This is thinking in public a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

front-line theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Mober, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

in Louisville, Kentucky.

Barton Swaim is a writer who contributes regularly to the Washington Post,

the Wall Street Journal, the Times Literary

Supplement, and the Weekly Standard.

He holds a doctorate in English from the University of Edinburgh.

From 2007 to 2010, he worked for South Carolina's governor Mark Sanford as

communications officer and speech writer. His first book that caught a great deal of

national attention is titled The Speech writer, A Brief Education in politics. Martin Swain

welcome to thinking in public.

Martin your book the speech writer that was published back in 2015

instantly became a discussion point amongst people.

First of all just interested in politics. Beyond that

those interested in words and in it you tell an incredible story. You do so a

bit indirectly at points but but how did this book come to be how did Barton

Swain come to write the speech writer? Oh well I couldn't help it.

Yeah it's the trouble with writers. It will be some of us anyway.

We just can't help, you know, if we see something that is a story worth telling, just we just have to tell it and so I think I'm right

in saying that I knew that I would write a book about my experience in the State House within, I don't know, a couple of months of going

to work there just because it's a crazy place. It's very funny place. and and there are there's some pretty terrible things go on

...