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Over 25 years ago, on September 29th, 1998, we watched a brainy girl with curly hair drop everything to follow a guy she only kind of knew all the way to college. And so began Felicity. My name is Juliette Littman, and I'm a Felicity superfan.
Join me, Amanda Foreman, who you may know better as Megan, the roommate, and Greg Grunberg, who you may also know as Sean Blundberg, as the three of us revisit our favorite moments from the show and talk to the people who helped shape it. Listen to Dear Felicity on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Well, welcome to the Jason and the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and thanks for joining us. We're going to have a good, fun discussion today. We're going to give some thoughts on the news, highlight the stupid, because there's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere, and we've got a couple candidates for you. And then we're going to phone a friend, and honored and privileged to be able to get Bill McGurn to join us. You've seen him on Fox News. He's a great guy.
He was the chief speechwriter for a spell there for President George W. Bush. He was also the speechwriter for Mr. Murdoch, who is who's the principal, obviously, here and the founder of of Fox News. But he's got a fascinating background and.
You know, he's just one of those happy warriors, happy people that when you do bump into him and see him, he's got a smile on his face. And one of the great writing talents that's out there. Not everybody can do speech writing.
and the written word the way he does. And I think it'll be a very interesting discussion. But let's kick things off with a little bit about the news. I got four things that I want to kind of share with you. First is about oil prices. Oil prices are starting to go back up. The White House is scrambling to come up with the word track on this because
As Peter Doocy last week asked the White House spokesperson, so the president seems to be taking credit when the price of gas goes down, but is he also responsible when it goes up? Now, usually the White House comes out quickly and says, oh, it's Putin's fault and the Putin war and all this stuff.
But the moment it drips, you know, it comes down a penny or two, guess what? The White House is out there taking credit for it. Thank goodness that the president did this, that, or the other. But I think we're going to see more of a rapid rise in the price of fuel, unfortunately. And it's because of a couple things. One is the policies that were put in place by the White House, really within the first week of this administration, shutting down ANWR, getting rid of pipelines,
pushing back on the permitting process. They never did want fossil fuels, natural gas, nuclear, any of these things. Nuclear is about the cleanest energy out there, and they pretty much shut down that production and movement as well. So,
The president, Biden, went over to Saudi Arabia and almost embarrassingly tried to ask for more production. But with OPEC last week saying that they were going to produce 2 million barrels less per day,
And you combine that with a really bad policy that Biden had in place. He said he was going to, in order to drive down the price, start releasing our strategic petroleum reserve. Now, ladies, gentlemen, the reason we have a strategic petroleum reserve is to deal with it in terms of war and natural disasters.
And to deal with it so that if imagine if there was a natural disaster somewhere else in the world, like maybe Saudi Arabia or one of these big producers, we could be self-sufficient for a spell, a time for months or a couple of years, depending on how much we're using at a time.
It's not a political tool. It was there as a strategic petroleum reserve. It's got a great name. Not a political tool to try to drive down the price of gasoline. Well,
That had a minor effect for a short period of time. But guess what? Now that they've helped drain that strategic petroleum reserve, there's not a lot of reserve that you can go out there and suddenly put out into the marketplace to drive down the overall cost. So you do that, OPEC producing less, guess what? Price goes up. And that, unfortunately, is going to be what's happening. Next thing in the news is the national debt crisis.
It was announced last week that the national debt is north of $31 trillion. $31 trillion.
Now, the White House used to be able to say, oh, but we're reducing the deficit, which is such a bunch of hogwash, particularly now because Biden erroneously, I think, and despite the law has gone out there and said, oh, well, hey, you know what we're going to do is we're going to have this handout, this free bailout for anybody who went to college and your student loans. Well,
That is hundreds of billions of dollars, wiped out any talking point that they had about reducing the deficit. Now the debt is north of $31 trillion. We're paying something, and it fluctuates because of interest rates around $2 billion a day just in interest on that national debt. And keep in mind how much money that is. If you spent a million dollars a day, every day, it would take you almost 3,000 years to
to get to $1 trillion. And now we're $31 trillion in debt. Now, next year, the makeup of Congress may be very different, and we're going to have to have a discussion in this country about the debt limit. And I think that is an opportunity to take pause as a nation. People say, oh, well, we can't shut down the government. Well, we got to have some point where we actually have a discussion. And I do hope that that discussion leads to a discussion and a movement
to deal with the national debt, I happen to think, I believe in a balanced budget amendment. I think Congress should pass this so that it goes to the states. And if two-thirds of the states agree that we need to have a balanced budget, then that's the way we go. But I think it's irresponsible to not have that vote and not allow the states in order to...
have a vote and a say through their state legislatures, legislators, as to whether or not we're going to actually balance the books in this country. It's killing us, absolutely destroying the nation. All right, third thing, I found it interesting. You can go to ballotpedia.com and look this up. This is where I see some of this information.
It's fascinating that here we go into the waning days of the 2022 election, and Joe Biden is really pretty absent out there on the campaign trail.
Not many people want to be seen with him. You know, he goes to Georgia. Stacey Abrams doesn't want anything to do with him. He goes to Ohio. Tim Ryan running as a Democrat in Ohio doesn't want to see him. Arizona. Will he go to Arizona? I don't know. But thus far, he has shunned the presence of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, by the way.
