Confessions of a Presidential Speechwriter

Front matter

CRAIG R. SMITH

Confessions OF A PRESIDENTIAL

2 | Smith, Caig R. Confessions of a Presidential Speechwriter. E-book, East Lansing, Ml: Michigan State University Press, 2014, https://doi.org/10.14321/9781611861136. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution

Contents

Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Chapter One. Meeting Richard Nixon and Robert Kennedy 1 Chapter Two. Geography Lessons 9 Chapter Three. From Student Body President to CBS News 31 Chapter Four. First Job Syndrome 61 Chapter Five. Working at Mr. Jefferson’s University 85 Chapter Six. Writing for President Ford 101 Chapter Seven. Writing for President George H. W. Bush 123 Chapter Eight. Working for the United States Senate 143 Chapter Nine. Running a Senate Campaign 165 Chapter Ten. The National Republican Senatorial

Campaign Committee 187 Chapter Eleven. Living Large with Lee Iacocca 205 Chapter Twelve. President of a National Foundation 225 Chapter Thirteen. Protecting Broadcasters’ First Amendment Rights 245 Chapter Fourteen. The Rise and Fall of George Bush 265 Chapter Fifteen. The Fall of Bob Packwood 283

Smith, Caig R. Confessions of a Presidential Speechwriter. E-book, East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2014, https://doi.org/10.14321/978161 1861136. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution

Preface

I WAS THE FIRST PERSON WITH A DEGREE IN COMMUNICATION STUDies to be hired as a full-time presidential speechwriter. This memoir explores the training for that post and its execution. The memoir provides lessons I have learned that will give the reader an understanding of the nuances of various structures in our society that touched on my life, from the academic to the news media and the political world. However, there are various byways along the journey that should also prove interesting to the reader. The first concerns the American Dream, from the success of immigrants and cross-cultural integration to the rise of lower-class kids to the top rungs of American power. The second investigates higher education in America, shows its value in the ’60s, reveals its sometimes corrupt nature, and discusses how that corruption can be overcome if we simply narrow our focus to providing an excellent opportunity to mentor students. The third byway analyzes broadcast news from behind the scenes at cgs. The fourth explores national politics from my perspective as a presidential speechwriter, a campaign manager, and a deputy director of the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, while at the same time being in the closet. The final byway explores my contribution to the fight for freedom of expression in America.

I believe the early autobiographical material on my parents reveals part of my training as a writer, and also how some of my political views were shaped. The root of immigrant stock was grafted to a tree that can be traced to the first battle of the American Revolution. That heritage played an important role in the themes I would write about. Furthermore, while my father taught me what constituted a good argument, my mother taught me that there was more to a good argument than logic. My education and experiences provided the skills and practice required to make me into a professional and academic writer.

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Smith, Caig R. Confessions of a Presidential Speechwriter. E-book, East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2014, https://doi.org/10.14321/9781611861136. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution

Acknowledgments

I WANT TO THANK MARTHA BATES AND GABRIEL Dotto at MICHIgan State University Press for guiding this project to completion in a responsible and professional way. My gratitude also goes to Marty Medhurst for recommending the book to MSU Press, and to the anonymous reviewer and Chuck Morris, both of whom provided a reality check and prevented me from running off on paths unrelated to the main highway of this book.

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Smith, Caig R. Confessions of a Presidential Speechwriter. E-book, East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2014, https://doi.org/10.14321/9781611861136. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution

CHAPTER ONE Meeting Richard Nixon and Robert Kennedy

NINETEEN SIXTY SEVEN WAS ANOTHER MAGICAL YEAR FOR ME. | would complete my master’s degree and begin work on my PhD. In March, quite by accident, I would have drinks with Senator Robert F. Kennedy. As fall ended, my request for a meeting with Richard M. Nixon would be granted. When I met with Nixon to present him with a copy of my master’s thesis, he had come out of his winter of discontent. He was a rich and comfortable lawyer in New York City, but he still lusted for the presidency that had eluded him. He had lost it to John Kennedy by only 112,000 votes in 1960. Nobly, he did not contest that election. Then he lost the governor's race in California to Pat Brown in 1962, promptly held his “last press conference,” and moved to New York to join John Mitchell’s law firm.

