A pro­file of Barack Obama’s speech­writer, Jon Favreau, 26, from a Jan­u­ary ’08 edi­tion of The New York Times:

“The trick of speech­writ­ing, if you will, is mak­ing the client say your bril­liant words while some­how man­ag­ing to make it sound as though they issued straight from their own soul,” said the writer Christo­pher Buck­ley, who was a speech­writer for the first Pres­i­dent Bush. “Imag­ine putting the words ‘Ask not what your coun­try can do for you’ into the mouth of Ron Paul, and you can see the problem.”

Newsweek’s pro­file of Favreau (again from Jan­u­ary ’08) is also worth a browse.

“What is your the­ory of speech­writ­ing?” Obama asked.

“I have no the­ory,” admit­ted Favreau. “But when I saw you at the con­ven­tion, you basi­cally told a story about your life from begin­ning to end, and it was a story that fit with the larger Amer­i­can nar­ra­tive. Peo­ple applauded not because you wrote an applause line but because you touched some­thing in the party and the coun­try that peo­ple had not touched before. Democ­rats haven’t had that in a long time.”

Now, with Obama announc­ing Favreau as the White House’s Direc­tor of Speech­writ­ing, Esquire looks at his influ­ences.