General Interest Review 00000

William Safire

William Safire died today. I learned this from the website of one of those pesky newspapers that still seem to be hanging around. Safire wrote for The New York Times. He was also a speechwriter for Richard Milhaus Nixon, and coined some of the phrases that made Nixon's hatchet man and vice president Spiro T. Agnew look like a creep to people with whom I would've agreed had I been around 40 years ago. Nattering nabobs of negativism. That stands alone for me. It crosses my mind when I least expect. And with some regularity. You know what doesn't? Anything Bob Herbert writes...

When Safire was hired by The Times, conceivably The Enemy as he was on the PR side of things, he turned himself into a nattering nabob as he withstood the brunt of rancor that comes from holding the whipping post known as "The Conservative On The Times' op-ed page." Along the way, he also instituted On Language, one of the most delightful columns to read that has ever been in print.

The Times op-ed columnists seem to be selected to reflect the sort of ideals of society that that great self-identified beacon of society, The Times Reader, can identify with. For people who are aware that there are poor people in other countries, we now have Nicholas Kristof. For generic Times readers who think that these countries are filled only with people like themselves, we have Tom Friedman. For people who reduce everything to meaningless, gimmicky gook, we have Maureen Dowd. And of course Herbert, who represents the mainstream Democratic Party's line of failing to say anything that everyone doesn't already know. Safire's space is designed to prove that there are a few conservative Times readers -- or at least that those other imes readers were intellectually honest enough to read about what the other side thought. But Safire wasn't just an ideological stenographer. He won the Times readership over anyway because he brought provocative ideas, my personal favorite being his crusade to abolish the penny, that had little to do with sucking up to the party o restating what Irving Kristol thought about something in column size. (The latter job was filled by Kristol's son, William, during his short stint on the whipping post). Safire's views were nuanced enough to support the Iraq War but oppose the USA Patriot Act.

That is to say, he was an old-fashioned Republican that didn't mind rolling up his sleeves and disagreeing with his party's standard bearers. The amount of arrogance and self aggrandizement required to carve out this sort of reputation over decades is not yet even measurable. One only need look at the sudden spotlight foisted on Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine as she fights to hold onto roughly the same reputation within the Establishment to see how much power you can accrue by being a lone inconsistent voice among a chorus of hard-line party-liners. But, hey, when is the point of anything in Washington something other than "look at me?" Safire stood out even beyond the Snowes of the world because he actually put forth ideas that you could agree or disagree with, and the man could turn a phrase. That means...he wasn't a moderate. And that's the point. The landscape that Safire departed forces anyone wishing to expose their spine to hide beyond ideology ("You lie!"), or, worse, self-serving delusion (anything Tom Delay and Rod Blagojevich have ever done in public). But Safire was just pounding out what he thought might be interesting. That's the imperative that the conversation shapers seemed to have decided the public would rather do without. Reading and thinking...you mean it's possible to both at the same time?