Did you know that Donald Trump has done more than 450 endorsements in the 2022 cycle? 92% of the people in the primaries that he endorsed won. An amazing statistic. If you look at Biden and Harris, I don't think Kamala Harris has done any endorsements. But if you look back in the previous years, oh yeah, she did this regularly.
This is not like a principle of hers. Hey, I don't endorse anybody. It's just nobody wants to get her endorsement. If you look at what Joe Biden's done, I think he has less than 10. Less than 10 people want the president of the United States to endorse him. And these are Democrats. All right, number four, I got to move on to Twitter. Who knows? By the time this podcast comes out, we will be back forth all over the place. But the mere mention of
that Elon Musk may actually complete the transaction to purchase Twitter, I love it. Because you know what? Twitter has become an important social media tool, but the suppression that happens at Twitter and Facebook and others of conservative viewpoints, I'm here to tell you personally, it is real. And if you're going to have somebody in there that can take a very popular social media tool...
and get rid of the censorship and get rid of the irresponsible and politically motivated suppression, more power to you. I think Elon Musk is one of the great human stories of our generation. The impact that he's made on the world is just unbelievable. There's a reason why he's the richest person in the world. And more power to him if he can take over Twitter and fix it.
All right. Now it's time to bring on the stupid because, you know, as we say, there's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. All right. Got to go back to immigration. New York Mayor Adams, he criticized the far left for doing nothing on immigration. And he is right. You compare that to Henry Cuellar, who's a Democrat, who I served with in the Congress.
He's telling people, and he's said this for a long time, the White House, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, policymakers of the White House, they will not return his call. He's imploring people. Now, Henry Cuellar is a Democrat. His district is on the border between Texas and Mexico. And he wants to talk and show the Democrats what's going on at the border. And they won't even return his call.
So I just can't believe that these people are taking on these types of positions when we've had millions of people flowing over the border,
unimpeded. And this is so wrong. There's so much to this immigration story, and I know you know about it. Alright, the second thing for bringing on the stupid are the lack of debates. You have some key, key races out there where there's very few debates or debates that are very late in the system. Lee Zeldin, running for governor of New York. Pretty close and tight race for a Republican coming in there.
Kathy Hochul, the current Democrat governor of New York, who's never had to go through this type of election. Remember, she was the lieutenant governor before the governor had to step down. She should be subject to a debate. How the New York Times and a lot of these liberal-leaning media outlets are just pounding on the door saying, you have got the debate, you've got to answer these questions. Unbelievable that they get away with that stuff.
And in Pennsylvania, yeah, there should be more than one debate. There should be a couple of debates. And you know what? There should be a debate or two or three in Arizona. Again, late in the process. Look at your own races. There should be public debates. These are key to the process. And they shouldn't happen just a day or two before the actual election happens.
Voting is opened up. Guess what, folks? There probably should be a debate. That is bringing on the stupid.
All right, now we have the pleasure of calling Bill McGurn. Bill was the chief speechwriter for part of the George W. Bush administration. He worked for Mr. Murdoch doing speechwriting there, but he has a long storied history, and I hope to hear more of that about his journalism, his being a newspaper man, and he's just one of those happy warriors. We've seen him a lot on Fox, so looking forward to this discussion. Let's give a call to Bill McGurn.
Hello. Hey, Bill, Jason Chaffetz. How you doing? Hey, thanks for letting me interrupt your day here. But thanks for joining us on the Jason in the House podcast. Oh, you're welcome. Looking forward to it. Hey, look, I really appreciate coming on. First of all, I've had a chance to bump into you along the way at Fox. You're just one of the nicest guys out there. But you've got this fascinating background. You've got this skill set.
that not many people have. And it's a really, really hard one. And I want to learn a little bit more about it. I want to hear more about life and growing up and how you got in that position. Because to be able to be a writer and to have the President of the United States speak what you write...
That is a really, really interesting job. It is. I didn't set out to be a speechwriter. And, you know, what's interesting is that since that happened, since I went to work for President Bush, that seems to be how I'm defined. Where I think of myself, I've spent
Now it's almost 40 years in the journalism business, so I think of myself as a newspaper man, but I recognize to a lot of people I'm a speechwriter, and that was only for a very brief period of about three years. Hey, Bill, there's a whole generation growing up that don't even know what a newspaper is.
Isn't that kind of weird? Isn't that sort of scary? I saw this comedian. I don't want to get us off track here, but I thought it was pretty funny. And I can't remember the guy's name. I'm trying to give him some credit, but I can't remember his name. And he said, yeah, you know, the poor newspaper, because boy...
If it had been invented second as opposed to first, it would have been the greatest thing. Imagine somebody comes along and says, hey, you know what we're going to do? We're going to take all the things that are happening in the world, everything on the internet, we're going to synthesize it down, and we're going to print it on a piece of paper. We're going to deliver it to you before you wake up. You can hold it and just read the best about news and sports and everything. And I thought, that is so funny. It's so true that...
