administration tried to negotiate away but that haunts U.S. policy to this day.

The list of threats that Bush itemized 20 years ago was not imaginary. If anything, the ranks of hostile anti-U.S. regimes have multiplied since 2002. Back then, Vladimir Putin’s Russia sometimes cooperated with the United States on important strategic issues, including the war in Afghanistan. China was accepting major economic reforms to qualify for entry into the World Trade Organization. Neither regime was liberal toward its people or friendly to the West. But 20 years ago, optimists could reasonably hope that Russia and China might soon evolve in better directions. Those hopes have long ago been disappointed. Both regimes turned to the worse, and to each other.

Putin’s invasion plans for Ukraine offer China a “ new world order ” made safe for autocrats. As Putin threatens Ukraine, Chinese warplanes menace Taiwan . Earlier this month, Putin welcomed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to Moscow. Raisi is an outspoken advocate of Iranian-Russian cooperation against the United States. Last week, China, Iran, and Russia held joint naval drills in the northern Indian Ocean. Maybe axis of evil is too melodramatic a phrase for our polarized and disillusioned era. But we need words to describe when the bad guys cooperate against the United States and its democratic allies.

Like the Vietnam War, the Iraq War casts a long shadow. It did not deliver the results promised, for Iraq or the United States. Perhaps even without U.S. intervention, Iraq would have collapsed into civil war, as Syria did. That cannot be answered. But there is still wisdom to be gained from the post 9/11 moment. President Bush’s 2002 warnings contain insights that can be repurposed for a changed world.

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• remembrance

Former George H.W. Bush Speechwriter on Why the President Was Shy About Talking About His World War II Service in Public

I joined the Bush-Quayle presidential campaign in the summer of 1988 when I was 25, writing something called the “line of the day”—a one-page memo of catchy facts, stats, anecdotes on whatever the topic of the day was. Once we arrived at the White House, I began ghostwriting magazine articles by the President. I would send him questionnaires through intraoffice mail and he’d handwrite his answers. It was like having a pen pal. I worked my way up to doing more junior speechwriting stuff, like the turkey pardoning and statements of congratulations to spelling-bee winners. The more I wrote for him, the more I learned his style. He didn’t like to talk about himself much. If we used the word “I” too much he’d circle it, to mean “too many.” He felt that in a democracy the President should use the word “We.”

That’s probably why he was generally extremely reticent to talk about his World War II experience.

The most memorable speechwriting experience I had with him was writing a speech to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1991.

One night at about 6 o’clock in the Oval Office, before the anniversary, we started talking about what his memories were of the day he heard about Pearl Harbor. Despite his father’s objections, he went to sign up for the Navy and got turned away because he was only 17. He showed back up on June 9, 1942, a few days before his 18th birthday and enlisted, becoming the youngest Navy pilot at the time.

Pearl Harbor had a huge effect on his life. Though he flew 58 combat missions, he bristled at being called a war hero. He thought the war heroes were the ones who didn’t come home. He told me about all of the buddies he had lost, the circumstances of their deaths, and him having to write to their parents. But every time he would tell me one of these stories, I’d say, “That’s an amazing story! Can I put that in the speech?” And he’d say, “Oh, God no! You can’t use that. I’m just telling you that.” And he wouldn’t let me use any of it! I pleaded, “Sir, give me something here!” I think he knew he would get very emotional while talking about it, and he didn’t want that to happen.

So we ended up deciding that the message of the speech I was working on, one of four speeches given that day, was to convey to his fellow veterans that it was time to bury the hatchet with Japan. One of his first acts as President was to attend the funeral of Emperor Hirohito — the same emperor who was on the throne when Bush’s plane got shot down over the Japanese island of Chichi Jima on Sept. 2, 1944; he survived but his two crewman died. The President thought it was important to send the message to all of the veterans of Pearl Harbor who were still alive that he did not bear any grudge against the Emperor because of his own personal experiences during the war. He had forgiven the Japanese, and it was time for them to as well. It was a uniquely appropriate speech for George Bush to give having survived being shot down.

I would make the argument that survivor’s guilt was what motivated him to public service and to build his amazing career. He wanted to show that his life was in gratitude for surviving and to repay his colleagues who didn’t make it. He wanted to make his life worthy of their sacrifices. And he did. What a remarkable life he led.

As told to Olivia B. Waxman as part of a presidential-history partnership between TIME History and the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs. Mary Kate Cary is a former speechwriter for George H.W. Bush’s administration and a Senior Fellow at the Miller Center.

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Write to Mary Kate Cary at [email protected]

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George H.W. Bush Was A Man In The Middle, Says Former Speechwriter

Rachel Martin talks to Andrew Ferguson, ex-speechwriter for the former president and now with The Weekly Standard , about how the Bush presidency impacted the identity of the Republican Party.

