Spotlight
Veteran Speechwriter and Communications Strategist Eric Schnure Joins West Wing Writers
By: West Wing Writers · 10/19/2026
Washington, DC, October 19, 2026 – Today, West Wing Writers announced that former White House speechwriter and executive communication strategist Eric Schnure has joined the
The Speechwriter’s Room Podcast
By: Sarah Gruen · 09/25/2026
Looking for your next listen (best streamed while baking)? Our Sarah Gruen stopped by The Speechwriter's Room to share her experience at the United Nations,
UNGA Pressure: An Insider’s Guide to Diplomacy’s Biggest Week
By: Sarah Gruen · 08/11/2026
As the former Director of Speechwriting for the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, UNGA was my Super Bowl (right down to the halftime
The Name is Mamdani.
By: West Wing Writers · 01/13/2026
Zohran Mamdani is a relentlessly disciplined messenger on affordability. So it’s all the more interesting when he gives a speech about something else. A week
Why Speechwriters Take Humor Seriously
In honor of silly season in Washington, our resident humorists Chandler Dean and Sarah Gruen unpack the strategy behind the hilarity — and share techniques that
A Murder Mystery Is Revisited in the #MeToo Era
By: Janet Potter · 02/21/2023
Janet Potter reviews Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions for You, a boarding school novel and a murder mystery, and the story of a woman reexamining
White House Aides Keep Trying to Torch the State of the Union Address. Presidents Keep Getting in the Way.
By: Jeff Shesol · 02/07/2023
In 1998, Jeff Shesol, a speechwriter in Bill Clinton’s White House, wrote an internal memo calling for a shorter, tighter speech that focused on one
The State of the Union Shouldn’t Be Self-care for Presidents
By: Jeff Shesol · 02/07/2023
The State of the Union address is often described, charitably, as a tradition. What it has become, really, is a nostalgia act — an aging
The Secret to Wealth Is Giving Up Pointless Expenses (and Other Lessons from My Twenty-Eight-Dollar Book)
More Americans than ever are struggling to make ends meet. Is this because wages have remained stagnant while expenses creep up? Could it be that
Metropolitan Diary: Barney Greengrass
By: Sarah Gruen · 01/08/2023
Sarah Gruen quiets down on her first pilgrimage to a New York institution.
Dear Diary:
One Saturday this past
When Freedom Meant the Freedom to Oppress Others
By: Jeff Shesol · 12/12/2022
Jefferson Cowie’s powerful and sobering new history, Freedom’s Dominion, traces the close association between the rhetoric of liberty in an Alabama county and the politics
If I Emailed My Parents Like Democrats Email Me
SUBJECT: I’m DESPERATE, Mom
Mom, did you see this?!?
FIRST: I got a $300 traffic ticket because I forgot about alternate
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