That is no accident, according to people who have worked with Gerson, the cerebral former theology student and Starbucks coffee addict. Gerson, they say, is to Bush what Peggy Noonan was to Ronald Reagan - a gifted wordsmith with an intuitive sense of the boss.
"He and the President have a psychic connection," said Ed Gillespie, a former Bush campaign adviser. "He understands the President's philosophy, his view of the world, his compassion and his resolve."
Gerson occupies a job he did not seek. Two years ago, Bush the presidential candidate and Texas governor sought him out at U.S. News & World Report, where Gerson was covering politics. Bush interviewed him for less than an hour and offered him the job as chief speechwriter on the spot.
From the beginning, Gerson was able to soften Bush's reputation for mangling the language. Where Bush sometimes struggled extemporaneously for the right word - and settled for the wrong one - his speeches began to hit the right note. Fresh and memorable turns of phrase, a must of towering presidential legacies, started to slip into Bush's public addresses.
During a stump speech on education reform, Bush promised to end "the soft bigotry of low expectations."
His inaugural address described democracy as a "seed upon the wind, taking root in many nations." Then Thursday night, with the President tasked with no less than allaying the fear created by the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, Gerson helped Bush find these words: "Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done."
New Yorker contributor Hendrik Hertzberg, who wrote for President Jimmy Carter, has called Bush's inaugural address one of the best in U.S. history.
