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January 26, 2005
On William Safire's Retirement
This seems like a good time to remind people why you can't trust William Safire on anything.
Begin with an extended passage from William Safire's Before the Fall,:
...The motorcade rolled into San Jose with the advance car of photographers shooting back at the President's limousine.... I was in the next to last bus, and could hardly believe what I saw.
Obscene signs were nothing new, and the chant of "One, two, three, four, we don't want your fuckin' war" had long since lost its shock value; demonstrators had plagued both parties since the late 1960s.... Ordinarily, they worked their disruptive schtick in groups of 20 or 30, popping up in an otherwise friendly crowd, but that night in San Jose was different.
Slowing down as we approached the civic auditorium, we were teated to the screams, howls, and roars of the representatives of the outer fringes of the counterculture. A screamer would look in our windows, lock onto one person's gaze, yell an oath, and make a gesture with arm or middle finger. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, faces contorted, worked up into a froth of hatred, doing everything a body can do with voice and gesture to express loathing and disgust. This was a lynch mob, no cause or ideology involved, only an orgy of generalized hate....
Their plan was to throw only epithets on our way in; a more serious onslaught was reserved for later. Inside the hall, five thousand tense and worried supporters made up the auditorium "rally"; Senator George Murphy and Governor Ronald Reagan spoke to warm them up, but even before the President came on, the sound of a battering ram was heard. The hall was actually, not figuratively, besieged; the demonstrators outside envisioned it as a drum to beat upon; the staff, after a few nervous self-assurances that this kind of thing only helped our cause, began to worry about getting out safely with the President. The people in that hall, ourselves included, were at once defiant and fearful, a state which is at the least a tribute to the success of the mob's attempted intimidation. The Secret Servicemen, who always had seemed too numerous and too officious before, now seemed to us like a too-small band of too-mortal men.
Let the President describe the scene, from the reading copy of the speech he gave on the subject a few days later....Thursday night in San Jose, I spoke to a crowd of 5,000 fine Americans. They were exercising their right to assemble peaceably, to listen to political speakers, to weigh the issues in the campaign of 1970.
Outside the hall, a mob of about a thousand haters gathered. We could see the hate in their faces as we drove into the hall, and in the obscene signs they waved. We could hear the hate in their voices as they chanted their obscenities. Inside the hall, we could hear them pounding on the doors as if they could not bear the thought of people listening respectfully to the Governor of the State of California, the Senior Senator from California, and the President of the United States.
Along the campaign trail we have seen and heard demonstrators. But never before in this campaign was there such an atmosphere of hatred. As we came out of the hall and entered the motorcade, the haters surged past the barricades and began throwing rocks. Not small stones--large rocks, heavy enough to smash windows. And not just directed at me, though some hit the Presidential car--most of the rocks hit the buses carrying the Press and my staff, as well as the police vehicles....
Some say that the violent dissent is caused by the war in Vietnam. It is about time we branded this line of thinking--this alibi for violence, for what it is--pure nonsense. There is no greater hypocrisy than a man carrying a banner that says "peace" in one hand while hurling a rock or a bomb with the other hand....The San Jose police had driven the demonstrators away from the doors of the auditorium and out of the official parking place. The motorcade was parked in a circle, much like that of a wagon train under siege, with the inside of the circle secured by motorcycle cavalry and the outside left to the savages.... The President came out and did his usual thing--climbed atop the car and wiggled the V sign to his cheering supporters and the cameras behind them.
The Nixon people ringing the car... were not the only ones who hollered at his signal. A reaction of fury and spleen was heard from outside the ring of buses in the parking lot. One reporter, Martin Schram of Newsday, said he heard the candidate "in a low, angry voice to a nearby confidant" say, "That's what they hate to see." This murmured remark, overheard by one reporter and by no other reporter or aide there at the time, amid shouts and jeering and cheering, became the basis of a point of view of many of those covering the event: that the President taunted the demonstrators into violence. The reponsibility for the attack, under this theory, was not so much the antiwar militants', but that of the President, who led them into rock-throwing in order to cast himself in a sympathetic role, and to focus public anger on the youthful dissidents.
The motorcade moved out of the parking lot and ran a guantlet of cursing demonstrators. As Time reported: "The eggs began to fly even before the motorcade moved out... Dozens of rocks were thrown, some the size of a potato. They bounced off the President's well-armored car, and they smashed windows in the press and staff buses tailing behind..." I was in the staff bus with Rose Woods, the President's secretary, when the rocks began to hit the steel sides. She said, "Just like Caracas"--she had previous experience along these lines when Nixon, then Vice President, was stoned in Venezuela--and she hit the deck in the aisle, shouting to the rest of us to do the same. I, like a jerk, kept looking out the window. When a rock slammed into the window on the opposite side of the bus, I was showered with glass splinters, but with my face turned away, I was unhurt and hastened to join my colleagues on the floor. In a minute, it was over and the buses were roaring toward the airport...
