Where can a guy write a State of the Union speech?

At the same time, it won't be the near-90-minute laundry lists Americans grew used to with Clinton's eight State of the Union speeches. In preparing for his, Clinton scavenged for ideas. One year he loaded vans with leading thinkers and brought them to Camp David for a seminar with his senior staff and the vice president. Another year he had them to dinner in the executive mansion.

"Differences of time and circumstance call for different strategies," says Mr. Galston. Although a Democrat, he was called to the White House during this year's speech-writing cycle to share his ideas on civic involvement. It's an important subject for Americans who wonder what they can do in the war on terrorism.

At the heart of this year's address is the trio of Gerson, Hughes, and of course, the president.

Gerson, an evangelical Christian and an early architect of the Republican "compassionate conservatism," was handpicked by the president. Lauded in Washington as unusually talented, he's full of nervous energy, leaving teeth marks on his ball point pens and reading first drafts aloud as he paces a room. When then-governor Bush read Gerson's words at the Republican Convention in 2000, the speechwriter couldn't bear the tension of actually being in the arena. Instead, he walked around Philadelphia, trying to take his mind off it.

Nicknamed "the scribe" by his boss, he knows his presidential speeches. To prepare for the inaugural, he read every single previous inaugural address.

Though Gerson wasn't available for an interview for this article, former presidential speechwriters describe the State of the Union experience as intense - even scary.

"You have to pace yourself," says Don Baer, once a Clinton speechwriter. You become a ping-pong ball, he says, bouncing between various aides, the president, and a flood of incoming ideas.

The White House has tried to control that by not formally soliciting from outsiders and tightening the circle of people reviewing the drafts of this speech, says Ms. Womack.

In Gerson's circle, Hughes is a major influence. Once a Texas TV reporter, she has an ear for the soundbite, and more important, she knows the president's voice. She describes her boss's natural style as "eloquent simplicity," and is constantly after speechwriters to drop the gobbledygook of policy talk.

It was to Hughes that Bush turned to get the ball rolling on his September address, and her desk is the last stop before Gerson's drafts reach the president.

But both players do work together with Bush. Unlike Clinton, who constantly wrote in blocks of text, Bush prunes. Simplifying, making sure words are easily pronounceable. He's not a fan of long speeches.

By tomorrow night, the president will have gone through multiple practice runs, in which the speech scrolls by on a TelePrompTer, and Gerson and Hughes act as coaches. But whether "the scribe" will be able to stand the suspense and actually watch the real thing, is anybody's guess.

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