Strike a chord; don't pound the keys

In high school I started watching re-runs of The West Wing and dreaming about working in the White House. Specifically, I wanted to be either Press Secretary CJ Cregg or speechwriter Sam Seaborn or, most of all, head speechwriter Toby Ziegler. No one plays a tortured writer quite like Richard Schiff. (For the record, I would have also settled for dating Sam Seaborn. Rob Lowe in his prime, people.)

I'd never before seen speechwriting celebrated as an art apart from any other; this scene in particular is iconic in my mind:

In college I double-majored in journalism and political science, always thinking in the back of my mind of speechwriting but never actually attempting it. I spent a summer interning in the Washington, D.C. office of Hawaii Senator Daniel Akaka, working on the Hill during the day and traipsing back to my West End sublet and devouring two or three West Wing episodes a night. Obviously reality didn't have much in common with my favorite TV show, but it was an incredible summer and I came away with a deeper appreciation for the complexities of working in government, particularly in communications.

Yesterday President Obama gave a speech in Tucson at the memorial for the victims of the shooting last Saturday. He's getting praise for it all over the place, and for good reason: It's a really, really phenomenal piece of writing. If you haven't seen it, read the transcript here or watch below:

The speech is emotional but balanced. It is precise and focused and does not take advantage of the situation. Most of all, it's sincere. This is the best speech of Obama's presidency thus far.

I'm a little embarrassed that I don't know more about Obama's speechwriters beyond the fact that a 29-year-old whippersnapper leads the team. Jon Favreau (no, not that one) started as a Kerry intern in 2004 and, six years later, is Obama's Director of Speechwriting. Talk about making me and everyone else under 30 look bad.

Besides an incident last summer wherein Favreau was photographed playing beer pong shirtless (the horror!), he's received mostly positive reviews under the current administration. Favreau was on the Time 100 list and also got some love from GQ and Vanity Fair.

(By the way, Favreau is not the youngest head speechwriter the White House has seen: That would be James Fallows, who wrote for Jimmy Carter in the '80s and has since established himself as a total badass with a pen, writing for the Atlantic Monthly and pumping out top-notch books like nobody's business.)

It's inspiring to see this caliber of writing coming from the very top of the government communication machine. It makes me want to be a part of politics again, a part of bringing eloquence to a national forum which is too often dominated by trying to out-scream the other guy. Of this speech, I think Toby Ziegler would be proud.