Michael Gerson was chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush as well as a columnist for the Washington Post.
- Died: November 17, 2022 (Who else died on November 17?)
- Details of death: Died at a hospital in Washington DC of kidney cancer at the age of 58.
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Influential conservative
Gerson joined President Bush’s campaign in 1999 and remained with him until midway through his second term in the White House. Among the notable speeches he wrote for the president were his second inaugural address, in which he spoke of freedom and human rights, and several of his speeches in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Gerson was said to have coined the phrase “axis of evil” in a speech for Bush’s January 2002 State of the Union address, referring to Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Gerson also played a key role in the development of the Bush administration’s U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a successful program that has saved millions of lives worldwide. In 2006, Gerson left the White House, joining the Washington Post in 2007 as a twice-weekly columnist. He was also a regular correspondent for “PBS NewsHour.”
Gerson on writing Bush’s words of grief after 9/11
“These were fresh wounds in America, and I sat there in [Washington National Cathedral] and realized the words really counted at that point. They don’t always. You know, you do a lot of speeches when you’re at the White House, hundreds of them. But at a few moments the words really matter.” —from a 2007 interview for Religion & Ethics Newsweekly
Tributes to Michael Gerson
Full obituary: The Washington Post