In today's world, the newspaper is just kind of fading away and they're trying to find their place in this new rapid fire world.
you know, speak and then think about it later type of world that we're living in. Yeah. And then when you're done reading the newspaper, it had the advert to have, you could use it to line your bird cage or put down for your pets in some area. You got a new puppy. You could just like put the newspaper down. Right. I'm more positive about the outlook for papers. Look,
The paper part is disappearing. I mean, I myself seldom read the physical paper and I do a lot of reading on my iPhone. That's not because I've chosen to
the iPhone. It's because it's more convenient. You know, I can read it in the waiting room at the doctor. I can read it on the train when I'm commuting. I can read it all sorts of places. So I seldom actually sit down and read the newsprint.
Even though I like it when I do, you know, occasionally I buy a paper, go in for a cup of coffee somewhere and spread it out. And I would say you miss a few things when it's on paper. You miss...
The level of importance that you can tell on the layout of a page, whether it's on top, what the illustrations are on the web in electronic form, it's a lot more democratic. You can't even tell the length of the piece at first glance. So you do miss something, but there are tremendous opportunities. Newspapers,
are far more timely than they've ever been before. And, you know, I think the Wall Street Journal is dedicated to belief that the greatest days are still ahead. Yeah, but, you know, is there something lost, though? Because it seems like these reporters, they knew they had a deadline, kind of whatever it was, midnight or 1 a.m. or 11 p.m., whatever the newspaper deadline was.
And they could continue to churn on a story as opposed to what's happening now, which is first to market, you better get it out quick. And sometimes you move too quickly and
And yet the story is still percolating for another, I don't know, six or eight hours. Imagine all the additional interviews and the comments and the time to pause and think it through. Have we lost something there? Maybe, but I think that was always the case. You know, one of the things people used to say about paper is, you know, the person reading it thinks, you know, all these people,
it's a finished product, you know, buffed, um, and shine to perfection. And that was true. Even then, you know, you couldn't reach some people by, um, deadline time, or they called back at 8 PM and the paper had already gone to bed. Um, you know, now you could fit those things in and update as needed. So I'm not sure we've,
We've missed that so much, but it's definitely changing. You know, it's giving an avenue for content, a lot of content on there. You know, our owner, Rupert Murdoch, always says we're in the content business. You know, we're sorting things out. And I think people are learning, for example, from the blogs that a newspaper is something else. You know, it has a lot of editors. They're not perfect.
but it goes through a lot of hands before it gets printed. And a lot of blogs, you know, I don't know about you, but sometimes I read a story and I click on to see if there's other information. And what I see is the same version of the story that,
picked up elsewhere. And so often it comes down to one Associated Press story or something. And it looks like it's reported by a lot of people, but it's really just one source.
So I don't know. I think the challenges of being timely and accurate are largely the same. The technology has made it easier to be timely. I don't know that it's made easier to be accurate. Let me compare it to when I worked at the White House, you know, in the newspaper business.
When I write something, I'm really on my own until the editor looks at it. And I have to do my own research and so forth, which I like because...
You know, when you do your own research, you read the background and the context. You don't just take something, you know, if you had an assistant. Well, you do this. I don't know that everybody's doing the kind of background. But if you do it by yourself, you can't rely. Like, for example, if a related issue is plagiarism.
You know, a lot of famous authors have been caught plagiarizing stuff for their history books, right?
I don't think they really were deliberately plagiarizing. What they had is a lot of these guys, especially the well-known ones, they have an army of research assistants and the research assistants find the stuff and they might not say it's in quotes. And so they take it, not realizing it's just lifted word for word. And I think they'd rather say, oh, I made a mistake or,
I didn't give sufficient credit then to then to say, well, I didn't really write this. This is my right. Right. Right. Twenty one year old grad student doing the work. So in journalism, we largely do our own stuff. Now, I compare that with the White House when you have a staff of fact checkers, researchers. And, you know, it's kind of funny. You could you could.
Like write a speech. First, I write a speech and I'd ask them to find me the specific number. Like, you know, what's the GDP of California or something? They can do that. Then after a while, it can get fun. If you write a sentence, the United States Army stationed in Iraq consumed oil.
Blank pounds of bananas in the first half of 2006. Okay. And then you realize there's someone in the government who
that's responsible for knowing how many bananas they consume. And you get back questions, does that count green bananas? Does that count bananas baked into other things like banana bread? And so there's vast information. And I never got...
you know, quite used to that having so many people, you know, giving you information. I still kind of preferred to ferret it out myself so I could read the background and so forth. But that was one different. You're listening to Jason in the house. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Bill McGurn right after this.
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All right, so I want to hear a lot about your time in the White House, working with the president, coming up with those words. But I think in order to kind of really appreciate and know that, let's go back to little Bill or Billy or whatever. I don't know what they called you when you were a little kid, but tell us about growing up. In my family, it was Billy. Okay, so little Billy. I don't know, brothers, sisters, where'd you grow up? Tell us about that experience. Yeah, I was the oldest of six.