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

George H.W. Bush often found himself in the in-between. He was a transitional president, trying to navigate the end of the Cold War. He told his biographer, Jon Meacham, that he was personally caught between the glory of Ronald Reagan and the political travails of his son. And Bush often found himself in the political center for good and for ill. He was a moderate Republican at a time when the conservative wing of the GOP was ascending.

That faction of the party would lead Republicans to win the House in 1994 and lay the foundation for a GOP today where moderates seem to be disappearing. To talk more about this, we are joined now by Andy Ferguson, a former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush and a national correspondent for The Weekly Standard. Thanks so much for being with us.

ANDREW FERGUSON: Happy to be here.

MARTIN: How would you describe George H.W.'s brand of Republicanism?

FERGUSON: Well, I think you put it well. It was largely a matter of temperament for him. He was not an ideological person. And he came from a time when ideology was thought of as kind of an obstacle to governing. Temperamentally, he was a man of the middle. And I think he wanted to translate that sort of temperament that he had into his presidency. Of course, politics doesn't often accommodate that kind of temperament.

MARTIN: No. Someone who has a moderate kind of temperament, we often see them move to more extremes when they're campaigning. Point in fact, he uttered that famous line, no new taxes, in 1988 at the Republican convention and then two years later, had to go back on that promise. And there was this huge backlash within the party as a result - ended up paving the way for Newt Gingrich and the Republican revolution of '94. Did he take that as a repudiation of him? Did he take it personally?

FERGUSON: Well, I think he said himself said he did. And certainly, I remember when the last days of the administration were going on and we were all filing out the door, he was almost apologetic to those of us who had worked for him. I thought that was certainly not necessary for him to apologize to anybody. He had been a very good president in a time that wasn't very well suited to him.

The important thing about the no new taxes business, though, is that he broke the promise. And that was - he knew it when he did it. If you look in his diaries, he says they're going to kill me if I break this pledge. But that unleashed all kinds of forces not just within the Republican Party but two years later then, he was facing - totally out of left field - this kind of crazy guy from Texas who ended up winning 20 percent of the vote - Ross Perot.

MARTIN: Ross Perot, yeah.

FERGUSON: And it was totally unforeseen by the time he broke that no new taxes pledge. And that unleashed - beyond Perot, you then have a sort of free-floating animus against politicians in general. And it got picked up by Gingrich. It got picked up by the Tea Party. Obama, I think, even took advantage of that kind of mistrust of the established order. And a lot of that can be traced back to that no new taxes pledge and the breaking of it.

MARTIN: For many people, he did represent the ultimate establishment, you know? He was the guy with the perfect resume. He came, was bred in the Northeast even though later settled in Texas. Can you talk about how he tried to shed that?

FERGUSON: Well, I don't think he really ever thought he could. And I don't think he wanted to. He was an extremely naturally gracious man. He had a sense of propriety in all of his dealings with people. You know, the old Eastern establishment saying was always watch how they treat the help. And then George W. - H.W. Bush, if you looked at him that way, he was a real stalwart of that kind of propriety and self-possession. He had a good sense of who he was. And he was very good at maintaining those standards.

MARTIN: Tough to come after The Great Communicator, though, and Bush 41 is often criticized for not being able to connect with average American voters. Did he struggle with that part of the job?

FERGUSON: Well, I don't think he really thought of it as part of the job. He thought he had been - he had an older view of what elected representatives do, which is you get elected, and then you're elected to do your job, which is to try and see all the options ahead of you, apply your character, your principles, your experience and do what you can to do the best for the country. It's not a matter of just following what some focus group in a shopping mall is going to be telling your pollster. Of course, he did lots of polls. Everybody does lots of polls. But that wasn't really - wasn't his sense of leadership. Leadership is someone who leads.

MARTIN: Do you see George H.W. Bush Republicans today in the party?

FERGUSON: Oh, yeah, sure. You know, the thing is about parties, the parties are - they're organisms. And they're always changing. They're always growing. At the moment, it's a hyperpolarized period. I don't think I'm the first one to have mentioned that. And, you know, the George W. Bush - H.W. Bush people are there. They'll come back out in four or six or eight years and parties will change back.

MARTIN: Andrew Ferguson, national correspondent for The Weekly Standard, former speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush, thank you for your time this morning, sir.

FERGUSON: Thank you.

Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Inside Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson’s relationship with George W Bush as famed speechwriter dies at 58

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• Published : 11:25 ET, Nov 17 2022
• Updated : 14:36 ET, Nov 17 2022

MICHAEL Gerson, who has died on Thursday at the age of 58, was one of the voices that helped craft former President George W Bush's rhetoric during some of the nation's pivotal moments.

The conservative speechwriter and Washington Post columnist passed away in Washington, D.C., due to complications with cancer, the paper reported.

