By Julia Parmley
On Jan. 20, 1969, Richard Nixon delivered his first speech as president of the United States. His inaugural address called for peace around the world, something he said that man “has dreamed of since the dawn of civilization.”
“If we succeed, generations to come will say of us now living that we mastered our moment, that we helped make the world safe for mankind,” he told the millions of Americans listening. “This is our summons to greatness.”
On April 18, four of President Nixon’s speechwriters, including MSNBC commentator Patrick Buchanan, gathered in GW’s Jack Morton Auditorium to talk about crafting this speech and others for America’s infamous 37th president at “Writing for 37,” a panel hosted by GW and the Richard Nixon Foundation.
Mr. Buchanan—along with William Gavin, Kenneth Khachigian and Raymond Price—shared stories about writing for Nixon on the panel, moderated by GW Airlie Professor of Media and Public Affairs Lee Huebner, former deputy director of the Nixon White House research and writing staff.
The first fulltime staffer on Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign, Mr. Buchanan, who later served as communications director for President Ronald Reagan, recalled President Nixon’s arrival to a town, a Congress and a media that was “utterly hostile” toward him. Mr. Buchanan said Nixon used primetime addresses and press conference to help turn public opinion around.
“Thus was the imperative of Nixon to communicate over, through and around this filter, which many of us saw as distorted, in order to communicate his ideas and keep the country united behind him,” he said.
As chief speechwriter to President Nixon, Mr. Price helped craft some of Nixon’s most notable speeches, including his first inaugural address and his resignation speech six years later. But Mr. Price said Nixon was “his own chief speechwriter.”
“He would know what he wanted to say, he’d have it all in his mind,” said Mr. Price. “He would’ve planned it all out. We always provided what we called ‘suggested remarks.’ But essentially his speeches were his, not ours.”
“[Nixon] had a phenomenal mind,” he added. “You can’t understand the Nixon presidency without understanding the depth and dexterity of his mind.”
Mr. Price also recalled helping President Nixon craft his resignation speech, which he delivered to the nation on Aug. 8, 1974. “I kept hoping, as it was such an emotional week for him, that he would be able to hold up delivering it and luckily he did,” said Mr. Price.
President Nixon was president during a tumultuous time in history, including the Vietnam War, the U.S. invasion of Cambodia and shootings at Kent State. The panel discussed some of the Nixon rhetoric inspired by these events in history as well as played excerpts from a few of President Nixon’s speeches, including his 1971 State of the Union address.
Mr. Gavin spoke about President Nixon’s presidential nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in 1968, when he said the president had to address several issues, including his adversaries and his reputation as “Tricky Dick.” Mr. Price said what President Nixon did in that speech, as well as in many of his other speeches, was address and solve “a particular problem.”
“Speechwriting, in my view, is not an exercise in eloquence,” he said. “I think that the search for eloquence is the curse of the speaking class. What our rhetoric needs, and what Nixon did with that speech and so many others, is directly addressed a specific kind of problem and in doing so he used every rhetorical tool he could.”
Mr. Price told a personal story about President Nixon putting his arm around him at a staff party and thanking him for his contributions to the acceptance speech, which Mr. Price said was “an uncharacteristic gesture from a man who was not touchy-feely.”
Mr. Khachigian, who later became chief speechwriter for Reagan, described the “whole tribe” of speechwriters at the Nixon White House, noting that researching and assembling fact sheets and talking points was a large part of their job—and that the team’s prowess in assembling background materials became “an art form.”
“We didn’t just write for the president; we wrote for cabinet officers and senators,” he said. “We would flood Washington, D.C. and this hostile atmosphere that we had—which we had to overcome constantly—by generating our own massive amount of communication from the White House.”
The event was hosted by GW’s School of Media and Public Affairs.