I missed this write-up on Jon Favreau, Barack’s head speechwriter, in the New York Times Fashion section last week. He first started writing for Obama when he met him during John Kerry’s campaign back in 2004.
Life was relatively quiet then, and Mr. Obama and Mr. Favreau had some time to hang out. When Mr. Obama’s White Sox swept Mr. Favreau’s beloved Red Sox three games to none in their American League 2005 division series, the senator walked over to his speechwriter’s desk with a little broom and started sweeping it off.
Sounds like they have a good working relationship.
UPDATE : There’s a nice profile of Favreau in the Washington Post. It describes how his life has changed since Obama’s victory and the pressure leading up to writing Obama’s inaguration speech.
Very interesting article; not only because the guy is so YOUNG to be filling such a prominent role in the senator’s presidential campaign, but mostly because I think his position as chief speechwriter would be a very difficult job to perform. The WRITING part would probably come easy to him, being a writer, but the difficult aprt is to convey the speech in OBAMA’S way, not his own. I think you’d really have to have an innate ability to study and absorb all of who a person is to be able to convey a speech as if it were THEM doing toe writing of it.
Nice post!
woopsy, lotsa typos in there-sorry.
aprt- should be “part”, obviously!
and
toe – should be “the”…
I need to learn to type!
=)