Reacting to the news on Thursday, Bush said he was "heartbroken."

“He was a great writer, and I was fortunate he served as my chief speechwriter and a trusted advisor for many years,” Bush said.

“His brilliant mind was enhanced by his big heart. As a result, Mike harnessed the power of the pen to not just write about good policy, but drive it.”

Gerson gained national notoriety after he joined Bush's campaign in 1999. The two shared an evangelical Christian background, with Gerson infusing the former president's speeches with religion and morality themes.

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He worked on the Bush's first inauguratal speech, and also the one following the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The famous Bush speech included the poignant phrase by Gerson: "[Our] responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.”

Gerson was behind the famous line where Bush pledged to end “the soft bigotry of low expectations” in the education of minority and low-income students.

He was also Bush's speechwriter during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, helping convince the public to support it.

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Following his time at  the White House until 2006, he moved to The Post, where he wrote about politics and  faith  in twice-weekly columns.

Gerson is the  author  of Heroic Conservatism (2007) and co-author of City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era (2010).

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While writing for The Post, he was open with readers about his ongoing struggles with  depression .

In one of his February 2019 columns, Gerson  wrote : “I have no doubt that I will eventually repeat the cycle of depression, but now I have some self-knowledge that can’t be taken away. I know that — when I’m in my right mind — I choose hope.”

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George W. Bush's top speechwriter is now calling for Trump's impeachment

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Another Republican has hopped on the impeachment train.

After the Mueller report detailed President Trump's failure to take what Michael Gerson calls "a criminal plot by a hostile foreign government" to the FBI, the chief speechwriter for former President George W. Bush writes that "House leaders should lay the groundwork for impeachment." This move strays from politics' usual goals of "partisanship" and "endless fundraising," Gerson continues in his Monday op-ed for The Washington Post, but adds that this choice will "echo across the decades."

As Gerson describes in the Post , Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report "shows that Trump and members of his campaign team were willing — actually, eager — to cooperate with Russian attempts to subvert a presidential election." Trump also "ordered subordinates to lie about their ties to the Russians," Gerson continues, going on to decry Attorney General William Barr for "provid[ing] cover for those deceptions." Yet Congress, Gerson writes, is "punting" its "responsibility" to hold Trump accountable for these actions. It's time for impeachment, Gerson finishes, because "the honor of the presidency now depends on the actions of Congress."

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Gerson has previously authored Post op-eds saying Trump is a "Russian stooge" and a "danger to democracy." But it ran just ahead of another Republican's call for impeachment , this one from former Trump transition staffer J.W. Verret, published Tuesday in The Atlantic . Verret was not a "Never Trumper," but opposed Trump on several policy points. And after reading the Mueller report twice, he reached a "tipping point" with Trump's leadership and said "Republicans in Congress" should have reached it too.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter .

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John McConnell

A longtime senior speechwriter for President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, John P. McConnell was part of the three-person team responsible for all of the 43rd President’s major addresses, including the speech to the Joint Session of Congress after September 11, 2001 and four State of the Union Messages. He co-authored eulogies by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney for President Ronald Reagan, remarks following the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia, and the President’s remarks on September 14, 2001 at the National Cathedral in Washington.

John served all eight years of the Bush-Cheney administration, holding the unique position of both Deputy Assistant to the President and Assistant to the Vice President. Previously he had worked as a speechwriter for Vice President Dan Quayle and Senator Bob Dole, and traveled extensively with both during national campaigns. He has visited more than 30 countries on Air Force One and Air Force Two. In his career he has also practiced law and served as a law clerk to Judge J. Daniel Mahoney of the United States Court of Appeals in New York City. He is a member of the Bar of the District of Columbia.

A lifelong political enthusiast, John was a page in the United States Senate under the sponsorship of Senator William Proxmire, Democrat of Wisconsin. He grew up in Bayfield, Wisconsin and is a graduate of Wayland Academy, Carleton College, and Yale Law School.

Disclaimer: This information is accurate for the time period that this person was affiliated with the Institute of Politics.

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‘Brave, kind, and modest’: Senior speechwriter remembers George H. W. Bush

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Curt Smith is a senior lecturer in the Department of English. He was a speechwriter for President George H. W. Bush in the White House from 1989 to 1993 and wrote more speeches for Bush than anyone else.

George Herbert Walker Bush was a son, husband, father, grandfather, pioneering businessman, global diplomat, forty-first President of the United States, Commander in Chief of a great liberation, war hero in America’s Greatest War, and last President of America’s Greatest Generation—and friend. He also embodied the way the world has historically seen America.

