Conservatives and ex-Bush staffers have been buzzing for weeks about the contents of Matt Latimer’s Speech-Less tell-all, ever since excerpts appeared in GQ magazine. 
In any case, since we have a veteran speechwriter, who himself worked in the Bush White House’s speechwriting office with some of the people involved here at TNL, I asked our Editor, Ben Domenech, what he thought about Latimer’s book. Here’s what he said, a comment he shared today over at RS:
Any staffer — particularly a speechwriter — who does what Mr. Latimer has in this case violates as basic of a code as there is in the business of politics.
I have not read much of the criticism of Mr. Latimer — he suggests instead that you should judge the book on its content. I read the entire excerpt in GQ, and found its content to be the worst kind of pointless reminiscing and inaccurate gossip. It’s worth noting that the only staff tell-all of the past two decades which is defensible on the merits is Stephanopoulos’s All Too Human — the least gossipy entry in recent years, it also showed that Stephanopoulos had a good understanding of his personal limitations and his own weaknesses, and exposed President Clinton to precious few attacks at the time it was published. Mr. Latimer gives no signs of having any of this humility, and what’s more, his focus seemed to insult and defame as many people as possible who trusted him during times of great difficulty.
No matter what’s in the rest of the book or Mr. Latimer’s intent in writing it, no one should ever hire him to write another political speech after this, or the response from William McGurn. They should be aware that every slip, every foible, every unknown fact, every mistake that they make behind the scenes and in front of Mr. Latimer is not just unlikely to be subject to staff privilege, but certain to appear in the public square.
Anyone of us who’s worked in Washington for politicians has embarrassing stories we could share about their personal limitations and foibles — they are human, after all — and more than one of us has fallen on a sword on occasion for those we served. The very activity of writing a political tell-all which exposes private work-focused moments of a politician you formerly swore to serve works directly contrary to this. It is, in my view, execrable. It’s like listening to a doctor share his patients’ most embarrassing diseases, or a lawyer with a few in him spill the beans about the other partners. Whatever the intent — whether to entertain, to gossip, to score points — it’s a terrible practice, and I think it’s shameful that Mr. Latimer is profiting from it. How very modern it all is — he would make the Commander in Chief of the United States nothing more than a pathetic male version of The Devil Wears Prada for the rags to chew on.
This is the lowest form of the Washington gossip game. Will it entertain? Of course — that’s why it’s done. Will anything come of this book other than burned bridges, broken promises, and profit from sales for Mr. Latimer for selling out those he once worked alongside (profit that, like Damon Linker and others before, he may find rather dwindling a few years from now, when he may find he will have to spend the rest of his days as a score-settler)? Of course not.
Whatever the case, I hope for his sake he never hires a secretary who aspires to a writing career.
Perhaps more interesting today is the follow up from Rich Lowry, who says that he asked Latimer to respond to queries about his relationship with former SecDef Donald Rumsfeld, one of the few people who is lauded in the book. Lowry could not get Latimer to explain the business relationship he now has with Rumsfeld, and when he made this fact public, it prompted Latimer to have a spokesman suggest Lowry and National Review are “part of the mainstream media.”
It’s hard to understand the rationale here. Well, maybe Latimer didn’t think he had enough enemies in politics or something.
TNL