The Speechwriter, Martin McKenzie-Murray [distant reading TXT] 📗

anger, Toby. There’s diminishing returns on that investment. And change that bloody phone number.’

I was a little confused by the seeming superficiality of my boss, but no less exhilarated by occupying his office. And Stuart’s motivations, I decided, were probably not superficial but inscrutable — the product of a superior political judgement that I hoped, one day, to understand. Maybe nobility wasn’t all cymbals and lightning. Maybe it took its time.

Still, I’d promised Arthur an update in a week’s time, and I wasn’t sure what I’d be able to tell him. I googled ‘feral cat bait’.

After a year mostly spent digitally retouching my boss’s face, my ability to peacefully absorb his condescension — as well as Stuart’s factional alignment — commended me for a junior role in the Premier’s office.

I would be paid. I would be an angel. I would be a speechwriter.

When I heard the news, I thought that such volumes of happy magic gushed inside me that I could recover Father’s corpse and breathe life back into him. I left my desk to go outside and enjoy the moment quietly, but the feral cats chased me back in.

A blown opportunity

I have a simple, unoriginal theory: The West Wing’s fantasy of soulful, hyper-competent political staffers encouraged a generation of self-regarding clowns to join politics in order to imitate them. A generation of callow staffers who experienced the TV series as an alluring dream with which to translate their own humble reality. What this generation chose to hear from Aaron Sorkin’s relentless coke-patter was that they were the brilliant mechanics of democracy. They quoted lines, and debated which characters they most resembled. Tipsy with fantasy, they failed to see the comic incongruity between their own work and the melodramatic nobility of their TV counterparts. And I was one of them.*

[* Garry says he’s never heard of The West Wing, but wants me to include here his top three TV shows of all time and his quick explanation of their ‘magic’:

1. MacGyver: Don’t know many folks who haven’t dreamed about fucken up some sneaky, smack-peddling Russians with a bulldog clip and some sugar. How the fuck did the writers come up with this shit?

2. Grand Designs: This shit stirs the swarm of bees in my heart. Tell me, Toby: does a man need a roof, or does he not? Is a roof a right, or a fucken privilege? This show makes a roof a tittie mag for rich cunts. Tune in, and you’ve got some prick who got rich designing the new Woollies logo who’s nervous about replicating a Tunisian cave in Somerset. You shit-eating cunt. And I fucken love it, Toby.

3. M*A*S*H*: Maybe the only time I cried, other than when me ol’ lady died, was that last episode. Did Hawkeye and BJ ever see each other again? Fucked if I know. Can’t spend much time thinking about it, if I’m honest. It’s too much.]

‘I’m Josh,’ David said the first time we met. David was the head of the dirt squad, though its official designation was the Parliamentary Research Unit. He was referring to Josh Lyman, imaginary deputy chief-of-staff to the imaginary President Jed Bartlett.

‘I’m CJ,’ I said, referring to the imaginary press secretary.

We wore self-regard like a creep wears a trench coat. We bounced down hallways with witless self-assurance, emulating the verve and purposeful movement of the West Wing characters. But emulating their eloquence, courage, and intellect was another thing. Where the West Wing heroes had a scriptwriter to polish their souls and their banter, we had only ourselves.

Initially, I thought David was another noble, grit-faced miner at the coalface of democracy, but really he just supervised a young and dispirited team tasked with finding compromising facts about political opponents. It wasn’t Mossad. They weren’t bugging rooms, backgrounding reporters, or meeting rogue cops in dives. They had no investigative powers or skill, and were limited to trawling Hansard and newspaper clippings for contradictory statements that might cause some fleeting and obscure embarrassment in parliament. It was a petty and banal grind, worsened by their boss’s insistence that their work resembled ‘the construction of the ancient pyramids’.

My job was to write minor speeches for the Premier. I read nothing but political hagiographies, which I piled ostentatiously on my desk and would occasionally consult if I wanted to elevate a speech on the opening of a new swimming lane at a local rec centre.

It was also my job to chaperone the Premier and members of cabinet on excursions to bowls clubs. We called it Community Cabinet, and it allowed citizens to meet their leaders and discuss the issue most important to them: daylight savings.

The Premier had begun a three-year trial, which was to be followed by a referendum in which the people could vote to reject or retain it. If you were over 60, there was a good chance you thought the issue of greater significance than death or taxes. And so, having secured the ear of the Premier, Treasurer, or Attorney-General, the opportunity was used to argue the moral tragedy of shifting our clocks one hour in summer.

But if that’s what The People wanted to talk about, then I would gratefully facilitate it. I would earnestly pace the clubroom with pen and notepad, asking those who were at the back of long queues, and in danger of not finding their attentive surrogate, if I could take their name, number, and issue so the Premier’s office could respond to them later.

‘Yes, you can,’ they’d say. ‘Take this down in your fancy notepad: We’ve already had a referendum on this.’

‘On daylight savings?’

‘Well, what else could I be talking about?’

‘Ma’am, that referendum was twenty-five years ago.’

‘And we said No. You’re too young to remember.’

‘But I do remember. And things change. We think enough time has passed to put it to the people again. I’m not arguing a side, I’m just saying that it’s time to publicly ask the question again.’

‘Daylight savings is disgusting. I get up at 4.30 in the morning, and it’s