When I came by his Broad Street office in Manhattan, Nixon was interested in my take on Ronald Reagan, the subject of my thesis. The year before, in 1966, Reagan had become governor of California in a landslide vote. Nixon wanted to know how this actor had done it. My thesis on the speechmaking of Reagan explained how he won, right down to a precinct analysis of the vote.

Reagan wasn't the only Republican winner in 1966. They had scored an incredible comeback from the Goldwater debacle of 1964. Charles Percy of Bell and Howell fame won a Senate seat in Illinois. George Romney of American Motors became governor of Michigan. Nelson Rockefeller was reelected governor of New York. And Reagan, who had given a magnificent television address on behalf of Goldwater in 1964, had become governor of Nixon’s home state—a governorship Nixon had lost to the man Reagan beat. However, all was not lost for Nixon, because along with these new names on election night 1966, you also heard the name of Richard

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2 Chapter One

Nixon. He had predicted the results to Walter Cronkite, because he had campaigned all across the country for congressional candidates, and because President Lyndon Johnson had made the mistake of questioning Nixon's patriotism in a televised news conference right before the election. Nixon demanded and got response time just before election night. At the end of his half hour, he excused himself from the public and turned to a second camera to address his closing remarks directly “to the President.” It was a brilliant strategy. Pure Nixon. The man was back.

In 1967 I did not know that running into and working for politicians would become my fate. I merely wanted to finish a PhD and become a professor. However, the tension between Nixon and Kennedy would alter my path. The story begins in 1966 when Nixon made his comeback, rising from the ashes of his double defeat. There he was again, the same self-conscious look, the hands held awkwardly in front, a pose assumed for the cover of Newsweek, which ironically was owned by his old and future nemesis, the Washington Post. There he was again. Yes, Richard Nixon, shaking hands with Katharine Graham, the owner of the Post, at the American newspaper publishers’ convention. And again, on Meet the Press for an unprecedented hour-long interview. Then came a special “Profile” in Time, accompanied by a full-page color picture.

How is it that this man was able to make more comebacks than Judy Garland and yet never achieve the adulation of his archrivals, John and Robert Kennedy?

The answer lies deep not only in Nixon’s psyche, but in the psyche of the nation. For Americans, myths guide perceptions, and once we elevate people to the level of hero, we tend to forget the reality of their lives. We've done that with John and Robert Kennedy, but never with Nixon. The reason is that Nixon was perceived to be a rhetorical man, constantly concerned with the specific audience and the specific issue, while the Kennedys were perceived to be more poetic, seeming to look for universal truths and mythic status.’ They attached themselves to poets, from the Greeks to Robert Frost. They were princes, Nixon was Machiavelli.

While Nixon would go into the 50s remembered for uncovering Alger Hiss, John Kennedy would be remembered for writing Why England Slept. While Nixon would go into the 60s remembered for his “Checkers” speech, John Kennedy would be remembered for Profiles in Courage. During the first debate between them in 1960, Nixon addressed Kennedy and the specific issues; Kennedy addressed the nation and often ignored the questions he was asked to give the answers he wanted the public to hear. Kennedy

Smith, Caig R. Confessions of a Presidential Speechwriter. E-book, East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2014, https://doi.org/10.14321/9781611861136. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution

Meeting Richard Nixon and Robert Kennedy 3 went on to reign in Camelot; Nixon lost an election for the first time, then lost again in 1962, and went into exile on Wall Street.

