Will Rahn at the Daily Caller has a fine appreciation of my old comrade Matthew Scully, Paul Ryan's new speechwriter:
After a long tenure as one of George W. Bush’s top speechwriters, Scully was picked to help craft then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s well-received address to the Republican National Convention in 2008 that helped cement her status as a national star. Informed that Palin was John McCain’s running mate just days before the convention, he wrote much of her speech in a single night.
The speech was met with wild applause by the Republican faithful and moved even future Palin-skeptic Nicole Wallace to tears. “Jubilant choruses of ‘She knocked it out of the park’ and ‘One of the greatest speeches ever’ were heard throughout the room, and some people gave, yes, Obama-style fist bumps,” journalist Robert Draper reported a month after the convention. “When the tall, unassuming figure of Palin’s speechwriter, Matthew Scully, shuffled into the bar, he was treated to the first standing ovation of his life.”