Editor’s Note: This Leader Board is excerpted from Ken Khachigian’s upcoming book, “Behind Closed Doors: In the room with Reagan & Nixon.” During his career, Khachigian, a former attorney who resides in San Juan Capistrano, advised dozens of corporations, including SoCal Edison, PG&E, Allergan, AT&T and the Irvine Company and played a role in nine presidential campaigns as well as a variety of California campaigns. He is scheduled to give a presentation on his book on July 23 at the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda. The excerpts are reprinted courtesy of Post Hill Press. The Republican National Convention starts this week in Milwaukee.
FALL, 1967: I was a second-year Columbia Law student who had loved politics since attending California Boys State in high school. The opportunity was Richard Nixon’s improbable comeback to the presidency. I wrote a letter to Nixon to volunteer. Patrick J. Buchanan, who hired me, liked to joke that my Columbia student credentials made me a suspect as a “Rockefeller spy.” It began a lasting professional and personal relationship as Pat became my boss, mentor, colleague and lifelong friend.
Aug. 8, 1974: I went upstairs to see Rose Mary Woods, who was at her typewriter, crying. She was typing Nixon’s resignation speech.
Carl Bernstein called. Only a predatory ass would think to call at such a moment. It wasn’t enough that Bernstein would cash in on Nixon for the rest of his life; he was gloating over his political corpse. I thought of only one response: “Why don’t you go watch ‘Deep Throat’” and slammed down the phone.
That night, the president delivered his resignation speech.
5-weeks to Campaign
Sept. 29, 1980: After Watergate, I had given up hope of participating in presidential elections. However, Ronald Reagan’s speechwriting team was floundering. With only five weeks remaining until election day, I was hired as the newest scriptwriter for Reagan’s biggest starring role.
Nixon viewed me as a source to provide information on Reagan, and I was more than happy to count on his input. Nixon reiterated his lessons from the previous five years: “Reagan’s speaking style is his great advantage. Don’t make it appear he’s a packaged candidate.”
Oct. 7: With four weeks left, my hope was to release Reagan from the tightly scripted, policy-wonkish, sleep-inducing messages mandated by headquarters and unleash a leader to convey messages representing everything that President Jimmy Carter was not. I took direct aim at Carter’s economic record, with the insert of a small gem into a Reagan speech in Pennsylvania:
“Look around you—at the price of food, the price of gasoline, the interest rates you have to pay to buy a house, the amount of taxes taken out of your paycheck. Look around, then ask yourself: are you really better off than you were in 1976?”
That meme was initially overlooked, and Reagan repeated it in subsequent speeches, and with even greater effect three weeks later when he debated Carter. When I unleashed that line, I never dreamed it would serve as Reagan’s defining message in 1980 and resonate for decades as a gold standard in political rhetoric.
Oct. 10: Women’s rights organizations continued their disruptions. My boss Stu Spencer said we were on defense with these women groups, so he dropped a bombshell on me: “Why don’t you get a statement ready saying that one of the priorities of a Reagan government is support of women and the lack of discrimination. And, at the end, sort of add in there that for Supreme Court Justice, he appoints a woman.”
Stu’s offhand tone made it sound as though we were only announcing additions to Idaho’s Women for Reagan Committee. Today, a woman on the U.S. Supreme Court is routine, but in October 1980, this represented a dramatic departure for the highest court.
Repeat Inflation, Unemployment
Oct. 15: Carter seemed to embrace a tax increase when he flubbed by claiming that among the factors causing inflation was “the government wasn’t taking in sufficient revenues to meet a greatly expanding budget.”
I wrote this line for Reagan: “We now know what Mr. Carter plans to do with four more years. Catch your breath, hold on to your hats and grab your wallets because Jimmy Carter’s analysis of the economy means that his answer is higher taxes.” The “catch your breath” line made all three networks that night.
Reagan had no official chief of staff in 1980, and I quickly realized that whenever wife Nancy spoke up, she did it for Ronnie—playing the “tough guy” role that he avoided. Every political leader needs an SOB, and, when necessary, Mrs. Reagan was prepared to be her husband’s.
Nixon privately sent a memo that read: “The practice of having a different speech each day should be discarded for this period. Repeat over and over again the inflation and unemployment themes. Don’t give the media a chance to report on other issues. They will desperately try to avoid reporting on the economic issue not because they think it is an old story (which they will contend) but because deep down they know it helps Reagan and hurts Carter…. The time is past for reading important but dull lines prepared by speechwriters. [OUCH!]…Hit hard. Excite people…In the debate, let the visual and verbal image be the contrast between a small man in a big job and a big man for a big job.”
Nixon also referred to his infamous 1960 debate: “A tactic Kennedy used effectively was to virtually ignore a question where he had no good answer and to make points he wanted to make… Always talk about the number unemployed rather than the percentage.”
During the debate, the line about being worse off than four years prior won fame. Two other moments during the debate worked against Carter. Carter tried raising the Social Security bogeyman against Reagan, and in frustration, the practiced communicator cocked his head before saying, “There you go again.” Viewers saw Reagan as the scolding mentor, making his errant student look small.
Carter’s other bonehead comment was a preface to his response on strategic arms limitations: “I think, to close out this discussion, it would be better to put into perspective what we’re talking about. I had a discussion with my daughter, Amy, the other day, before I came here, to ask her what the most important issue was. She said she thought nuclear weaponry—and the control of nuclear arms.”
In the viewing room, we looked at each other in disbelief that the U.S. president just cited his thirteen-year-old daughter as a source of nuclear age wisdom. It may well be that Jimmy, Rosalynn, and Amy fretted about nukes over family dinner, but across America, voters’ minds sketched a portrait of daddy seeking advice from a teenager on Armageddon.
The Smell of a Landslide
Nov. 3: San Diego was our final stop because Reagan viewed it as his city of good luck due to finishing his 1966 campaign for governor there. He gave pretty much the same stump speech. Some loud-mouthed loon began yelling and shouting repeatedly about nothing discernable. Reagan stopped in midsentence, looked over in the fellow’s direction, and said, “Aw, shut up!” The crowd broke into a big roar, and Reagan immediately took the edge off by saying, “You know, my mother had told me never to say that to anyone, but it has been such a long campaign, and there’s been so many people like that, I thought that just this once I could do it.”
Nov. 4: Reagan won 51% of the vote, or 43.9 million, to 41%, or 35.5 million, for Carter. In the electoral college, it was a landslide: 489 to 49.
My job was done, or so I thought. Then I got a call to write Reagan’s inauguration speech. I ended up spending the next eight years with the Gipper.
