[5] He was a speechwriter for Secretary of Education William Bennett before becoming special assistant to the director at the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
[4] Wehner was then executive director for policy for Empower America, a conservative group[4] that Bennett, Jack Kemp, and Jeane Kirkpatrick founded.
[6] Wehner served George W. Bush as deputy director of speechwriting in 2001, and became the head of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives in 2002.
[4][5] After leaving the White House in 2007, Wehner joined the Ethics and Public Policy Center as a senior fellow.
[7] In Wealth and Justice, published by American Enterprise Institute Press, Wehner and Brooks argue that the free market and capitalism, when properly functioning, act "as a civilizing agent" that improves the moral condition of society by prizing "thrift, savings, and investment" and discouraging "bribery, corruption, and lawlessness".
[10] He has called the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)—which allocated $15 billion to promote prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS and malaria in Africa—as "one of the great achievements of the [George W.] Bush administration.
In a January 2016 column in The New York Times titled "Why I Will Never Vote for Donald Trump", Wehner wrote that, if Trump was the Republican nominee and Hillary Clinton the Democratic nominee, "I would prefer to vote for a responsible third-party alternative; absent that option, I would simply not cast a ballot for President.
[15] He also wrote: it is fair to say that there existed in the Republican Party repulsive elements, people who were attracted to racial and ethnic politics and moved by resentment and intolerance rather than a vision of the good.
[18] In July 2017, Wehner wrote, "Republican voters and politicians rallied around Mr. Trump in 2016, believing he was anti-establishment when in fact he was anti-order.
It is an irony of American history that the Republican Party, which has historically valued order and institutions, has become the conduit of chaos.
"[22] Following the removal of Liz Cheney from the House leadership, Wehner was quoted in The Atlantic's electronic newsletter of May 12, 2021, as having said, "The Trump presidency might have been the first act in a longer and even darker political drama, in which the Republican Party is becoming more radicalized" in a section headed "The new GOP is a threat to American democracy".