George Bush was brave, kind, and modest. He was generous, loyal, and honest. He knew sorrow—daughter Robin, dying at four, of leukemia; wife Barbara’s recent death. He also knew a lifetime’s joy of priorities: “family, faith, and friends.” His mother taught him to treat people equally—“Now, George,” she said, referencing the great hymn, “none of this ‘How Great Thou Art’ business.” Raised in an age of Tom Mix and Andy Hardy, he really did become The All-American Kid who lived the All-American Life.

President Bush said his three years in the Navy did more to shape his life than anything before or since. He was seventeen the day Pearl Harbor was attacked: December 7, 1941, a Sunday. Friends were among the 2,403 Americans who died. Next day he tried to enlist. Too young, he joined the day he turned eighteen—the Navy’s youngest aviator, almost dying when his plane was shot down. Many thought of that at Pearl’s half-century anniversary, in 1991, when President Bush courageously gave an emotional speech he feared he could not complete without breaking down.

“May God bless the United States,” he ended, whispering the words, “the most wondrous land on earth.”  For ninety-four years George H. W. Bush blessed the United States of America. May God bless him, and He will.

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‘Leave It To The States’: Former President Trump’s 2024 Message On Abortion The Fox News Rundown

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Earlier this week, former President Donald Trump announced his official stance on abortion, saying this issue “should be left to the states” instead of supporting federal regulation. Abortion access and rights remain a top issue for Democrats heading to the polls in November. Former President Trump’s statement has spurred disagreement among other pro-life Republicans, such as Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who says he prefers a federal ban at 15 weeks of pregnancy. Main Street Columnist for the Wall Street Journal and former Chief Speechwriter for President George W. Bush, William McGurn, joins the Rundown to discuss why the former President’s decision on abortion policy was a "wise one," the merit of states deciding this issue, and why he doubts it will be a winning issue for Democrats. Can someone staying in your home claim “squatter’s rights?” The issue has gotten national attention after high-profile cases of squatting went viral on Instagram and TikTok. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed a bill that he says will effectively stop squatting throughout the state, in a move that strictly limits the legal rights afforded to squatters. Florida Attorney Kevin Fabrikant joins the podcast to discuss the legal rights that squatters have under various laws, the involved process of evicting a squatter, and how the new Florida law seeks to remedy this housing issue. Plus, commentary by New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz. Photo Credit: AP Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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A fact-checker’s guide to Trump’s first criminal trial: business records, hush money and a gag order

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Former President Donald Trump speaks Feb. 15, 2024, before entering the courtroom at Manhattan criminal court in New York. (AP)

If Your Time is short

• Jury selection starts April 15 in former President Donald Trump’s trial in New York. Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels.  
• Judge Juan M. Merchan placed a gag order on Trump that bars him from talking about witnesses, court staff and their families, but he can still criticize District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Merchan.  
• Our mission: Help you be an informed participant in democracy. Learn more.

Amid a fiercely competitive 2024 election rematch against incumbent President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump will become the first former president put on criminal trial. 

Trump faces felony charges in four cases, but the first one to go to trial — and perhaps the only one likely to be completed before Nov. 5, Election Day — is a case in Manhattan concerning the alleged mislabeling of payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election. Daniels has said she had an affair with Trump.

Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a $130,000 payment to Daniels made through Trump’s then-attorney Michael Cohen. (Daniels’ real name is Stephanie Clifford.) Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is prosecuting the case.

Jury selection starts April 15. 

On its own, falsifying records in the second degree is a misdemeanor. However, the charge transforms into a felony if the person accused is convicted of falsifying business records with the intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal a crime committed. The upgrade would make the crimes Class E felonies, New York’s lowest level.

"Paying hush money is not illegal. People can disapprove of it, but it’s not illegal," said Jon Sale, a criminal defense attorney in Miami and a former Watergate prosecutor. 

Rather, Trump is accused of having made false entries in financial records to further another crime.

"Why did Donald Trump repeatedly make these false statements?" Bragg said when he announced the charges. "The evidence will show that he did so to cover up crimes relating to the 2016 election." 

Bragg said Trump’s actions "violated New York election law, which makes it a crime to conspire to promote a candidacy by unlawful means." He also said the wire payment exceeded the federal campaign contribution cap and falsified financial statements violated New York law.

The number of charges refers to 34 documents the grand jury found to have contained a "critical false statement" related to the payments. The counts also include documents related to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Trump, which Trump has consistently denied .

Trump has three other active criminal cases : one Georgia case involving election interference, a separate federal case on election interference and a federal case on document retention. He has also faced a civil trial in New York over inflated valuations of his businesses. In that case, Trump was found liable but is appealing the verdict.

Here, we will answer questions about the prosecution’s challenges and how the trial will work, and fact-check false and misleading statements Trump has made about the case.

Michael Cohen, former personal lawyer to President Donald Trump, leaves federal court Aug. 21, 2018, in New York. (AP)

The Manhattan case may be the first to go to trial, but legal experts say it may be the hardest to prove.       

They cite three major challenges facing the prosecution.

