William McGurn of The Wall Street Journal skewers his former hire, Matt Latimer, for writing a kiss-and-tell about his tenure in the Bush White House.

McGurn writes: “Bringing him [Latimer] into the Oval and getting him on Air Force One was a (losing) attempt on my part to get the president to warm up to him. These are distasteful things to have to say publicly about someone who once worked for you. And I would have taken them to the grave had Matt not used these props and the snippets of conversation he picked up to paint a highly distorted view . . .”

The merits of Latimer’s criticisms of the Bush years aside, I concur that it is bad form for a speechwriter to betray his president by revealing and hyping private conversations. More to the point, such tales can add up to bad history.  

There are any number of little moments, comments, asides, and funny observations about other political figures I had in conversations with President George H.W. Bush that could have been spun into worthless revelations once I was back in the private sector.

In truth, most of it was the flow of ordinary human conversation.  Presidents should be able to let their hair down and relax around their wordsmithing consiglieri.  

Perhaps the time has come for all hires for a White House speechwriting job to sign a non-disclosure.