Oh, wow. I was the oldest six. I don't think I was ever a little Billy. Um, my side, but I was the oldest six. My dad was an FBI agent. Uh, I'm
a Marine before that. So I was actually born in Camp Pendleton. He was a Brooklyn guy like my mom from Flatbush. And eventually they settled in New Jersey where I grew up. Now, they were also charter subscribers to National Review, you know, from the beginning. So I
Sometime in high school, I looked at National Review and I started reading it. So I was always pretty conservative when I went to high school and to college. And then I got a job with the American Spectator. And from there, moved to the Wall Street Journal overseas, first in Europe for three years, then
uh, then in Hong Kong. What were you writing about at that time? It was all the politics. You remember, um, NATO was a big thing that the, um, it was right before the bust up of the Berlin wall. So there was a lot of stuff going on solidarity. I went into Poland and met let Valencia, I think when he's under house arrest. So there was a lot of ferment, uh,
And I left just before the Berlin Wall came down. I was in Asia for that in Hong Kong. I
I thought I'd go there for the experience, spend two years, something. I spent two years or three years with the Asian Journal. Then I went back to Washington, worked for Bill Buckley at National Review. And then I had an offer to go back to Hong Kong for something called the Far Eastern Economic Review. Dow Jones owned it. It was kind of like an economist for Asia. And I spent another six years there.
When I went back to Hong Kong, I was married. So it was a very different experience. The first time in Hong Kong, I just was single. I used all my free time to travel. I went to Afghanistan during the first war with the Mujahideen. The second time I was married. So I got to know
a lot of local people who became like family to us. And so the second time was, I would say, almost a little better because I made real lasting friendships like with Jimmy Lai, the newspaper publisher who's in jail now about to go on trial for collusion with foreign forces. So again, going back just a little bit, when did you figure out that, you know,
was something that you could do and that you excelled at and that you liked? I mean, what was the spark that said, ooh, I'm pretty good at this? Well, I always liked writing. And in fifth grade at a Catholic parochial school, an all-boys class, someone, how do I put this delicately,
Someone had an accident in the classroom. Yes. And one of my classmates, a kid named David Fry, came up to me and said, we should have a newspaper. So he called the newspaper the 5B Blab. Yes.
And it was all about that accident. It only had one issue and it was handwritten. I think we had three copies because it took a long time to copy it down. So that was my first foray into newspaper writing. And I wrote for the high school paper and my college paper. So I always wanted to do that. But I will say when I got to the Wall Street Journal, my boss was Seth Lipsky, who, you
at the journal for many, many years. And now he runs a New York Sun in New York. Seth really taught me how to report that you don't just write opinions. You know, you have to back them up, reporting, calling people, all sorts of things. And that's when I think really learned the craft of journalism. And he sent me all over the world, Malta, Liberia,
Lebanon and so forth, Israel to write all these stories. So that's where I first started really getting serious about the business of writing.
A journalism. And I have to say, I don't like the word journalism. One thing Seth taught me is never say journalists say newspaper man. So I always feel like I'm betraying him when I say journalist or something. What was the lesson there? What was the what's the difference?
The difference is a newspaper man is kind of gritty and it's about reporting. And journalism is kind of a fancy word with journalism schools and kind of pretending that it's a profession like law or medicine, which is not, you know, you don't need any degree in
to be a journalist, much less a good journalist. You know, it's open to all. So that has stuck with me through all these years. You know, I think I'm with him on that. I think I would, it does, you're right. There's a grittiness to a scrappy, somebody who's out there living it, breathing it out on the streets, talking to people as opposed to,
oh, I'm going to write in my journal tonight. Right. And also it's, you know, less pretentious, you know? Yeah. No, I told, okay, I'm, I'm with, you've sold me on that one. I'm buying that. But what point, Bill, you know, it's one thing to be a newspaper man and to be, and to write all this, but taking that and then crafting that and turning that and spinning that, if you will, or, or tweaking it, I don't know what the right word is. Help me with this.
To be a speechwriter. When did that happen? Because you're right. I mean, you'll be known for your time at the White House probably more than anything else.
Yeah, that happened by accident, you know, and a lot of times when I meet kids getting starting out, they want they say, I want to do what you do. And I said, that's a mistake because I didn't aim for what I'm doing. I, you know, I took advantage of opportunities when they arise and the opportunities for others will be different than the ones for me.
In terms of working at the White House, I was a draftee. I was not a volunteer. I was working at the Journal, very, very happy. And I got a call, first of all, to preface this, when
George Bush was first inaugurated. I had a call from Mike Gerson and I went down and had breakfast with him. And he asked me if I wanted to be a speechwriter. Now, I had just returned with my wife and children from Hong Kong.
You know, my kids are adopted from China. So we we were really committed to our new life, our home in New Jersey for the kids. And I had never had a desire to work for the government. So I declined. But then I left the journal and actually went to write go write speeches for Rupert Murdoch, largely for financial reasons.
for my family and uh just as i got there they called me up again and said the president would still like you to join a speechwriting department this time as chief speechwriter and um i didn't want to go it was a huge cut in salary by about a third and the reason i went is that um
We were at war. I just don't think... I was raised... A wartime president asked for your services...