One is convincing a jury that the misdemeanor business falsification charges collectively advanced a separate crime, enabling Trump to be charged with a felony.

"A juror could easily have a reasonable doubt about whether the true motive behind the payments is … to keep your wife from finding out and protect your public image," said Bill Otis, former head of the Appellate Division of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and a former special counsel to former President George H.W. Bush.

A second challenge involves some key government witnesses, including Cohen, who was sentenced to three years in prison for tax evasion, making false statements to a federally insured bank and breaching campaign finance rules. Some charges he pleaded guilty to were related to the Daniels and McDougal cases. In a separate case, he pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. Cohen eventually served a little more than a year in prison plus additional time on home confinement. 

This history means Cohen "has serious credibility problems," said Matthew J. Galluzzo, who worked as a Manhattan prosecutor before Bragg’s tenure and is now in private practice. 

A third challenge for prosecutors is that it will take only one juror to prevent the unanimous verdict necessary to convict Trump.

"Even in a favorable venue like New York, some jurors could believe that Trump is being treated unfairly by our civil and criminal justice system," said Neama Rahmani, a former prosecutor who co-founded the firm West Coast Trial Lawyers.

Adult film actor Stormy Daniels speaks April 16, 2018, outside federal court in New York. (AP)

Citizen residents of Manhattan will comprise the jury. Even though Trump lived in the borough for much of his adult life, Manhattan probably is not a favorable jury pool for Trump: Biden won 86% of the vote there in 2020.

During jury selection, attorneys on both sides will be able to ask potential jurors questions to see whether they have fixed notions about the case that would keep them from ruling impartially.

The juror questionnaire posted by the court includes such questions as the prospective juror’s news and social media consumption habits; whether they have supported or belonged to  anti-government groups or identified as QAnon ; whether they have attended a Trump rally or signed up for a pro-Trump newsletter; whether they have read his books; and whether they "have any feelings of opinions about how Mr. Trump is being treated in this case."

Sale said that even though the test is to put one’s beliefs aside "and only decide based on the facts and the law," getting a fair jury will be a challenge for the defense. 

However, Trump’s ace in the hole is that he needs only one holdout.

"Mr. Trump is not going to find 12 jurors in Manhattan to unanimously acquit him," Galluzzo said. "However, he wins, as a practical matter, if he can convince one juror out of 12 to have reasonable doubt."

If that happens, the judge would declare a mistrial, and it’s highly likely that Election Day, Nov. 5, will fall before the retrial. That outcome would benefit Trump.

Former President Donald Trump salutes at a campaign rally March 16, 2024, in Vandalia, Ohio. (AP)

The trial will be held every weekday except Wednesdays, when Juan M. Merchan, the acting justice of the Supreme Court, holds mental health court. New York law generally requires a defendant to be present during the trial, which, in this case, could last six to eight weeks .

That schedule would mean that Trump can hold campaign events at night, on Wednesdays or on weekends. Trump can also continue posting on his Truth Social platform.

Outwardly, Trump seems unfazed by the logistical constraints, often speaking to press gaggles after court appearances and using the trials to portray himself as a victim of the justice system. 

"He is expected to use his trial as a major theme of his campaign," said Jerry Goldfeder, a senior counsel with the firm Cozen O’Connor who has represented elected officials.

A week before the trial started, a Trump fundraising email said, "Biden will raise millions while I’m stuck defending myself in court!" and asked "one million pro-Trump patriots to chip in."

A Class E felony is punishable by up to four years in prison , but even if Trump gets convicted, he might not get jail time. Being convicted of a felony is no barrier to running for president or serving. Even being in prison would not block him from serving as president, though it might cause significant logistical headaches. 

Trump omits that the order still allows him to criticize key people with power in the prosecution.

Merchan’s April 1 gag order barred Trump from speaking about witnesses or counsel in the case other than Bragg or about members of the court staff or their family members if those statements are made to interfere with the case. In other words, Trump can still criticize Bragg and Merchan. Even though the federal government is not prosecuting Trump in this case, Trump also maintains his right to call it a "Biden trial." 

Trump’s lawyers have challenged the gag order and courts will have the final say. Legal experts agreed that Trump should not be allowed to make comments that incite violence, But beyond that, we heard mixed opinions about the gag order.

Sale said one potentially unfair aspect of the order is that although Cohen has frequently talked about the case on television, outside of court, Trump cannot rebut what Cohen says.

However, experts said the law supports gag orders. 

"This case law goes back decades," said Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University School of Law, "Merchan followed it."

Duncan Levin, who worked in the district attorney’s office before Bragg and is now a defense attorney, agreed with Gillers. Gag orders "with very limited exceptions have long been found not to violate the First Amendment," Levin said. Trump "is free to discuss the criminal justice system but not to make ad hominem attacks on particular people associated with the case," Levin said.

