Free The Speechwriter by Barton Swaim Page A

ID” and the second was “Shawn’s Law.”
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    Shawn had been killed in 2003, and now his parents wanted a law. Some people joked that when members of the General Assembly wanted badly to pass a bill, they would name it after a dead child. This wasn’t fair, since some of these “dead kid laws,” as they were cruelly called, were forced on legislators rather than conceived by them. Bereaved parents would ask their representative to introduce the bill—intended to prevent the means of death visited on their own unfortunate child—and since nobody wanted to be on record opposing the bill, it would make its way through committee, to first reading, back to committee, to second and third readings, to the other chamber, through first, second, and third readings, to conference, usually back to both chambers, then ratified, then to the governor, in barely any time at all. There were all sorts of deadkid laws: Rebecca’s Law and Erica’s Law and I don’t know how many others. They were called laws even before they passed, so confident was everyone that they would.
    Shawn’s Law had made its way through committee to the senate floor, then to the house, then to conference in a fortnight. Shawn was a young teenager who’d been killed while driving an ATV, an all-terrain vehicle; he was the latest in a series of four or five boys who’d been killed in similar ways, and several of the state’s newspapers and television news channels had run lengthy stories on this trend, as it seemed to be. Shawn’s mother and father wanted a law banning kids under sixteen, I think it was, from driving ATVs while unattended by an adult.
    The governor had vetoed the bill the year before and, despite some changes in this year’s version, would veto it again. That decision had already been made at a “rat meeting,” a ratification meeting. These were meetings of the policy staff with the governor in which staff would explain the substance of ratified bills to the governor and offer their opinions on whether he should sign the bill, veto it, or allow it to pass into law without his signature. After this, unless the right decision was plain to everyone, another member of the policy staff would take the contrary position, and the governor would listen and moderate. As a member of the press office, I wasn’t required to attend rat meetings, but I liked to sit in on them if I could. It gave me a sense of what was happening, and I liked the feeling of importance it gave me to argue in favor of or against a bill that might become law for four and a half million people.
    All rat meetings went more or less the same way. The first staffer would explain his or her bill and the reasons for vetoing it or not. Having been immersed in the legislation, the staffer would relay the bill’s contents in a wonkish way; the governor would snap, “Come on, in English!”; and the staffer would explain it in a more decipherable way. Or, if the staffer proved incapable of explaining it to the governor’s satisfaction, Stewart would mediate.
    Diane, the health policy advisor, might go first. “H-three-nine-one-nine requires that out-of-state dental labs employ a dental technician registered in-state if that lab performs tech work prescribed by a dentist licensed in this state.”
    â€œWwww,” the governor would respond. “Wwwhat does that mean? Come on, guys, how many times do I have to say this? In English.”
    â€œGovernor,” Stewart would interject, “a lot of dentists prescribe tech work to out-of-state labs. This bill would mandate that those labs, wherever they are, employ at least one technician who’s registered here, in-state.”
    â€œOkay. So, if a dentist prescribes tech work, the lab or whatever has to employ somebody registered here?”
    â€œThat’s correct, sir.”
    Governor: “Veto. That’s stupid.”
    Stewart: