The Young Speechwriter Who Captured Rice's Voice

Brose was a political science major in college -- what he calls a "Plato-to-NATO education." He became interested in making his mark in Washington after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He was hired as an editor at a couple of serious policy journals and then applied for a job as one of Powell's speechwriters in 2004, after one of his bosses had made the move to the State Department. He thought he had little chance of being hired. "I basically got lucky," he said.

The first day he walked into the main lobby of the State Department and looked up at the flags of nearly every nation, Brose recalled, "it was intimidating but thrilling at the same time."

Brose said one of his aims in Rice's speeches is to connect her life story -- growing up black in a segregated South -- with the struggle to build democracy in faraway lands. Rice's recounting of the difficulties African Americans have faced in gaining a voice in U.S. society seems to strike a chord with audiences here and abroad, in part because it adds a note of humility to a democracy project that many overseas view warily.

Earlier this year, in a speech at Georgetown University, Rice noted that there is a portrait of Thomas Jefferson -- the first secretary of state -- "that looks direct at me when I am speaking to those foreign ministers, and I wonder sometimes, 'What would Mr. Jefferson have thought? . . . What would he have thought about America's pursuit of the democratic enterprise on behalf of the peoples of the world? What would he have thought that my ancestors, who were three-fifths of a man in his constitution, would produce a secretary of state who would carry out that mission?' "

Rice's speech in Cairo last June stands as one of the defining moments of her tenure. It was the first time a secretary of state had gone to the Middle East and demanded that the region's autocrats open up their political systems. Rice began working on Brose's first draft shortly after the plane took off from Andrews Air Force Base. Her aides squeezed into her cabin on the Boeing 757 and spent two hours going over it word by word. Brose then produced two new drafts each day, until the speech was given three days later.

Brose said Rice encourages him to be "forward-leaning," and so he pushes as hard as he can. "My rule of thumb is let them take it out." he said. "I want to get the secretary out as far out on a limb as possible. Otherwise you will end up with oatmeal."

In this case, Brose would have had Rice publicly name three Saudi dissidents who were jailed after they petitioned the monarchy to adopt a constitutional system, prompting one career State Department official to ask if the administration wanted $11-a-gallon gasoline. The names were removed, but Rice raised the issue in her speech, saying such actions "should not be a crime in any country." The Saudis were annoyed, but one of King Abdullah's first acts after being crowned in August was to pardon the men.

Brose likens speech writing to alpine skiing. "If you are lucky, it looks pretty in the end," he said -- "the viewers don't see the falls and the endless hours."