Ghostwriters brought to life

WHITE HOUSE GHOSTS: Presidents and Their Speechwriters. By Robert Schlesinger. Simon & Schuster. 494 pages. $30.

"White House Ghosts" brings to life the people behind some of the most poignant words spoken by presidents in the past 70 years. Journalist Robert Schlesinger gives a chronological account of the writer/president dynamic from Franklin Roosevelt to George W. Bush.

The presidential speechwriter, known as a ghostwriter, tries to write in a way that would express the president's own philosophy, allowing him to claim ownership, if not authorship, of the speech.

The difference in the speeches and phrases that have become part of presidential lore, having a profound effect on policy, and the speeches that quickly became forgotten footnotes, often depended on the speechwriter's success in finding the president's true voice.

The book is filled with intimate details about some famous policies, doctrines and presidential addresses.

One example came after the Challenger space shuttle tragedy on Jan. 26, 1985. Ronald Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan had inserted a quotation from a John Gillespie Magee poem, "High Flight," saying the astronauts had "Slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God." After sending the speech to staffers for approval and editing, the speech came back to Noonan with someone having changed the quote to "reach out and touch someone — touch the face of God," a reference to the former AT&T commercial. One can only wonder how Reagan would have sounded had Noonan not fought to keep her line.