President George W. Bush prepares his State of the Union speech with Dan Bartlett, White House Communications Director, at left, Mike Gerson, director of Presidential Speechwriting, and speech writers Matthew Scully and John McConnell in the Oval Office Thursday, January 23, 2003.
Scully worked as a speechwriter in the 2000 presidential campaign, and served as a special assistant and senior speechwriter for President George W. Bush from January 2001 to August 2004. He also wrote speeches for vice-presidents Dan Quayle, Dick Cheney, and Mike Pence. Governor Robert P. Casey of Pennsylvania, and Bob Dole.[3]
Prior to the 2008 Republican National Convention, Senator John McCain (the Republican presidential nominee to-be) asked Scully to write the acceptance speech for his vice presidential nominee, whom McCain had not yet chosen. Scully wrote the speech two weeks before the convention. He wrote the speech for a man to deliver, not a woman.[4][5][6] Four days before the convention, Scully was surprised when he was informed that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was to be McCain's running mate. Scully then worked all night to tailor the speech to Palin and also to incorporate new campaign strategy shifts that were being rapidly formed in intensive discussions by McCain campaign staff.[7]
Palin delivered the 40-minute speech at the convention on September 3, 2008.[8]
Melania Trump 2016 convention speech
Scully was hired along with John McConnell to write "the biggest speech of Melania Trump’s life," to be delivered on July 18, 2016, at the 2016 Republican National Convention.[9] Scully and McConnell sent Ms. Trump a draft a month before the convention; however, one of Ms. Trump's writers rewrote most of the speech herself, inserting "word-for-word repetition of phrases" from Michelle Obama's speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, leading to focused criticism of the writer.[9]
Animal welfare
Scully is the author of Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy (2002), described by Natalie Angier in a review published in The New York Times (October 27, 2002) as a "horrible, wonderful, important book... because the author, an avowed America First conservative Republican and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, is an unexpected defender of the animals against the depredations of profit driven corporations, swaggering, proponents of renewed 'harvesting' of whales and elephants and others who insist that all of nature is humanity's romper room, to play with, rearrange, and plunder at will."[10] Nichols Fox in a review published in The Washington Post wrote that Dominion is "destined to become a classic defense of mercy."[11]
As a conservative Christian Scully argues that mankind has dominion over animals but should be compassionate and merciful in their treatment towards them. He argues from a Christian animal welfare position and is not an animal rights activist.[12] Scully argues against the philosophies of "no-pain theorists" who hold that animals are not conscious or do not feel pain, including Stephen Budiansky, Peter Carruthers and David Oderberg.[13] The book strongly argues against using animals for food (factory farming) and sport (hunting). The book was positively reviewed in the journal Animal Law, which noted that "Dominion asks tough questions and forces us to face the reality of civilization's needless cruelty toward animals."[13]
Scully wrote a chapter ("Fear factories: the case for conservatism for animals") of the book "CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation): the tragedy of industrial animal factories" (Daniel Imhoff, editor). San Rafael, California : Earth Aware, c2010. ISBN9781601090584
^Ferguson, Barbara (2008-09-06). "McCain speech breaks record". Arab News. Saudi Arabia. Archived from the original on 2012-06-16. Retrieved 2011-03-14. the speech had actually been written two weeks before the convention, and had to be tweaked, because it was originally written for a man, not a woman.