The First Amendment does not protect all speech, said Steven Friedland, an Elon University law professor and former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

"Political speech and ideas are the most highly protected, although they are still not without limits," Friedland said. "The judge is attempting to protect political speech while at the same time protecting the fair administration of justice."

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks April 4, 2023, at a press conference after former president Donald Trump’s arraignment in New York. (AP)

This statement by Trump on Truth Social is unsupported. 

Trump points to one of Bragg’s prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo, who formerly worked for the Justice Department and the New York attorney general. 

"Colangelo is a radical left (prosecutor) from the DOJ who was put into the state working for (New York Attorney General) Letitia James and was then put into the district attorney's office to run the trial against Trump," Trump said during a March press conference .

While working for the New York attorney general, Colangelo investigated the Trump Foundation and led lawsuits against the Trump administration.

But his presence on the team doesn’t prove that Biden White House or campaign officials coordinated the case with Bragg. 

Although some legal experts told PolitiFact that Bragg could have avoided controversy by not hiring Colangelo, they agreed that his hiring does not signal that the White House or campaign officials coordinated with the district attorney’s office.

Galluzzo called Trump’s statement "total nonsense."

"Why would it be strange or suspicious for a prosecutor to hire another prosecutor with a New York license and experience working on complex prosecutorial matters?" Galluzzo said. "Most federal prosecutors in this country have worked under both Democratic and Republican administrations."

Days before the trial, Trump wrote on Truth Social "look what was just found! Will the fake news report it?" and showed a Jan. 30, 2018, letter by Daniels stating "I am denying this affair because it never happened."

The letter was publicly released and widely reported on the day it was released. 

But soon after, Daniels recanted , saying an affair had in fact occurred. She said her denials were because of a nondisclosure agreement and that she signed the letter because parties involved "made it sound like I had no choice."

PolitiFact in 2023 fact-checked a claim that the 2018 letter "debunked" Bragg’s case and rated that False .

RELATED : Timeline: What Donald Trump has said about Stormy Daniels and $130,000 payment

RELATED : Read all of PolitiFact’s coverage on Donald Trump indictments

Our Sources

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, District Attorney Bragg Announces 34-Count Felony Indictment of Former President Donald J. Trump , April 4, 2023

Supreme Court of the state of New York, Trump motion to dismiss , March 8, 2024

Supreme Court of the state of New York, Letter from Judge Merchan about jury questionnaire , April 8, 2024

Judge Juan Merchan, Decision on defendant’s motion for recusal , Aug.11, 2023

New York State Unified Court System, MEDIA ACCESS: PSNY v DONALD J. TRUMP, April 2024

New York State Senate, Section 175.10 Falsifying business records in the first degree , Accessed April 5, 2024

U.S. Attorney’s Office, Michael Cohen Sentenced To 3 Years In Prison , Dec. 12, 2018

U.S. Attorney’s Office, Michael Cohen Pleads Guilty In Manhattan Federal Court To Eight Counts, Including Criminal Tax Evasion And Campaign Finance Violations , Aug. 21, 2018

Associated Press, Michael Cohen ends prison term after Trump-related crimes , Nov. 22, 2021

ABC, Timeline: Manhattan DA's Stormy Daniels hush money case against Donald Trump , April 4, 2024

CNN, Breaking down Trump’s attacks on the daughter of the judge in his New York hush-money trial , April 7, 2024

NBC News, Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg discusses charges against Trump , April 2023

U.S. Attorney’s Office, Former Acting Associate Attorney General Matthew Colangelo , 2021

The Bulwark, "There is no breaking point with Donald Trump." March 27, 2024

Washington Post, What to know about Trump’s New York charges — and any potential sentence , April 8, 2024

CNN, ​​ Appeals judge denies Trump’s request to delay start of hush money trial so he can challenge gag order , April 9, 2024

CNN, Fact Check: Trump repeats baseless claims about Biden orchestrating his trials , March 25, 2024

New York law, Section 340.50 - Defendant's presence at trial , 2024

Former President Donald Trump, Truth Social , March 26, 2024

Former President Donald Trump, Truth Social , March 27, 2024

Former President Donald Trump, Truth Social , April 10, 2024

New York Times, Manhattan D.A. Hires Ex-Justice Official to Help Lead Trump Inquiry , Dec. 5, 2022

PolitiFact, Fact-checking Trump’s post-indictment speech at Mar-a-Lago about Stormy Daniels payment , April 5, 2023

PolitiFact, Trump’s indictment, explained: Falsifying business records, prosecutors’ challenges, and what’s next , April 5, 2023

PolitiFact, Did Trump release a ‘bombshell’? No. Stormy Daniels quickly recanted this 2018 letter. March 27, 2023