Furthermore, fate seems to have dealt John and then Robert Kennedy mythic lives, particularly if you look at them from Nixon’s perspective. Nixon’s fate always seemed to be in his own hands. He ordered the Watergate cover-up on June 23, 1972, and for a while it worked. One can see Nixon on election night in 1972, having finally won a landslide, triumphantly uttering, “I told you so!” He carried every state but Massachusetts; it was the sweetest moment of his political career. And it was followed by a blue funk that led him to demand a resignation letter from each of his Cabinet members, allowing him to shuffle it.

Nixon’s political suicide was not completed until 1974, but almost every step was his own. He could have gone public numerous times and saved the day. Or as Barry Goldwater suggested, he could have just burned the tapes on the White House lawn, claiming he was protecting state secrets and exerting executive privilege. What motivates such nonstrategic thinking in such a sophisticated mind? Perhaps he believed he was unworthy of the landslide of 1972. Or because of his saintly mother, maybe he never felt right unless he felt guilty. Or, as he claimed, he wanted a documented record with which to refute the inevitable critics he would face after he stepped down from power. As we shall see, that pattern shows up in several of the men for whom I’ve worked.

Every time I met Nixon in person—once in 1967, once in the summer of 1972, and once in San Clemente after his fall—my feeling of empathy was strong. The rise from poverty, the discovery of Communist infiltrators, the triumph in China, the withdrawal from the war, the electoral losses and victories, etched Nixon into our collective consciousness. In my case, a young man growing up in the subtle seasons of Southern California identified with the debater, the ambitious student, the man who would be president.

But if Nixon is the consummate rhetorical politician, his mythic counterpart was Robert Kennedy. I met him on St. Patrick’s Day, 1967, through a strange set of circumstances. I spent most of that day, as did my roommate, working on a master’s thesis, the very one I would turn over to Nixon a few months later. That night we went into Manhattan on a double date with a couple of intercollegiate debaters from usc. As Shea Stadium receded into the black depths and the subway sank into Manhattan, the soul I thought had died came back to life.

We met our dates at the Copter Club atop the Pan Am Building. As the escalator delivered us to the plush red lounge, important people at dozens

Smith, Caig R. Confessions of a Presidential Speechwriter. E-book, East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2014, https://doi.org/10.14321/978161 1861136. Downloaded on behalf of Unknown Institution

4 Chapter One of tables came into sight. The place had a fantastic view, accompanied by the muffled noise of helicopters rising and descending on the roof. In 1967, that sound filled us with dread because it was the sound of Vietnam, and my roommate and I were waiting for the inevitable draft notices.

The “girls” (that’s how we talked in those days) had already ordered drinks before we arrived; they worked for Pan Am and were familiar with the lounge. Just as we began to discuss where to eat, I noticed Jesse Unruh, then Speaker of the California Assembly, standing near a phone booth. Penny saw him too and, much to our embarrassment, went to ask him if he would join us.

In those days, Jesse Unruh was physically large; he wasn’t called “Big Daddy” for nothing. His big face sagged around his wide, friendly mouth. We were surprised when he accepted Penny’s invitation and bought us another round of drinks. He asked us for our “political philosophies.” We shocked our dates and they surprised us, not to mention Unruh, when we all admitted to being conservative Republicans. Unruh wanted to know why so many young people were turning to Republicanism. We gave him different judgments, which amounted to “the Democrats got us into a war and the Great Society doesn’t reward hard work.”

Throughout the ensuing conversation, Unruh periodically left and paced in front of the phone booths. The lines were long, so he would return, defeated. Finally, Mary asked if she could help. He told her he had to call Robert Kennedy and that no one at the phones believed him. What was worse, no one recognized him “even after I told them who I was!” We laughed at his honesty. Mary took Unruh down to her office so he could use her phone.

Unruh returned with a wide, warm grin. He was more comfortable now and began to attack our Republicanism. Finally, he looked at his watch and asked, “How far away is the Waldorf Astoria?”

“Only a few blocks,” I chimed in. Would we take him there? We'd be happy to.

