The explosion of media formats ended the reign of the must-read columnist. Today, with everyone using different formats, platforms, and sources, it’s hard to find a single columnist that everyone reads. Peggy Noonan’s Saturday Wall Street Journal column comes close, but the weekend appearance of her column means that people are less apt to talk about it at the office. (If they’re even at the office.) Tom Friedman and David Ignatius are useful for knowing what the Biden administration is thinking, but their very closeness to the administration raises questions about whether they’ll be as useful when the next one comes in. Jonah Goldberg wields a powerful pen, but his syndicated column does not appear in a must-read paper. Then there is Politico, home to two strong columnists in Jonathan Martin and Michael Schaffer. But that outlet, while widely read in political circles, remains a niche publication.
There was a time, though, before social media, when a columnist reigned supreme. William Safire, who died 15 years ago this week, was a New York Times columnist for three decades who combined a killer instinct, reporting, insight from his time as a Nixon White House aide, and arch humor to make his words essential reading. When I was growing up in a liberal home in Queens, New York, in the 1970s, Safire was my only conservative source of information. It was the pre-Internet era, and my family did not subscribe to the Wall Street Journal or National Review. When it came to getting conservative opinions, Safire was it, as I later had the opportunity to tell him when I met him at an event in the George W. Bush White House.
Safire was born in New York City in 1929. He attended the Bronx High School of Science and then Syracuse University, from which he dropped out to work for the columnist Tex McRary. Safire was working for a public relations firm in 1959 when he got his big break. Richard Nixon was in his second term as vice president, and preparing for a presidential run, when he took a trip to Russia. During that trip, Nixon visited a model U.S. kitchen at a trade fair exhibition, along with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The manufacturer of the kitchen had hired Safire to promote the product. The young and ambitious flack helped create an indelible moment both for his client and for Nixon. In front of the kitchen set that Safire was promoting, the two leaders engaged in what became known as the “kitchen debate,” in which they argued over the merits of the modern capitalist’s labor-saving appliances. An AP photographer tried to snap a photo, but he could not get through the crowd. Safire held out his hands. The photographer tossed him the camera, right past a stern Soviet guard, and Safire captured the moment on film.
Nixon and Safire met a few hours after the debate at the home of the U.S. ambassador. According to Safire, Nixon “showed his grasp of capitalism’s priorities by commenting, ‘We really put your kitchen on the map, didn’t we?’” Safire went on to work for Nixon’s unsuccessful 1960 presidential campaign, and then for his triumphant 1968 effort, which propelled him into the role of White House speechwriter.
In the White House, Safire worked as one of Nixon’s three primary speechwriters, along with Pat Buchanan and Ray Price. Each served distinct roles. According to Safire, “When Nixon wanted to take a shot at somebody, he turned to Buchanan. . . . When Nixon wanted a vision of the nation’s future, he turned to Price.” Safire himself was used to inject “a touch of humor,” though it was often turned to serious uses. Some of Safire’s best-known work in the White House was for Vice President Spiro Agnew, for whom he wrote a series of hard-hitting speeches blasting the media and other cultural elites (some things never change), describing them with memorable phrases like “an effete corps of impudent snobs,” “ideological eunuchs,” “professional anarchists,” and, most famously, “nattering nabobs of negativism.”
Safire was also a skilled bureaucratic infighter. After Buchanan wrote a speech that Nixon gave in Colorado Springs in June 1969 to the Air Force Academy, Safire told Buchanan that White House aides needed to have a “passion for anonymity,” and that he shouldn’t take credit for the speech. As Buchanan tells it, National Review then reported that the well-received speech had been written by none other than William Safire. Safire had apparently taken credit while getting Buchanan to stand down. “So this is how the game is played,” Buchanan thought.
Safire also had the rare ability to tame mercurial National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger. Once, during a Kissinger tirade in which he was threatening to resign—a not infrequent occurrence—Safire defused matters by appealing to Kissinger’s enormous ego: “If you quit, Henry,” Safire told him, “you’ll never get a phone call from a beautiful woman again. The secret of your attraction is your proximity to power.” Kissinger conceded, “You may be right about that Safire. It would be a tremendous sacrifice.” Safire observed of the incident that “Even amid a tantrum,” Kissinger “was usually willing to consider a humorous or intriguing proposition.”