PolitiFact, QAnon ideas proliferate in 2022 midterms, raising continued concerns of violence , Nov. 7, 2022

Email interview with Stephen Gillers, professor, New York University School of Law, April 4, 2024

Email interview with Bill Otis, former head of the Appellate Division of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and Special Counsel to George H W Bush, April 4, 2024

Email interview with Matthew J. Galluzzo, former Manhattan prosecutor now in private pracice, April 8, 2024

Telephone interview with Jon Sale, white-collar criminal defense attorney in Miami who was a Watergate special prosecutor and a former lawyer for Rudy Giuliani, April 8, 2024

Email and telephone interview with Steven Friedland, law professor at Elon University, April 9, 2024

Text exchange with Duncan Levin, attorney with Levin & Associates PLLC April 8, 2024

Email interview with Neama Rahmani, former prosecutor who later co-founded the firm West Coast Trial Lawyers, April 4, 2024

Email interview with Jerry Goldfeder, senior counsel with the law firm Cozen O’Connor who has represented a variety of elected officials, April 5, 2024

Email interview with Joan Meyer, former local and federal prosecutor who is now with the firm Thompson Hine LLP, April 4, 2024

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Where Kamala Harris Lives, a Little-Known History of Enslavement

The vice president’s official residence is in a quiet Washington enclave once home to 34 enslaved people. Ms. Harris has sought to reconnect the property to its Black heritage.

By Robert Draper

Reporting from Washington

Three years ago this month, Vice President Kamala Harris moved into her official residence in northwest Washington, a quiet 73-acre enclave where the U.S. Navy keeps an observatory as well as the nation’s master clock. Early in her stay she saw evidence of digging near her house, and after asking around, learned that an archaeological team had recently found part of a foundation of an Italianate villa, known as North View, that had been there more than a century and a half before.

Near the villa, the team had found something else: A brick foundation of a smokehouse used to cure meat. Ms. Harris did not have to be told who had used it. Well before moving to the new residence, the nation’s first Black vice president had been told by aides about the 34 individuals who once lived on the property against their will. A subsequent opinion essay for CQ Roll Call was the first mention of it in the news media.

The names of the enslaved people were recorded in a document of the era. Peter, Mary and Ellen Jenkins. Chapman, Sarah, Henry, Joseph, Louisa, Daniel and Eliza Toyer. Towley, Jane, Resin, Samuel, Judah and Andrew Yates. Kitty, William, Gilbert and Phillip Silas. Susan, Dennis, Ann Maria and William Carroll. Becky, Milly, Margaret and Mortimer Briscoe. Richard Williams. Mary Young. John Thomas. Mary Brown. John Chapman. William Cyrus.

They ranged in age from 4 months to 65 years, and in skill from winemaking to carpentry. Five of them would go off to the Civil War as Union soldiers. Another would flee at age 13, destination unknown. For those who remained on a property that was known at the time as Pretty Prospects, the abject conditions of their lives are hinted at in documents now preserved at the National Archives.

Mortimer Briscoe, 30, “had one of his toes frost bitten, but is otherwise sound.” John Thomas, 41, “has three fingers on his left hand injured by a corn sheller” but “can drive the carriage and work as well as before.”

Until these enslaved people and roughly 3,000 others in the nation’s capital were emancipated by an act of Congress on April 16, 1862, the 34 inhabitants of Pretty Prospects were the property of a widow, Margaret C. Barber, who lived in the North View villa. Together they constitute a largely unknown chapter in a historic property whose famous resident today believes herself to be descended from an enslaved Jamaican.

After learning about the smokehouse, aides said Ms. Harris asked if any other evidence about the 34 enslaved people had been uncovered. No, she was told. But the discovery, which has now been documented in a new report that will soon be published by the District of Columbia Historic Preservation Office, prompted Ms. Harris to do some digging of her own.

Aides said she studied the old map that the archaeological team had consulted, dated 1882, which displayed the exact location of North View and the nearby smokehouse. About a quarter of a mile from where she lives now was a long-gone dwelling referred to as “Negro House,” where the 34 enslaved workers lived.

Ms. Harris then began poring over photographs taken on the property during the past half-century. The subjects were vice presidents, all white males, with their families and guests. The images conveyed nothing about the role Black people played in the history of the nation’s capital, much less on the property itself.

A Widow on a Farm

The history of a slave farm that then became the U.S. Naval Observatory and today the residence of the nation’s first Black vice president has previously been told only in fragments. This account is based on interviews with associates of Ms. Harris. It is also based on information provided by the naval archaeologist who unearthed the smokehouse, Brian Cleven, and on a trove of historical literature, much of it culled from archives and libraries by the Washington historian Carlton Fletcher.

Ms. Harris has never mentioned the residence’s legacy of slavery in public remarks. Aides said the very idea of moving to such a place only became palatable to her once she was assured that her new home was not the same structure where Ms. Barber’s servants once worked, and that they had been emancipated three decades before it was built.

