Presidential speechwriters always strive for those few pithy words - like "a thousand points of light" or "a kinder and gentler nation," - that will live on after the applause has died.
But the ghostwriter who put those earlier words in Bush's mouth and taught us to read his lips, Peggy Noonan, is now persona non grata at the White House since becoming a tell-it-all author. And neither Bush, left to his own devices, nor his current speechwriters have been having much luck at matching the Noonan nuggets."The underpinnings of the United States, the State of the Union, is not bad," Bush told a group of newspaper publishers last week when asked to preview Wednesday night's address.
"Not bad," might be an honest assessment. But it doesn't have much ring.
Meanwhile, Bush's speechwriters seem to be straining for soaring passages.
"With all the flash and fluff in the world today, there's something we can't afford to lose sight of - something deceptively simple. It's who we are that makes this nation what it is," was one recent offering.
In his 1989 inaugural address, Bush spoke lyrically of a "new breeze" blowing through the totalitarian world. He promised Democratic leaders an "age of the offered hand." And he summed up the nation's budget woes in six words: "We have more will than wallet."
Noonan, again.
It was the last speech she wrote for George Bush. White House sources said there was a falling out between Noonan and White House chief of staff John Sununu and other top Bush advisers in early 1989, partly due to her own growing fame as a wordsmith.
Noonan recounts her experiences as a speechwriter for Bush and former President Reagan in a book, "What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era," published last week.
Bush has made no secret of his disdain for insider or "kiss-and-tell" books written by former aides. The publication of Noonan's book did little to heal the rift.
When she began writing speeches for Bush in the 1988 campaign, Noonan writes, he gave her a list of words with "special meaning" to him: "family, grandkids, love, decency, honor, pride, tolerance, hope, kindness, loyalty, freedom, caring, heart, faith, service to country, fair (fair play), strength, healing, excellence."
From those threads she began weaving Bush's speeches. But she ran up against one major obstacle: "George Bush hated to say `I.' "
"I became adept at pronounless sentences," Noonan says. "Instead of `I moved to Texas and soon we joined the Republican Party,' it was `Moved to Texas, joined the Republican Party, raised a family.' "
Noonan suggests Bush's modesty came from his "doughty old mom," Dorothy Walker Bush, "who used to rap his knuckles for bragging, a brag apparently being defined as any sentence with the first person singular as its subject."
She confesses visions of Bush taking the oath on the Capitol steps with these words: "Do solemnly swear, will preserve and protect. . . . ' "
Bush's characterization of a "kinder, gentler nation," contained in his acceptance speech to the Republican National Convention, has become one of the president's signature phrases. But, Noonan writes, it was just "kinder nation" in her first draft. She later scribbled in "gentler."
Noonan takes all the credit for "read my lips," even though Bush aides took it out because "there is no history of presidential candidates making personal-organ references in acceptance speeches."
Bush left it in. One line he scratched out: a reference Noonan proposed to Michael Dukakis' slight stature.
Noonan claims full credit for Bush's "thousand points of light" but allows it might have been influenced by a line from a favorite author, Thomas Wolfe, who wrote in "The Web and the Rock" of a "thousand points of friendly light."