Warren Christopher's In the Stream of History: A Review Essay
"Every man looks at his woodpile with a kind of affection," Henry David Thoreau said. Every secretary of state views his speeches that way too, a fact perhaps fully appreciated only by those staff aides who stoically endure the excruciating production of draft after draft, solicitation of colleagues' comments, the clearance process, the proofreading, teleprompting, and backgrounding of the press, whose reporting is "embargoed until delivery." And then they are dismayed when the public pays scant attention to what has been so carefully prepared. Every former secretary of state is tempted to collect and publish all those speeches to give the world a second chance to see what important substance they set forth in such elegant style. And just as invariably the ex-cabinet officer is prevailed upon by friends, colleagues, and literary agents to forget about it, because speeches don't sell; only a "real" memoir can fulfill one's debt to history. Warren Christopher has not heeded such advice. He has done it his way, in a handsome volume of thirty-seven speeches, each preceded by a brief essay.' Although none of these speeches is likely to be considered by William Safire for his next collection of rhetorical gems of the genre, they are (almost) jargonfree models of clarity and serious purpose in which now and again the distinctive Christopher voice can be heard. At just those points when the listener's attention is about to flag, a freshly apt word or phrase pops up. The man behind the thesaurus seems to be Christopher himself, for we are surprised to learn at