When we reached the Bull and Bear Room of the Waldorf, Unruh surprised us by asking us in for another round of drinks. Because it was St. Patrick’s Day, the tables all had potatoes wrapped in Irish green ribbons and stuck with white plastic picks. (I still have the ribbon and picks; the potato was last seen growing behind a shabby apartment house in Flushing, New York.)

As we sipped our drinks and talked, we were suddenly stunned into silence. Then we bumped and balanced to our feet. Robert Kennedy had appeared from nowhere. He was dressed in a navy-blue suit and wore a navy-blue and red striped tie. His hair, slightly mussed, characterized the

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Meeting Richard Nixon and Robert Kennedy 5 frenzy that was his personality. Unruh introduced us as “student aides”; no one gave him away. Kennedy, in a quiet voice, said, “Hello, how are you?” to each of us, repeatedly taking a swipe at his forelock.

No sooner had we reseated ourselves than a whiskey on the rocks—Old Fitzgerald, we later learned—arrived for Kennedy. He nursed it through the forty-five-minute meeting, which concerned whether or not he should run for president. I have never strained so hard to hear any conversation. Unruh gave him several arguments in favor of running and supported each one with poll data and assurances from other political bosses: Run in 68 or forget ’72.. . . If you don’t take an ideological stand against Johnson in 68, it will be used against you in ’72. . . . Move now, I have California lined up. . . . New York is yours. . . . You can get Daley. . . . The Republicans can all be taken. . . . Romney is shallow. . . . Rockefeller has the same base as you, only theyre more loyal to you, and he'll never be nominated after what he did at the 1964 convention. . . . Another Kennedy-Nixon battle would put you in for sure.

Kennedy would not commit. He was worried about splitting the party, about the fact that his own brother had made Johnson vice president, about moderate Republicans winning in ’68 and controlling things for the foreseeable future. And he worried about Nixon, who had been so effective in engineering the Republican congressional comeback of 1966.

Unruh skillfully answered each of these concerns. He concluded with a joke about Nixon being from sunny Southern California: “He’s a man for no seasons.” In the end, neither man left the table satisfied. Kennedy agreed to let Unruh start an organization that would emerge at the opportune moment, but Kennedy was in no mood to tip his hand just yet. Unruh wanted Kennedy to get in the race as soon as possible but settled for the tentative agreement. Suddenly, Kennedy was shaking my hand and saying goodbye. He was shorter than I had expected, his nose more hooked than I had remembered; he looked older than he did on television. He was gone.

Though I have forgotten where we took our dates to dinner, I have never forgotten what it felt like to be near a political pulse like Robert Kennedy’s. My dislike for him—arising out of his role in the 1960 campaign, his attorneygeneralship, his defeat of the gentle Senator Keating of New York in 1964, and his equivocations—was put aside for the better part of an hour. In those moments, I saw his style and was attracted to it. His opportunism matched Nixon's, but somehow he seemed more alive. Perhaps it was because Kennedy knew tragedy and Nixon only knew melodrama. It is one thing to lose a presidential election and quite another to lose a brother who is president.

A few months later, when I delivered my thesis to Nixon's office at 20 Broad Street, I remembered the meeting with Kennedy. Somehow the

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6 Chapter One warmth of the Bull and Bear Room was as appropriate to Kennedy as the coolness of the Wall Street neighborhood was to Nixon. It was my first faceto-face meeting with the man I had come to admire. Nixon surprised me with his warmth and the enthusiasm he had for what I had written. He was really interested in the concepts and the evidence I had generated for them.

On the first anniversary of my having met Kennedy, he stood in the Senate Cloakroom finally activating the network he and Unruh had discussed. In June, after his assassination, and while watching the Kennedy funeral train, I thought back to St. Patrick’s Day in 1967 and the subway ride home that night. My roommate and I just stared out the window of the dirty subway car, dreaming about potentialities. In the summer of 1968, I worked as a graduate intern for cBs at the conventions. In August in Chicago, when I saw Unruh on the floor of the chaotic Democratic Convention, I wanted to remind him of that special night, but couldn't bring myself to break through the huddle of delegates around him. They were singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and crying.

