They put the words in the presidents? mouths

The most passionate, insightful pages of this book concern the Kennedy and Johnson White Houses. President Johnson resented being in the shadow of the martyred, glamorous Kennedy. Where Kennedy and Sorensen might appeal to idealists ("Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country"), the earthy Johnson preferred a more understated style. He once draped an arm around Harvard-educated speechwriter Dick Goodwin, a Kennedy holdover, and told him, "No more of that Ivy League crap, huh?"

Schlesinger shows how closely Kennedy and Sorensen collaborated, and how intimately Sorensen understood Kennedy's political worldview. As to who "wrote" Kennedy's speeches, Schlesinger approvingly quotes Sorensen himself: "John F. Kennedy was the author - in the true sense of that word," because "he was putting his name and reputation at stake."

As Schlesinger makes clear, Sorensen played a crucial role in resolving the Cuban missile crisis by writing multiple drafts of Kennedy's speech over several days, attempting to foresee the consequences of different policy options. "Setting policy into words raised new questions and exposed possible weaknesses," writes Schlesinger of Sorensen's role. "And choosing the right words for the speech itself helped set the terms of the international debate."

Sorensen's beneficial influence on policymaking has not always occurred with other presidents. President George W. Bush's speechwriters, for instance, were unable to come up with an overriding, consistent rationale for invading Iraq. Schlesinger describes how Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, at a meeting of the pre-invasion White House Iraq Group, developed one much-used rationale: that we don't want "the smoking gun" proving the existence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction to "come in the form of a mushroom cloud."