I think you have to have real good reason to say no. And although there were real sacrifices for my family for that decision, they'd be disrupted again. They were nothing compared to the sacrifices of the men and women who were serving over in Iraq and Afghanistan. So I went and I had, I won't say it was great time. Like I look at it,
I think like men look at their time in the army, they're glad they did it. Not sure they would do it again. I love the people I met. I met some first rate people. The president was great to work with. He went the extra mile for my family. You know, my girls all love him. So it was a great experience. And actually, it taught me a lot of useful things for my job about how the government works
or does not work. So, you know, you learn something from everything you do. That's another thing I tell the young journalists. If you make a mistake somewhere and leave a job and take a different job and it doesn't work out, don't spend your time looking back and
look forward, say, okay, what do I want to do next? Every job has some lessons. If you learn you don't like something, that's a good lesson. So I don't think any experience is wasted no matter what it was. And I don't think people looking for a career in the news business should...
worry about mistakes, you know, and every job has certain advantages and disadvantages. So if you're finding yourself stuck in one, say, well, what are the few advantages this job offers me and take advantage of them until you find a new job. Let's go back to, to Rupert Murdoch for a second. Um, and I'll wait. He's, uh,
Very grateful. I've had a chance to interact with him a bit here at Fox and to be a contributor here at Fox News. But what did Rupert Murdoch see in you? I mean, look, he's been in the newspaper business and the news business for a long time. He sees a lot of people and reads a lot of things online.
Had you written speeches before? No, I hadn't. How did he pick you out of the sea of people he can get to? I don't think he saw anything in me. He was relying on Peter Robinson. You might know him. He's a former Reagan speechwriter. He wrote Tear Down This Wall, that speech and everything. And Peter's a good friend. And so when Rupert was looking for a speechwriter, he was planning...
to talk a lot about education, which he cares about a lot, and speeches. Peter recommended me, so I was hired on that basis. And I learned an incredible amount from Rupert, who, by the way, loves newspapers. You know, Rupert's probably most associated with Fox, but Rupert really has given the journal new life,
And he loves newspapers. At the heart, he's a newspaper man. So there are a lot of people that are a newspaper man, but they can't.
actually write for the spoken word. Right. What's different from, you know, writing something for whatever journal you're writing for, for the, for, you know, whatever you're writing and actually turning it into a good compelling speech? Because George W. Bush has a different cadence. He has a different inflection points. He has
How do you look at that? I mean, writing for a Bill Clinton as opposed to a, and I'm not talking about the content, right? But how do you do that? How do you approach that? That is an excellent question. And too many people don't appreciate that. But there is a fundamental difference between the written word and the spoken word.
And people that are good at one often are not good at the other because, again, takes very different skills. So take me, for example, for the journal. My columns are 800 words. So I'm trying to cram a lot of stuff, information in my column as much as I can.
And I have that limit and someone reading it can read like two paragraphs. And then, you know, their, their wife or husband asked them if they want another coffee and they get distracted, then they can come back and finish it. All sorts of things that that's not the way of speech works. And president Bush used to emphasize this. He took a course called American oratory Yale. And basically he,
The lesson in that course in a structure of speech is to tell people what you're going to say, have an introduction, then kind of make your three points about it.
then your peroration and conclusion. And, you know, with three points, like if you're giving a speech on, say, Ukraine today, you know, you're giving a speech on helping Ukraine in its war against Russia, you would say the first way we help Ukraine in this fight against Russia is to support them at the U.N.
Then you explain that didn't go to the second point. The second point is the second way we support Ukraine. It's war against Russia is to arm them and so forth. And the reason for that is we've all been at speeches where a guy goes on and on. Right. And then he says, and you think he's going to conclude that?
And he says, and now for my second point, you know, and everyone groans, you're trying to give people kind of a roadmap of where you are roughly in your speech. And President Bush, he always says, you know,
Bubba's got to be able to understand it. You don't talk down to people. You treat them as intelligent, but you organize it so that they know where they are and what you're saying. And that means that with the spoken word, you can't put in
quite as much information, you know, if you're getting your points across, because you're repeating a lot of your points in a newspaper column, you don't really repeat because that's wasting space.
you kind of are in speech re-emphasizing it. So they're very different. You know, listening to something, a lot of times people don't have the text in front of them, so they don't know where you are. And, you know, if they miss it,
they miss something you say, that train has left the station. If people read something, they don't quite get it, they can go back to reading it again. They can't do that with the speech. So you have to know your audience. And then one thing you kind of alluded to that a lot of good writers don't get, for a speech to be successful,
it has to reflect the speaker. You know, it has to be consonant with that person. George Bush would give different speeches from Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy, you know, all different, all successful in one way, but they have very different styles and it has to be consistent with them. One of the problems, uh, I had the speechwriters, um,
section is that, you know, I had about six speechwriters, all talented people, and they want to show off kind of what they can do.
But the president doesn't want them. If he has two terms, he's probably going to have about 20 something speechwriters all throughout, you know, that after some leave and some new ones come. What he wants is continuity. He wants them all to sound the same like him. So it kind of involves stifling yourself.