Robert Kennedy was the kind of man who won the crowd over the minute he entered the room. Nixon had to persuade them. Neither was above flouting the rules a little to achieve his aims, but because of who they were, the press, which was pretty liberal in those days, held Nixon to a tougher standard. The press gave the impression that many ideas walking through Nixon’s brain had been chewed up by a dark political robot. The same press found Robert Kennedy’s mind occupied by a fresh, lush garden blooming in passionate reds, electric blues, and ecstatic oranges against a neon-green mass. But that set of impressions was unrealistic if not dishonest. Robert Kennedy was a public man. Because he extended his imagination, he captured ours. Richard Nixon was a private man. When you penetrated his privacy, the excitement of ideas in conflict came into view: the lust for power, the international plotting, the dreams for a better day, the projections of self.

In the pages that follow, I want to pursue the thesis that the important thing is not the reality, but the myth that allows us to live with and bear the reality. Kennedy’s talent made him a myth, and that, for all of his rhetorical talent, Nixon could never be. And so he never tried and was never disappointed. Instead he spent his mind on the pragmatics of reality and in the process did some good things for the nation and the world. Freed of his burdens of power and guilt, he told us valuable things in remarkable speeches, interviews, and books that make us long for the days when such insight was more common among our leaders. For that, despite his sins, he has been welcomed into the pantheon of our political legends.

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Meeting Richard Nixon and Robert Kennedy 7

My meetings with Robert Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1967 triggered something that forced me to test my political abilities. By the summer of the next year, I was a writer for CBS News for convention coverage, and that would allow me to complete valuable research for my dissertation. Eventually, I would become a professor, and a full-time speechwriter for the president of the United States, the president of Chrysler Corporation, and candidates who wanted to be president. I would become a campaign manager for a major United States senator who would eventually be brought down by scandal. I became president of a major foundation that changed the laws that govern the telecommunications industry. It has been a heady life. However, there is one oddity about it: through it all, I remained in the closet at the center of power.

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Chapter Two

ON A CLEAR NIGHT IN APRIL OF 1775, WILLIAM DaAWEs AND PAUL Revere rode their steeds from Boston along the road to Lexington and Concord, warning farmers that the British were coming. The next day, April 19, a thousand British redcoats marched on the same road seeking the revolutionary Minutemen and their ammunition depot. On the way the “lobsterbacks” encountered resistance at Lexington Green. Among the ten Minutemen assembled to defend the Green was Isaac John Muzzy, a thirty-one-year-old patriot. He hoped to stall the British on their way to Concord, where a stash of weapons and powder was being removed from a small storage facility. While his father watched, Isaac Muzzy of Lexington arose and fired into the advancing British line. One of the redcoats returned his fire, using the white puff of smoke from Isaac’s musket to target him; the ball caught his jacket at heart level and blood rushed out. Isaac Muzzy was the first to die in the first official battle of the Revolutionary War, along with eight other men who were commemorated on the Green in 1799. The British went on to Concord, where they were ambushed by another group of Minutemen. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous poem about the “shot heard ‘round the world” commemorates the event. My father, who would also be something of a war hero, was a direct descendent of the Muzzy clan through his mother. He was a descendant of “Stonewall” Jackson's clan through his father. I will talk a bit more about my father in this and other chapters, because like many fathers of the “greatest generation,” he withheld his affection. That in turn made me all the more determined to please him. That desire to win my father over motivated me to work very hard in school, and to form habits that would sustain me through a varied career in and outside of academia.

