As Jack Fowler notes below, today is the last day in the White House for chief speechwriter Bill McGurn. Over the last couple of weeks Bill has been so thoroughly feted, feasted, roasted, and toasted that I get the feeling he can hardly wait to move back home to New Jersey this weekend if only so people will finally leave him alone. But there are a few people who, in the interest of simple justice, still must be limned: the staff that Bill leaves behind.

Succeeding Bill as chief speechwriter to the President: Marc Thiessen, who, at six-four, is surely the tallest man ever to hold the post; also, just as surely, one of the most gifted in reducing complicated policy to compelling prose. And after the Romney/McCain tussle of recent days, readers of this Corner will be relieved to learn that Marc, who trained on the Senate staff of Jesse Helms, is that rare item: an actual conservative. Assisting Marc, Chris Michel, who, at 25, is a recent graduate of Yale, where he edited the Daily News; after which post, writing for the chief executive of the Republic represents, at best, a lateral move. But such is Chris’s sense of duty that he has chosen to defer matriculation at law school in order to go on serving the president until he boards Air Force One for the final flight to Texas.

Serving with Marc and Chris: Matt Latimer, Jonathan Horn, Meghan Clyne (who moves to presidential speechwriting after writing gorgeous material for the first lady), and Troy Senik. Each is young, impossibly talented, and capable of earning a great deal more by walking out the door of the Executive Office building for a job in the private sector. Each is also entirely aware that the president’s approval ratings are not what might have been hoped; that even now, with the surge producing unambiguous progress on the ground, the war in Iraq remains bitterly contentious; and that, with less than a year remaining, the President for whom they work finds himself with diminishing options. They’re staying anyway. They see their work as service to a good and courageous man, and to the nation itself, and, therefore, as its own, immeasurable, reward.