Because there's no advice implicit in speechwriting, of course. There's no power in speechwriting.
Purely perfunctory role. Could be done by a computer.
Posted on 09/27/2009 11:19:38 AM PDT by fours
Edited on 09/27/2009 12:39:50 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
William Safire, a speechwriter for President Richard M. Nixon and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist for The New York Times who also wrote novels, books on politics and a Malaprop’s treasury of articles on language, died at a hospice in Rockville, Md. on Sunday. He was 79.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, said Martin Tolchin, a friend of the family.
There may be many sides in a genteel debate, but in the Safire world of politics and journalism it was simpler: there was his own unambiguous wit and wisdom on one hand and, on the other, the blubber of fools he called “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”
He was a college dropout and proud of it, a public relations go-getter who set up the famous Nixon-Khrushchev “kitchen debate” in Moscow, and a White House wordsmith in the tumultuous era of war in Vietnam, Nixon’s visit to China and the gathering storm of the Watergate scandal that drove the president from office.
Then, from 1973 to 2005, Mr. Safire wrote his twice weekly “Essay” for the Op-Ed Page of The Times, a forceful conservative voice in the liberal chorus. Unlike most Washington columnists who offer judgments with Olympian detachment, Mr. Safire was a pugnacious contrarian who did much of his own reporting, called people liars in print and laced his opinions with outrageous wordplay.
Critics initially dismissed him as an apologist for the disgraced Nixon coterie. But he won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, and for 32 years tenaciously attacked and defended foreign and domestic policies, and the foibles, of seven administrations. Along the way, he incurred enmity and admiration, and made a lot of powerful people squirm.
RIP, Mr Safire. You were one of a kind. Your wisdom, wit and love of linguistics will be missed.
Oh for Pete's sake, he was a speech writer, not an advisor.
Welcome to FR.
Clattering cacophony of cogs and camshafts.
Is he sitting, or standing with his leg cocked?
He always struck me as a RHINO.
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Paul or John was The Rhino. Coo, coo kee choo.
Safire, on the other hand, was a RINO.
So sad that the true conservative leaders and columnists are passing away. Let us pray there are more to come on the horizon. RIP Mr. Safire.
They go and die just when we need them the most...
I emailed him once, commenting about a quote from a Sherlock Holmes story (”the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime”). He actually replied to me, and as you would imagine, he was the very soul of courtesy. I had always been a fan, but from that day on, I was a rabid fan. He will be sorely missed.
RIP.
Nixon always lived by the code that a Republican could not win WITH only conservatives but could not win WITHOUT conservatives. Therefore, conservatives got the rhetoric, and liberals the action. John Newton Mitchell said as much.
P.S - I wonder if he wrote “I am not a crook”
“conservatives got the rhetoric, and liberals the action”
We’ve partially wised up to that since then.
I used to love to read his wordsmith columns. Great stuff
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