And and trying to find the president's words, I found personally that the younger people were better at that because they hadn't become hardened to their own style yet. And they were more amenable to.
to hearing the president's style and trying to capture that rather than falling into their own style. And their own style might be fine. It might even be better, but it's not the president. It's not the person who's speaking it. So there's a lot of different factors that go in. Now, another difference with President Bush, some presidents don't go over speeches. You know, I don't think his father did.
did that from the speechwriters I've talked to. President Bush went through and edited his speeches with us and was very, very involved. So by the time he gave it, he was really comfortable with it and it was his. And I think that's important for a president because
That's one of the most common ways you communicate with the world, what your administration is about. Well, in every word, the world does move, markets move, troops move. The significance of a word or the nuanced way that it's delivered, that's interesting, the difference between the father and the son. Just very briefly, in a generic way,
Or unless you have a specific example, what is the process? The president has a big speech coming up. Does he call you and say, hey, Bill, bring a couple guys? How does that work?
Well, I'll tell you how it worked. The Bush White House. One of the good descriptions of that is in Peggy Noonan's book. She applies the modern White House process to the Gettysburg Address and the results are disastrous. So, you know, most people think you probably write a speech and then mostly it's over except for tweaking. Not at all. In the modern process,
You get the topic and the venue, you know, so forth. And then the people in the government that are responsible for that policy. So if it's Ukraine policy, State Department, maybe Pentagon, if it's domestic policy, you know, if it's like taxes, you know, OMB, all sorts of things, OMB.
Office of Management and Budget, it has its hands in everything because everything has a price tag. So I learned how powerful they were during speech writing. So they tell you what the policy is. And then you write down a draft of what you think is speech. And what I did, I was assigned speech to different people and they would write a draft and
And that would be only about 25% of the work. Then the top three people in speech writing, myself, Mark Thiessen, and Chris Michelle, would go through it and would edit it, would read it aloud. Because remember, speech is a spoken word. And would read it aloud, pay attention to the applause lines and everything, and bang it into shape.
And then we send it to the staff secretary who circulates it to the people who have some authority over the speech. Like I mentioned, if it's foreign policy, State Department, NSC, they're going to have a lot of say in it. If it's education, the education department, all sorts of things. So it goes out. It can go out to as few as 20 people. Some people always say,
get it like chief of staff. They always get it and they send back their comments that were written on the speech, you know, like someone grading a paper of what they wanted. And it comes back to the speech writers. That's called staffing. You send it out for staffing and it comes back and we have to decide which of these changes you have, you have to take which of them we're not going to take.
which of them we have to find different words for and so forth. And sometimes there's contradictions. You know, one cabinet member wants this and one wants that. After we've incorporated all their stuff,
And Peggy Noonan gives a great example with the Gettysburg Address, how like four score and seven years ago, you know, in staffing, someone would circle that and say, archaic, why are we using that? Then in the part when he says, the world will little note nor long remember, someone circles that and says, then why are we giving speech if no one will remember? These are very typical examples.
comments. And some people offer bad jokes they want to put in or really awkward wording. So we try to iron out the kinks, take as much as constructive, and then it goes to the president. And that was really good for the speechwriters because even if the president hates it,
He's the authority from now on. You know, we don't have to worry, gee, we're saying no to the defense secretary. All we have to do is please the president.
And he goes over it with us. You know, if he hates it, he'll go over it with us several times. One of the good examples was the surge speech announcing the surge in Iraq. Right. You know, I was there with Chris Michelle, and that was an operational disaster for
because it was postponed a few times and it was going on when there were bombs. You know, if you remember all these people getting killed in Iraq, suicide bombs, it looked like Baghdad was falling. And so we were going to announce a surge. And with President Bush, one thing he wanted up high was
was like a nut graph explaining, you know, the core of the speech, what it was, and then the rest would follow. So we couldn't do that because we had some restrictions. Basically, the president was substituting a counterinsurgency policy for the existing policy, which was hunt them down and so forth.
But we weren't allowed to use counterinsurgency as a word because for classic counterinsurgency requires a 10 to 1 advantage.
And we didn't have the troops for a 10 to 1 advantage. General Petraeus argued that the Iraqi police made up the difference, but we weren't allowed to use it. So when you're not allowed to use the key word, it's like having a red tie and trying to explain that to someone else without using the word red. You know, it becomes...
A little incoherent. So one morning, one Saturday at like 6 a.m., we were in the Oval Office after three weeks working on this draft. We would have to tear it up so many times because new developments came in. Everyone was telling us what they wanted to say. And so after we finally went through and had a draft...
President Bush called me at 6 a.m. National Security people are there. I think Condi Rice is there. All sorts of people are in the Oval. And they give it to the president. And he says, he reads it. He hasn't read it before. He's reading it at the desk. And he says, page one is awful.
But it is not, it isn't the disaster that page two is. As only President Bush can convey. So then all these people who wanted to be part of the speech were telling us what to say. They all headed for the tall grass, you know, and just left us hanging there. So I went back with Chris and I said, look, if we're going to get in trouble,
Let's at least get in trouble for doing what we think is right, not what other people tell us. And we wrote it the way the president wanted to. The problem was that missing nut graph. And so rather than try to find awkward ways around it, we just cut it.
So the next morning, Sunday, we were back in the office at six. And remember, this has been preceded by like a month of 13 hour work days. Right. We're exhausted. We're in it. And as the staff secretary is handing President Bush's speech, he's sitting at his desk in the Oval. I said, Mr. President, you especially hated page two yesterday.