The key to Safire’s success in the White House was his relationship with Nixon. Yet Nixon also recognized Safire’s otherness. When Nixon introduced him to fellow 1968 campaign aides Bob Finch, Bob Ellsworth, and Len Garment, he told the group, “This is Safire, he was with us in ’60, completely trustworthy, but watch what you say, he’s a writer.” Safire included the quote on the cover of his memoir. Nixon also was keenly aware of Safire’s Jewishness. During the 1968 campaign, Safire told Nixon that he would miss one of his speeches because of Yom Kippur. Nixon admired Safire’s adherence to tradition: “You go all the way, the cap, the shawl, and everything? Good for you!”
Yom Kippur came up another time in Safire’s White House tenure. In the fall of 1970, Safire was traveling with Agnew on the campaign trail and returned to Washington to attend services at Adas Israel congregation. He was less than thrilled to hear the rabbi’s sermon criticizing those who “let our country be divided and polarized by those who use the technique of alliteration.” As Safire wrote of the incident, “the ‘nattering nabobs of negativism’ was not a sin I had come to atone for.”
Safire left the White House in 1973, before Watergate consumed the administration and brought about Nixon’s resignation. Safire even titled his memoir Before the Fall, seemingly suggesting that he was not a part of the Watergate debacle. He took a job as a “conservative” columnist at the New York Times, which shocked his old friend Buchanan. Despite his work with Agnew, Safire had long been known as a moderate or even liberal Republican. At the 1964 Republican National Convention nominating Barry Goldwater, Safire held up a banner that read, “Stay in the Mainstream.” When Nixon saw the news that the Times had dubbed Safire a conservative, the president wrote a cheeky note to Buchanan and White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman: “Safire a conservative. Somebody tell Human Events.”
By Safire’s own account, his tenure at the Times started badly. Few colleagues would have lunch with a Nixon person. His editor, Harrison Salisbury, felt that “He was still writing like a PR flak for the Republican right wing.” Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger warned Safire that he would be fired if the column did not improve.
Safire was devastated by the threat. According to Salisbury, “He didn’t want to be anything but a New York Times columnist, and he was blowing it.” In despair, he stared at the phone on his desk and had an epiphany: He would use the telephone to talk to people he knew about what was happening. Thus was born his Pulitzer Prize-winning reported column. As Eric Alterman wrote of the moment in his book Sound and Fury, “Soon Washington had its most effective pundit in a generation.”
Safire used his column to press on his favorite subjects: anti-Communism, Israel, and Ronald Reagan. He also sought—and got—scalps, most notably torpedoing the career of Jimmy Carter’s budget director Bert Lance. Safire’s columns exposing Lance’s alleged misdeeds as a banker in Georgia led to his resignation, costing Carter one of his most trusted advisers. Years later, Safire and Lance reconciled after Lance sent him a Christmas card reading, “Love those who despise you” (Matthew 5:44). Safire replied with, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32). The two began meeting for gossipy lunches and haircuts and became close friends. When Times columnist Maureen Dowd marveled at this turn of events, Safire told her, “Only hit people when they’re up.”
Safire’s weekly column made news and was read by world leaders, who were also his sources. Yitzhak Rabin was a friend and a source, even as the two men disagreed politically. Safire framed and hung on his wall a 1988 column of his that Vice President George H. W. Bush had heavily marked up. “I have the greatest job in the world,” Safire said. “I’m free to write, to select my subject and say anything I want about the subject.” When his name was broached as a possible Secretary of State, he scoffed, saying, “Why take a step down?” He ended his column in 2005 and died four years later.
Too many of today’s commentators see punditry as a path to a government position; it’s hard to imagine any of them dismissing the idea of a Cabinet slot. It’s also hard to imagine a column today like Safire’s. The wordplay, the breaking news, the humor, the understanding of how Washington works—all were key components of what made the column such edifying reading. But the disaggregation of news has changed the game. The dominance of a few news sources gave William Safire an opportunity to develop a tremendous following and influence. His talent did the rest. Fifteen years gone, he is still missed.
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