The greatest presidential servants are those who are modest and self-effacing, whose sole purpose is to help the president succeed without regard to their own reputation or status. Speechwriters especially are meant to blend in with the background wallpaper, lending bold or reassuring colors to a president’s rhetoric depending on the circumstances, though more than a few speechwriters made themselves famous during or after their tenure with a president.
Few speechwriters have performed an unassuming role more effectively and unassumingly than Ken Khachigian (he celebrates the Washington Post calling him a “little-known speechwriter”), and we have at last a splendid memoir of his speechwriting career with Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
Khachigian never became a Washington or media fixture, serving only intermittently as a speechwriter while primarily living and working in California on his own law practice. He never intended to be a professional political strategist or wordsmith, and the fact that he was summoned from private life repeatedly by Ronald Reagan and his team for critical help in crisis moments is a strong indicator of his qualities. This is highly unusual for someone who never formally joined the White House staff. While Khachigian may have referred to himself modestly as “a Word Donkey,” around the Reagan White House senior staff—and most significantly Nancy Reagan—he became known as “the Fireman,” the person to call on when something blew up.
Behind Closed Doors is a stylistically unusual memoir. Its narrative is constructed as a mix of a diary and chronological narrative, and some parts derive directly from a recorded diary Khachigian kept at various times. It contains numerous never-told details drawn from his contemporaneous notes and recollections (plus an appendix with facsimiles of official documents), adding new details that future historians of Reagan and his era will want to take in.
The book is notable for several key things that mark out its significance. First, it includes extended excerpts of Reagan’s key speeches, not all of them written by Khachigian, as a means of capturing how Reagan thought and argued. It is surprising how many chronicles of Reagan give short shrift to his rhetoric and arguments, as he explained his own purposes better than any biographer or historian can hope to do. Khachigian makes clear Reagan’s direct involvement and heavy editing of his own key speeches—and the subterfuges some of his staff employed to influence Reagan’s rhetoric.
Second, Khachigian, who worked in the Nixon White House to the very end in August 1974 and then became part of Nixon’s post-presidency staff in San Clemente, was the frequent go-between for Nixon and Reagan starting with the 1980 campaign and lasting through Reagan’s entire presidency. This back channel needed to be kept out of sight because of Nixon’s political baggage, and the book contains numerous anecdotes, letters, and phone calls from Nixon not previously known.
Although many books have portrayed Nixon as having a low or mixed opinion of Reagan, Khachigian’s account and documents reveal a Nixon with deep appreciation of Reagan’s talents along with shrewd and perceptive insights on how best to harness them. And Reagan valued Nixon’s counsel, as Reagan acknowledges in several places in his presidential diary. Khachigian writes, “Reagan appreciated the breadth of experience and wisdom his predecessor possessed. Nixon’s advice was faithfully solicited and absorbed in those key situations.” That advice “was the best-kept secret of the 1980 presidential campaign.” It was Nixon who recommended Khachigian to the Reagan campaign in 1979, which gave him a tryout with an early speech that Reagan liked. On the intense fall days of the 1980 race when he joined the campaign plane, Khachigian and Reagan established a close rapport that was rare.
Third, the book does contain some serious score-settling, especially with James Baker and Richard Darman. The insidious influence and Machiavellian maneuvering of Baker, Darman, David Gergen, and other moderate Republican senior staff in the Reagan presidency is well-known. Khachigian supplies a number of new details of their perfidy, which began in his telling even before Inauguration Day in 1981. Rather than relying on just his own personal memory and opinion, Khachigian brings receipts to his attacks, citing additional sources to substantiate every episode or harsh judgment he makes.
The mild-mannered Khachigian reached the limit of his forbearance for Darman in a 1984 campaign meeting:
“Dick, you really don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know a goddamn thing about politics or speechwriting. I don’t know why you’re even in this meeting or why anyone listens to your advice, and I’m not going to listen to any more of your bullshit. … You can go straight to hell.”
Darman, known for his hot temper, left the room, probably because, Khachigian adds, “no one spoke to Darman like that,” though Khachigian added that he received a lot of quiet approval from others. (Reagan policy aide Martin Anderson once shared with this writer a favorite White House joke: “Why do people take an instant dislike to Darman? Saves time.”)
Khachigian’s strongest indictment is the role Baker, Darman, and others played in getting Reagan to accede to the 1982 tax hike, which Reagan had initially said he wouldn’t support. The “pragmatist” faction (though significantly Khachigian never dignifies them with the term “pragmatist”) eventually wore Reagan down, and Khachigian says near the end, “One of my deepest regrets while serving Reagan was that I did not forcefully disagree with him on his 1982 tax increase.” Reagan later said agreeing to it was his largest regret, too.
This hints at one possible omission of the memoir: any direct criticism of Reagan himself, since ultimately he was responsible for this and other decisions that draw criticism from conservatives. But perhaps this is the flip side of the extraordinary trust and comfort Reagan had for Khachigian that is the subtext of this memoir. Khachigian is too modest and self-effacing to point out how extraordinary it was for any president, and especially the closely guarded Reagan, to call repeatedly on someone outside the full-time staff for help with key speeches and crises.
Reagan had a competent staff of speechwriters, and Khachigian does not offer a hint of criticism for Tony Dolan, Ben Elliott, or Peggy Noonan in his narrative (all make their appearances throughout), but it was often Khachigian who got the call for certain difficult or extraordinary moments. Among these were recovering from Reagan’s poor first debate performance in 1984, and the calamity of Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg military cemetery in Germany in 1985, along with providing the outline and early drafts from which Reagan composed the final version of his first inaugural address.
In each case it appears that Nancy Reagan was among the first in the inner circle to say that it was time to call on “the Fireman” again. Nancy could be hard on him too at times, but more often than not in meetings would say, “Ken’s answer here is good, Ronnie, and you should listen to it.”
Ken Khachigian’s memoir is good, and everyone should read it.
Behind Closed Doors: In the Room with Reagan and Nixon
by Ken Khachigian
Post Hill Press, 496 pp., $35
Steven F. Hayward is the Edward Gaylord distinguished visiting professor at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy and author of the two-volume chronicle, The Age of Reagan.
This article was originally published at freebeacon.com