We took that out. So when you see page two, if you think of it as page three, it will go down a lot better. And it gave me a funny look. And basically, it was okay after that, just a few tweaks and so forth. So it was certainly a learning process. Well, listen, what a pivotal role. And I do think a lot of people...
I find this too, like, you know, I served in Congress, what, eight and a half years, and people say, oh, I want to be in Congress, young people. And I'll say, well, look, the most important thing you can do there is not get involved in politics. Go out, do something else, then you have something to contribute.
And so much like you told us kind of earlier here, if you set out to do just the speech writing, I guess there are a few people that have had success doing that. But there are so few jobs in that that are consequential, right? I think the reason –
uh, um, uh, Mr. Murdoch or, uh, a president Bush is, is attracted somebody like it's because he's just a flat out good writer. And, you know, I find you as a person who comes in with a smile on their face and of good humor, but has a talent to back it up in the experience of writing. That's what, that's what ultimately attracts people to saying, Hey, we want Bill McGurn on this, on this project. Well, that could be when I went to the white house, uh,
I didn't go because I thought I would be consequential. I went because I thought I owed it to President Bush and my country.
even if it wasn't consequential, that I would be, you know, like a private, my little role in something for the nation, especially since I haven't served in the military and I hadn't had other opportunities. And I thought, yeah,
How do I tell my children that when I was asked to make a teensy sacrifice compared to, you know, great sacrifices other people made, you know, I decided I wouldn't do it. So, and it was great. Let me say it was great for my kids. I have three girls. They love President Bush. He's been great to them. It was such an experience for them. You know, my youngest daughter,
We had just brought back from China six months before. So six months or a couple of months after, you know, we got her in China. She's sitting on the lap of the president of the United States. That's amazing.
So that gave me great satisfaction. Well, your impact and the word choices that you made impact the world in ways we will never know. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back right after this.
Bill, you've had an amazing career, but in order to kind of get to know you a little bit better, I have some rapid questions I have to ask you. And I don't care how many speeches you've written or how many trips around the world you've taken. I don't know that you're properly prepared for this, but I'd like to give it a go. You ready? Yes. All right. What was the first concert you attended?
First concert, I think, was the Simon and Garfunkel concert. That's pretty legitimate. Yeah, that's pretty good. What was your high school mascot? Golden Knights.
Because there were obviously a lot of knights roaming around in New Jersey at that time. We weren't very original. Yeah, well, the golden knights as opposed to the silver knights. I think that makes a lot of sense. What was your very first job? Other than mom and dad saying, hey, Bill, take out the garbage. I mean, like where you had to go actually and have a different boss than mom and dad.
Well, first job as a kid was delivering newspapers, you know, six days a week, including Sunday morning. What time were you waking up on that deal? It was about 6 a.m. for the Sunday. The daily papers were in the afternoon. So I did them after school. And then the first job after that, I worked in the local A&P for a couple of years. That's good. That's good.
uh life's most embarrassing moment i should have my kids here my kids would say it's when i appear in public and having cleared my dress with them um um most embarrassing i'm sure there's been some but i can't um yeah for them along that line um i used to have a vespa can you you know a little scooter
And when they were really young, they thought it was so fun. Get on the back, hold on to dad, go for a ride. But then I realized that, you know, they lived close enough to walk to school, but every once in a while I'd come and pick them up. But then all of a sudden one day there was an age where that wasn't so cool anymore. And they were so embarrassed. I was. Which made me want to do it all the more. Yeah, that's.
It's kind of the same with me. I think my kids say the embarrassing thing is that I don't seem capable of embarrassment when I appear in odd clothes that I'm attached to and they're mortified by it. But, you know, there's something oddly satisfying about embarrassing your kids. And the older I get, the older I get, the more I kind of enjoy that. Yeah.
It's so pleasant. I don't know where that evil side of embarrassing your kids comes from, but I really do enjoy it. All right, let's move on. If you could invite one person over to have dinner, say, hey, family, we got a special treat tonight. Now, dead or alive, any person you could pick, who would you want to come have break bread and spend some time and have a conversation with?
I think Lincoln. He strikes me as so melancholy, but so prophetic and everything, and such a president with such burdens. I think it would have to be Lincoln. Yeah, between him and George Washington, I think they had the
the biggest tasks on their plate in a nation that wasn't so certain. We weren't quite so certain the next day it was going to be here. Right. I'm in that camp as well. Unique talent. Plus, he had a sense of humor. Oh, yeah. Sense of humor. And he was a great orator, too. I mean, the guy could speak. Right. Right.
A little known fact, you know, I was the chairman of the Oversight Committee, but back in the day it was known under a different name. But the two years he served in Congress, he was on that committee, which I thought was pretty interesting. Oh, really? Yes. Yes. That was his committee. All right. Unique talent about Bill McGurn that nobody knows about.
Well, I don't know how unique it is, and I rarely exercise it anymore, but I do play the guitar. And I know, and I have to say, having three daughters and a lot of road trips, I know more Taylor Swift lyrics than is decent for a 63-year-old man to know. I got to tell you, I have a daughter who's now in her early 20s,
But she grew up listening, loving, adoring, and still does Taylor Swift. So I can beat you there because I think I probably know more songs, more lyrics, and can recognize them. But I will also add that I have been to a Taylor Swift concert. Now, I went with my daughter. I didn't go by myself. I'm not that creepy. But I don't know if you've been to a Taylor Swift concert, but that takes you to a whole new realm. Yeah.
