Michael Gerson has served George W. Bush magnificently as chief speechwriter, during both the 2000 campaign and the first term in office.

* Michael Gerson has served George W. Bush magnificently as chief speechwriter, during both the 2000 campaign and the first term in office. His departure would have prompted us to declare his enormous talents "indispensable" to this president but for the two pieces of good news that accompanied its announcement. The first is that Gerson will remain at the White House in a new senior position. The second is that he will be replaced as chief speechwriter by another superb talent: our former colleague William McGurn, who was NR's Washington editor for three years in the early 1990s. We lost McGurn to the call of the Orient: He worked in Hong Kong for the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Wall Street Journal, but found time to contribute regularly to NR. He came back to the U.S. to become the chief editorial writer for the Journal. President Bush's public voice remains in the best possible hands.