Jon Favreau, 27, is, as Obama himself puts it, the president's mind reader. He is one of the youngest chief speechwriters on record in the White House, and, despite such youth, was at the centre of discussions of the content of today's speech, one which has so much riding on it.
Mr. Favreau, or Favs, as everyone calls him, looks every bit his age, with a baby face and closely shorn stubble. And he leads a team of two other young speechwriters: 26-year-old Adam Frankel, who worked with John F. Kennedy’s adviser and speechwriter Theodore C. Sorensen on his memoirs, and Ben Rhodes, who, at 30, calls himself the “elder statesman” of the group and who helped write the Iraq Study Group report as an assistant to Lee H. Hamilton.
Jon Favreau got out of college just in time to make history. But the kid writing all those pretty speeches has some surprising influences. Favreau also says he has greatly admired the writing of Michael Gerson, who was President Bush's main speechwriter for five years, especially his address to the joint session of Congress after the September 11 attacks. Gerson returns the admiration.
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