Yeah, sort of halfway. We got my daughter two tickets for a concert in Philly.
And my wife and I drove her down with a friend, and we stayed in a parking lot while she went in for the concert. There were so few people there with XY chromosomes. I mean, women and girls of all ages and almost no men at all or boys anywhere to see. The only men I saw were like security guards.
Well, and being in the concert, we were sitting in the upper bowl. My daughter had made a sign. And after like waving it for a while, I finally said to our daughter, you know, I think Taylor has seen the sign now.
And she's, oh, okay, okay. And then put the sign away. But there were a spattering of other dads out there. And I just kind of give them a look and they'd give me a look like, yeah, yeah. All right. We're just, this is interesting being good dads. But that, what an experience. This is what you do. Yeah, this is what you do. And, you know, I'm so glad that I did. Because I actually had a lot of fun because she just absolutely loves it.
All right, just a couple more quick questions. Pineapple on pizza, yes or no? I haven't had it, but I like pineapple, so I think I would like it. Ill-informed there, Bill. We'll work on you on that one because...
Wet fruit should not be on pizza, but that's well established. And I'm glad you haven't had it. That says a lot about you. That's good. What is the other thing for Bill McGurn? Like through the years, if you want to get out, clear your head, just relax, think about
or think about something other than the high-powered politics and stuff that you're covering and writing and everything else, if you wanted to kind of escape from the world, what is that other thing? Is it playing the guitar or what is the other thing for you? It used to be. I used to do a lot. I know a lot of... I spent a year in Ireland, so I know...
like all the Irish folk songs. I know that, but all the things that I find relaxing, my wife and children find irritating. So, and one thing I do like is old movies. And so, you know, if I ever put one on that I like,
I hear you black and white. And I've made my youngest daughter watch some old classics with me. You know, for example, so I went to Notre Dame and so did my middle daughter and my oldest went to St. Mary's, the girls school.
But they had never seen Newt Rockne All-American, right? Even though they knew references to him. So I made them watch. And I made my youngest daughter watch about 10 movies, old movies. And she says, I hate when you pick a movie because I know as soon as I like a guy, he's going to die in the end. And actually, that's quite true in most of the movies I pick. So.
So I made her watch Newt Rockne and she had never seen the young Ronald Reagan. Oh, you know, she said, who's that guy? He's pretty cute. Well, he was a former president. So I don't know if you know the movie, but of course he dies. And that becomes the source of Rockne's win one for the Gipper. And so then when Rockne has deathbed scene, I mean, uh,
The Gipper has his deathbed scene. She starts kicking her legs. She's lying on the couch. She said, I knew it. I knew he was going to die because I liked him. And I had to say, don't get too attached to Newt either. I don't think he makes it out of the final reel of the film. You know, it's one of the best things my dad too, because I, dad did for me and my brother. I, I,
You'd have to drag me into these old movies. But one summer in Scottsdale, Arizona, the Scottsdale Library was having this series of movies. And my dad bought like the 10-pack of
which meant every, I think it was Saturday morning in the summer, we went and saw one of these old films. And I'm like, oh my gosh, rolling my eyes, just dreading this. But that's where I saw Psycho and North by Northwest and movies that I like really, like North by Northwest, I think is one of the better movies I've ever seen. And I love that show. Would have never happened if my dad didn't drag me kicking and screaming to it. So good for you.
All right. Last question, Bill. Best advice you ever got? I'm not sure exactly specifically. I mean, the best advice has always come from my father, who has, you know, just always said, don't be afraid to stand for what's right, even if you're all alone. And, you know, he was like that. He is like that. You know, the Marine motto is semper fidelis.
And, you know, he kind of raises all as Marines, even though none of us enlisted voluntarily. So I think that's the best thing that don't be afraid to be alone if you're if you're
standing up for a principal. No, look, that's great advice. You've had an amazing, amazing career. Just the work, the body of work that you've had through the years, just absolutely love it. And very kind of you to kind of share your story, your background and perspective with
on this Jason and the house podcast. Really do appreciate it, Bill. Yeah, I appreciate it. It was a lot of fun. All right. I can't thank Bill enough for his time and, and, uh, what a storied history. Uh, there's still a lot more to come from Bill McGurn, I'm sure. And just a gem of a person and what he's done and the effect that he's had on the nation behind the scenes is, is truly remarkable. So, uh,
Really interesting discussion. And I thank Bill for joining us. Thanks for listening to the Jason in the House podcast. I need you to rate it, subscribe to it. That would be really helpful. If you can do that, I'd really appreciate it. You also can go over to foxnewspodcast.com. There's other great podcasts out there from some really talented people. And I think you might enjoy them. But make sure you join us again next week. We'll have a very interesting phone-a-friend guest next.
I'm Jason Chaffetz, and this has been Jason in the House. Hey, it's Clay Travis. Join me for Outkick the show as we dive deep into a mix of topics. New episodes available Monday to Friday on your favorite podcast platform and watch directly on outkick.com forward slash watch.