Safire's Death Prompts Change in Speechwriters' Group
By Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers
Not that there was ever a question, but famed former White House speechwriter and conservative New York Times columnist Bill Safire,who died last month, just can't be replaced. On many levels. And one of those is as the founder and leader of the exclusive Judson Welliver Society of former White House speechwriters.
"I miss Bill terribly," says Gordon Stewart, a former Carter speechwriter who's taking over Safire's role as chairman of the group. "I don't want to describe myself as a successor," he added. "I'm carrying on. I still feel very sad, but I'm carrying on," he told Whispers.
We understand from members that Stewart, who has long been the secretary of the group, was voted in by acclamation, in part because he handled the meeting and membership issues for Safire and was such a good friend of Safire's. "We had huge differences about everything in the world," Stewart said about the former Nixon speechwriter. "But we were great friends."
An E-mail to members said that Stewart was already planning the group's next meeting and said he was operating "in the wake of Bill's wake." Group members include former speechwriters like Bushie and former U.S. News-er Michael Gerson, the Carter era's Rick Hertzberg, and the Kennedy era's Ted Sorensen.
Stewart, however, might not keep his chairman role in the group, he said. Describing himself as a caretaker for now, he suggested that a future meeting of the members might decide if they want to elect a permanent chairman or just leave the administration in his hands as the group's secretary.
In his book White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters
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Reader Comments
Thanks to Muser for excellent comment
Nixon was one of the worst presidents. Transcripts of his talks with Safire show they plotted together to make alibis for crimes, like the Watergate breakin. On a day after Nixon on TV delivered a speech Safire wrote, guess what Safire did? In his column the next day, he praised the speech. Most GOP presidents reached office with aid of men who worked at advertising agencies. They sold Reagan and Nixon like any other consumer product. i haven't read "The Selling of A President," but that's what it must describe.
After reading transcripts of some Nixon tapes...
Safire wrote some of Nixon's speeches & remarks made at photo ops, etc.. On the tapes, Nixon and Safire agree on what someone should "say." They made' alibis to cover up the crimes of breakins at Democratic HQ at the Watergate & the psychiatrist's office of the author of The Pentagon Papers. They plotted to discredit him, so readers wouldn't even read why the Nam War was illegal and how Hunt wrote forged cables that fooled LBJ etc. After Nixon gave a speech written by Safire, the next day Safire published his praise of that speech in his column!! You need to read the transcripts to realize how extremely amoral and creepy were Nixon and his buddies. Some lawmakers, especially the elderly, were astounded by the insulting way Nixon described them. Nixon, a poor boy schooled at a small college, was bitter to the core against Harvard graduates and "the Eastern establishment." In the Navy, the moneyless Nixon built a nest egg from poker and that was his start. I guess he learned to bluff and maybe cheat. He treated US possession of atomic weapons as if they were high cards in an international game he played. He called politics a game.
It's not partisanship, MacTaggart (below)
There is either truth to what a person says with a "soft-spoken, educated" voice, or there is not. Being a Nixonite is a pretty big problem.
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