Notice Safire's attack on the biased liberal press? His claim that "...this murmured remark, overheard by one reporter and by no other reporter or aide there at the time, amid shouts and jeering and cheering, became the basis of a point of view of many of those covering the event: that the President taunted the demonstrators into violence..."? Well, it turns out that the press was correct. For example, take a look at Nixon Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman's diary:
Thursday, October 29, 1970
The rough one [campaign trip]--Chicago, Rockford, Rochester, Omaha, and San Jose, with an added speech at his [President Nixon's] initiative in Chicago for the Junior League at breakfast.
San Jose turned into the real blockbuster. Very tough demonstrators shouting "1-2-3-4-etc." on the way into auditorium. Tried to storm the doors after we were in, and then really hit the motorcade on the way out. We wanted some confrontation and there were no hecklers in the hall, so we stalled departure a little so they could zero in outside, and they sure did. Before getting in car, P[resident Nixon] stood up and gave the V signs, which made them mad. They threw rocks, flags, candles, etc. as we drove out, after a terrifying flying wedge of cops opened up the road. Rock hit my car, driver hit brakes, car stalled, car behind hit us, rather scary as rocks were flying, etc., but we caught up and all got out. Bus windows smashed, etc. Made a huge incident and we worked hard to crank it up, should make really major story and might be effective.
After arrival in San Clemente, P[resident Nixon] went home, then kept calling with ideas about how to push the line...
Question: Was Safire really as out-of-the-loop as he appears? Did he really not know that while he was feeling "defiant and fearful... the success of the mob's attempted intimidation. The Secret Servicemen... seemed to us... a too-small band of too-mortal men," Nixon and Haldeman were upset because there were not enough demonstrators outside? And were purposefully delaying the departure so that when the motorcade left there would be more demonstrators? Or was he so gullible that--knowing the character of Nixon and Haldeman as he did--it was trivial to gull him? Either way, it's not a performance that gives one confidence in Safire as a source.
So ever since I read Haldeman's diary, Safire has been on my "Don't trust--verify--and even then don't trust, for it's surely not the way he spins it.
Posted by DeLong at January 26, 2005 03:04 PM
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Comments
Ummm - didn't this piece run several months ago when Safire announced that he was retiring?
Posted by: Charles Kinbote at January 26, 2005 04:18 PM
Very interesting entry. Thanks for the insight. The left (and middle) could take a lesson from the right in sticking to a storyline. The "hateful" liberals routine never gets old for them, and it must be somewhat effective.
Posted by: Maximum Donkey at January 26, 2005 04:42 PM
The net quality of the NYT has shot upwards with the retirement of Safire, however I fear it will plummet back downwards as soon as he is replaced.
Posted by: Kuas at January 26, 2005 04:52 PM
Two things.
Perhaps Safire is still spinning the story
or
Perhaps Haldeman and Nixon didn't tell people what they were doing so that they would be more effective spinning it.
Also another blog, forget which one, mentioned that Sulzberger asked William Safire to be the omsbudsman at the Times before they hired Okrent.
Also it's "an undisputed fact" that Atta met Iraqi intelligence in Prague. Undisputed, except by US intelligence agencies and the 9/11 Commission.
Posted by: KevinNYC at January 26, 2005 05:38 PM
Pulling a page from a 30 year old book seems like a cheap way to indict someone with as much writing as Safire has. My heart is also soft enough that I think that even former Nixon hacks can reinvent themselves.
But to the point: So Nixon and Haldeman wanted anti-Nixon hooliganism on display for the news cameras... so what? Although the omission is perhaps unfortunate, it doesn't seem like this really conceals all too much, considering all the emphasis the Nixon White House put on "Law and Order" and the "anti-Americanism" of the protestors. I wasn't even alive then, and I don't need William Safire to tell me about this. It's just plain obvious.
Posted by: Marc at January 26, 2005 05:46 PM
Thanks.
Posted by: Andrew McManama-Smith at January 26, 2005 05:50 PM
Marc,
Unfortunately Safire never did reinvent himself. He has spent his entire post-Nixon career trying, one way or another, to justify his loyalty to Nixon.
As for your second paragraph, it seems to miss Brad's point entirely. Safire's comments were not "unfortunate," they were dishonest.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at January 26, 2005 06:38 PM
Google "for thinkers only" and see what Renfro says about Safire. Renfro doesn't have much good to say about anybody but interesting anyway.
His storys about his time as an infantry man in WW2 is also interesting.
His economic ideas????
Posted by: dilbert dogbert at January 26, 2005 07:44 PM
I actually agree with Marc that it's kinda silly to dwell on a 30-year old book to find what's so bad about Safire.
I mean, it's not as if in the past few months he hasn't written some whoppers. Hillary's going to be the Democratic nominee! Not invading Iraq would have lead to Al Qaeda-Iraq hegemony in the Middle East!
Besides, Brad, you've posted this at least twice before. How 'bout some of his other absurdities, like "Roth Plot II" or "The Lowest Blow?"
Posted by: Julian Elson at January 26, 2005 08:06 PM
Marc -- are you alive now? Sorry, bro, you're out of your league.
Jesus, what's this with the statute of limitations on lying and shit? Brad's point is that Safire was NEVER any good and was ALWAYS a liar. A retrospective longitudinal dimension was required in order to make that point.
