There is a school of thought that Ronald Reagan managed to look good only because he had clever writers putting words into his mouth. (Perhaps the leading exponent is my former colleague Peggy Noonan, who while a Reagan speechwriter appeared in a magazine article under a caption that said just that: "The woman who puts the words in the president's mouth.")
Notice he blames Noonan for what a headline writer wrote, but still manages to call her a "perhaps...a proponent" of the view that speechwriters made Reagan. Of course it's nonsense to suggest that Noonan took credit for Reagan. She has done nothing but worship and lionize the man for years.
A sleezy tactic like that definitely makes Robinson a candidate to be among the former colleagues Noonan slams in her column, but for my money Rohrabacher still has the inside track on being "the hack."
No it's not. Noonan broke a traditional rule that speechwriters don't step forward and announce themselves to the world. She started her campaign of self-promotion in that magazine article that Robinson refers to. Robinson is expressing some of the widespread irritation at her "me me me" approach to supposedly writing about Reagan. (Her self-obsessed writing is an elevated variant of the gonzo journalism pioneered by Hunter Thompson - an egocentric journalism that's focused more on the writer than on his -- or her -- subjects).