GREEN & GLOVER: Too much too soon for Favreau, Safire says

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By Stephanie Green and Elizabeth Glover

Jon Favreau, President Obama's chief speechwriter, has received "too much publicity too soon," said Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and former Nixon White House speechwriter William Safire at Thursday's reception in his honor at the British ambassador's residence.

Photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair and profiled in The Washington Post, Mr. Favreau has enjoyed a rapid rise to political celebrity and Beltway social cachet.

The 27-year-old Mr. Favreau was among the 250 movers and shakers and socialites under 40 selected for inclusion in luxury lifestyle magazine Washington Life's alternately coveted and derided Young and Guest List issue. The exclusive Young and Guest List party celebrating those chosen was scheduled for the same night Mr. Safire was being honored by the British ambassador.

Citing what he called the "code of the hills, which means that you don't claim credit for what the president says," Mr. Safire sought to differentiate between old guard presidential speechwriters and the new breed of White House celebrity scribes embodied most recently by Mr. Favreau.

"For awhile speechwriters had a passion for anonymity," Mr. Safire observed wistfully.

"It wasn't until FDR that people who work for the president became famous, because no one was supposed to know the president didn't write his own speeches," said Mr. Safire, who founded the Judson Welliver Society, a social club that comprises former presidential speechwriters from both parties. The society is named after the Warren G. Harding administration "literary clerk" who is generally credited with being the first presidential speechwriter.

Asked what advice he'd give to the young Mr. Favreau, the spry septuagenarian Mr. Safire said, "I'll wait until I see him to give him the advice."

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