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IMMIGRANT STOCK

On January 22, 1905, a group of workers protesting layoffs marched on the Winter Palace of Nicholas II in St. Petersburg. The Russian army protecting the czar, Nicholas II, brutally dispersed the crowd, killing many of them—their blood turning pink as it dissipated in the snow on “Bloody Sunday.” The event led to protests and riots throughout the empire, which were eventually put down. However, hatred for the czar and sympathy for a republican form of government continued to grow.

When he heard about these events from a union organizer, a coal miner named Okrik marched across a rain-drenched wheat field and shared the news with his neighbors in the village square in Sanok, the district capital of Galicia in the foothills of the Carpathian mountains. The city was surrounded by fertile farms and not far from the Dniester River, which runs all the way through the Ukraine to the Black Sea. The area had been ruled by the Poles, the Russians, and now the Austrians. The district was composed mainly of people descended from the Rusyn tribe who considered themselves Ukrainian. They were short of stature, usually blond, flat of face, but long-lived. They were intensely religious, but attuned to political reality. The minority of Sanok’s people, about a third, were Jewish. They were the entrepreneurs in the city along the river, and the Christians were either the farmers that tended the countryside in the fertile valley or coal miners like Okrik. The groups existed in an uneasy peace. Okrik discovered that many of these Jews were Zionists who wanted a homeland. He did not discourage their efforts.

Just after the ill-fated 1905 revolt, Okrik decided that the trouble in nearby Russia could spill into his little village. Austria and Russia were threatening each other with war. As a miner, Okrik feared the talk coming from Bolsheviks and Mensheviks that his mine and the local farms should be collectivized should Russia win the war. Thus, he made a painful decision. He would send his oldest daughter, Katherine, to America, the land of dreams.

She was a smart girl, and since she was of age, he believed she could survive the train ride to Hamburg and the steamer across the Atlantic to Ellis Island. Word soon came back from Katherine that America was indeed the land of opportunity. She had been hired to run a boarding house. She claimed that husbands and work awaited in the Rusyn neighborhoods outside of Newark and deep in the Pennsylvania mountains where coal was being mined. In Sanok, Okrik welcomed the news from Katherine and decided to send his teenage second daughter Julia off to America to join her sister. Julia was not a son and, therefore, could not work in the local coal mines. She was another mouth to feed in a poor household.

After trekking her way to Lonczin, Russia, the stepping-off point for

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Ukrainians, Julia Okrik made her way to Rotterdam and boarded a steamer for America. For a young woman of thirteen from a landlocked village, the voyage must have been frightening and exciting, particularly when the Statue of Liberty came into view. Scarier still was the walk through the turnstiles at Ellis Island. Julia Okrik claimed on her papers to have been born in 1895, and to be seventeen years of age; however, she was actually born in 1898. Not only was she afraid that her secret would be discovered, Julia almost did not get through processing because she was ill, and no one with any illness was allowed into the country. She was a good enough actress to make it through; she then ran for a restroom, where she threw up. It was not the last time evidence of her pluck would show itself.

Two years earlier on June 28, 1909, my grandfather Mihaljo Postic came to America via Austria and Havre. He quickly adopted the American name Michael and used it when he came to stay at the boarding house of Katherine Okrik and to work in the steel mills nearby. My grandfather was born in Galicia in 1892 and was very religious, but little else is known about his upbringing. He had been drafted, at a young age, into the Austro-Hungarian army and had shot his big toe off in some skirmish. He then deserted the army and fled to America. Katherine Okrik soon made a match between Michael and her younger sister Julia. Born in the hollows of Pennsylvania, my mother, Anna Postic, would be their second child.

Her older sister Mary emerged as the leader of the children until she moved to New York City to find a new life. An event in Catholic school prompted my mother to follow her sister a year later. During a geography lesson, a nun asked my mother where Buffalo was. She told the nun it was on the back of a nickel, since in those days Jefferson’s head was on one side and a bison was on the other. The nun rapped my mother’s knuckles with a ruler and slapped the back of her head. She fled the classroom and never looked back. The year was 1930 and she was only fifteen years old.