The Obamas could relate. Michelle Obama, in her speech to the 2016 Democratic National Convention, cited the fact that she lived in the White House as a Black first lady as “the story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, but who kept on striving and hoping and doing what needed to be done so that today I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves and I watch my daughters — two beautiful, intelligent, Black young women — playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.”

C.R. Gibbs, a local historian, said that many tourists are unaware of this chapter in Washington’s history. “What people don’t realize when they come to visit the Smithsonian Museum, the Washington Monument, the Capitol or the White House is that they’re standing on slave-worked land,” he said. “And the same holds true with the vice president’s residence.”

North View was built in the early 1850s for a wealthy Baltimore planter, Cornelius Barber. His wife, Margaret, was the offspring of a viticulturist, John Adlum, whose vineyard on the banks of Rock Creek drew admirers like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Five of the Barbers’ six children perished from disease, as would the father in 1853, leaving the 43-year-old widow to mind the country estate.

But she had help. The 34 enslaved farmhands and domestic servants under Ms. Barber made her second among the city’s slaveholders. (The first, the tobacco planter George Washington Young, owned 68 people of African descent.) Ms. Barber frequently rented out her men to neighbors who owned farms, tanneries and slaughterhouses. Throughout the 1850s, she netted an annual income of around $1,600, or about $61,000 in today’s currency.

One of Ms. Barber’s female domestic servants, Ellen Jenkins, had been bequeathed to her by her viticulturist father in his will, with the stipulation that Ms. Jenkins would be freed from servitude upon turning 50. But Ms. Barber described Ms. Jenkins in a document as a “good cook” and did not relinquish her servant until the 1862 law emancipated Ms. Jenkins, when she was 60.

Ms. Barber gave up Ms. Jenkins and her other enslaved workers only after hiring a lawyer, who argued to a government committee that the widow was entitled to compensation for her loss. She sought $750 each for them. In the end, Ms. Barber settled for $270 per worker, totaling $9,000, or about $336,500 today. She moved out of the villa, whose grand paintings and chandeliered ballrooms were later defiled by Union soldiers. Ms. Barber died of influenza at age 80 in 1892, around the same time North View was torn down.

A Return of Black History

Today Ms. Harris lives in a white turreted Queen Anne-style three-story building, one with a history less fraught than that of the villa it replaced.

Built in 1893 for the superintendent of the naval observatory and later the home of the Chief of Naval Operations, in 1974 it was designated by Congress as the vice president’s official residence. Walter F. Mondale moved in with his family three years later, abiding with good cheer the not-yet-updated plumbing. He chortled about it in interviews, and said the family became friends with the plumber. The hot water went out a lot.

At some point during the 1980s, Vice President George H.W. Bush added a horseshoe pit to the property. His successor, Dan Quayle, had a putting green and a swimming pool installed, which later endeared Mr. Quayle to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who along with his wife, Jill, were fond of taking evening dips there. Vice President Dick Cheney preferred the residence’s hammock, where he oversaw the romping of his Labradors, Jackson and Dave. The Pences contributed a beehive and hosted pumpkin-decorating activities on Halloween.

A notable first came two years ago, when Ms. Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, welcomed a gathering of predominantly Black Washington families to celebrate Juneteenth. In her off-the-record remarks that day, the vice president made a passing reference to the 34 individuals who once lived on the property against their will.

Ms. Harris has sought to reconnect the residence with the Black American experience and to showcase the works of minority artists. Last September she hosted a hip-hop concert on the lawn, dancing with 400 guests to performances by Lil Wayne and Q-Tip. She turned to a Harlem-based designer, Sheila Bridges, to reimagine the interior.

In decorating its walls, Ms. Harris passed on landscape paintings offered to her by the Smithsonian and instead installed art that includes works by the Black photographers Carrie Mae Weems and Roy DeCarava, a painting by the Cherokee artist Kay Walkingstick and a quilt by the women of Gee’s Bend, Ala., who are descended from enslaved cotton pickers.

To date, there are no plans by Ms. Harris to commemorate the 34 Black men and women. Their individual histories have all but vanished. The remains of only two have been accounted for.

One of them, Mary Brown, was about 16 at the time of her emancipation and later worked as a housekeeper in Washington before dying in 1886 at the age of 40. The other was Ellen Jenkins, the cook. Ms. Jenkins became a nurse and lived until she was 80.

Both women were buried in a Black cemetery that is now the site of Walter Pierce Park, two miles east of where Ms. Harris lives today.

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of a Harlem-based designer. She is Sheila Bridges, not Sheila Bridge.

How we handle corrections

Robert Draper is based in Washington and writes about domestic politics. He is the author of several books and has been a journalist for three decades. More about Robert Draper

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