Posted by: John Emerson at January 26, 2005 09:06 PM
Let's also never forget that Safire was good friends with, and a constant apologist for, Roy Cohn, who, in real life, was even more despicable than the portrayal of him in "Angels in America."
Good riddance to a shameless and mendacious hack. Though now that i've said that, I fear that his replacement will probably be worse. I mean, any editorial page that keeps Bobo Brooks on the payroll has lost all notions of journalistic standards.
Posted by: Basharov at January 26, 2005 10:03 PM
Maybe I'm mis-remembering, but I somehow vaguely recall that Safire started out life as a PR flack for some industrial giant and hooked up with Nixon at some public event -- was it the Kitchen Debate???
Anyway the point is he started out as a PR flack and continued on as one for his entire career in government and out.
And, twisting Mort Sahl's line on Goldwater a bit, I don't admire someone whose name is Shapiro and does something about it.
Posted by: larry birnbaum at January 27, 2005 05:54 AM
Forget Amalik and remember Amalik.
Posted by: Jonathan Goldberg at January 27, 2005 06:33 AM
"...no hecklers in the hall, so we stalled departure a little so they could zero in outside, and they sure did."
Becomes:
"Nixon and Haldeman were upset because there were not enough demonstrators outside? And were purposefully delaying the departure so that when the motorcade left there would be more demonstrators?"
Haldeman says nothing about being 'upset', nor about there not being 'enough demonstrators outside', nor that by delaying the departure there would be 'more demonstrators'(how would they know that anyway).
What Haldeman's clear English does say is that, they were confronted by angry, uncivilized, jerks who ended up throwing rocks and eggs when the President of the United States exercised his First Amendment rights.
And, that being the case, it would be good if the cameras rolling at the time captured it, to discredit those angry, uncivilized jerks. Big deal.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan at January 27, 2005 08:55 AM
Patrick Sullivan, if that's all that's going on here, why on earth would Haldeman want to *wait* for the crowd to get bigger, closer, angrier, and louder? Wouldn't that be counterproductive to his ostensible goal of "exercising his First Amendment rights"?
Posted by: Palindrome at January 27, 2005 10:33 AM
To the "Safire and Brooks were turning NYTimes into a two-bit tabloid" crowd:
Who belongs to the set of "intelligent, worthwhile conservative commentators?" Or do you think that set is empty?
I would also add that we shouldn't expect columnists not to have a few "off" columns, and that when we spot them (e.g., "The Lowest Blow"), it doesn't necessarily mean that they're not worthwhile reading most of the time.
In Safire's case, you would actually expect him to have more "off" days than most columnists, since part of his appeal was that he would go out on a limb to say novel things. Of course he'll be wrong more than somebody who just says obvious things.
And as to Nixon's White House and a much dwelled upon 30 year old incident, I don't think it takes Karl Rove levels of evil to want to make sure that news cameras will be around, and to help facilitate this, if you know that your opponents are going to behave like uncivilized, unwashed fools.
Posted by: Marc at January 27, 2005 02:40 PM
And Brad thinks that HE'S clueless?
The 1960s were chockful of examples of so-called adults who were so locked-in mentally to the establishment perspective on the war, civil rights, and the like, that to them, it was a far greater offense for protesters to be rude or profane than for the government to draft men in their teens (!) and send them to combat, just because 'it's the law'.
So many clueless mental zombies, it's an echo of the current day.
As someone said after rising up to protest the pollution of Love Canal: 'polite people get poisoned.' I might add, 'polite people get drafted.'
Posted by: Jon Koppenhoefer at January 27, 2005 03:22 PM
Marc -- like I said.
Posted by: John Emerson at January 27, 2005 03:49 PM
Now I'm going to have to disagree with Marc: Safire's problem isn't so much saying unconventional things that sometimes turn out to be ahead of the curve and sometimes turn out to be wrong. His problem is that he's a liar. However, since virtually all of his columns are full of lies, I think picking an incident 30 years ago and posting on it three times seems like grudge-holding.
As for worthwhile conservatve commentators... I'll admit it: my political spectrum is pretty left-skewed, from Barry Deutsch on my left to Abiola Lapite on my right. Hmm... Irwin Stelzer? Bruce Bartlett? It's not a field I'm really familiar with, I have to say. Anyone have any recommendations?
Posted by: Julian Elson at January 27, 2005 09:32 PM
Definitely not Bruce Bartlett. I'd really like to know how it is that he's taken off in the last few years. And even more so, I'd like to know how it is that he's managed to cast himself as an "expert" on economics.
Oh, and I'm also mildly curious to know what the point, if any, was in Mr. Emerson's last comment.
And I'd like some real examples within, say, the last five years of Mr. Safire being a liar. This Atta in Prague stuff doesn't count. If you are actually serious in citing pre-war US Intelligence to show that this isn't true, you'd have to believe that that was about the only thing they did get right. Note also Safire never claimed to have the evidence in his hands. If the Atta in Prague story is false, Safire is only a liar if he made up hearing the story from someone he believed to be reputable. That's a bit of a stretch, huh?
So far, I'm with the Pulitzer Prize people.
Posted by: Marc Gersen at January 28, 2005 12:53 AM