As Richard Nixon's presidency collapsed in the summer of 1974, 29-year old White House speechwriter Ken Khachigian earned a mordant nickname for his fierce and hardline loyalty under ferocious political fire.
"Onoda," Nixon special assistant Pat Buchanan dubbed young Khachigian, his protege and wing man.
It was a call-out to Hiroo Onoda, Japan's last World War II hold-out, a lieutenant who refused to believe reports his country had lost, and conducted guerrilla operations in the Philippines until finally surrendering 29 years after the rest of the Imperial Army.
It's an apt moniker for Khachigian, a San Joaquin Valley native who made his bones as UCSB's conservative student body president in 1966, then spent six decades in national and California politics as a partisan warrior, shrewd strategist, pugnacious operative and stylish speechwriter.
(And who, oh yeah, three months ago wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined, "Nixon Shouldn't Have Resigned" to mark the 50th anniversary of the occasion).
On this week's edition of Newsmakers TV, Khachigian dropped by for a conversation about his new political memoir, "Behind Closed Doors: In the Room with Reagan and Nixon," A political page turner and behind-the-scenes account of an extraordinary quarter-century of national transformation, it is an insider's, up-close-and-personal tale of an historic era, bookended by the fall of Nixon and the triumph of Ronald Reagan's Revolution.
Khachigian was there from his start to finish: Nixon's lead prepper and corner man for his famous interview series with David Frost, he also did heavy lifting on "RN," the memoir that began the political rehabilitation of the 37th president; Reagan's on-the-plane speechwriter in the 1980 campaign, Khachigian crafted the iconic "are you better off today than you were four years ago" line that framed that landslide victory; in and out of the White House, he collaborated and co-wrote (Reagan came up in politics writing his own speeches and always remained proprietary about the language he wielded) on nearly every major policy and campaign address during the two terms of the 40th president.
In a one-on-one with the genial host, who covered Khachigian and clients for years, the Republican warhorse offers glimpses of the political gold in his impeccably researched book, including insights and excerpts from his contemporaneous memos, notes and diaries,, fascinating first-hand observations of two of the 20th Century's most consequential presidents - and some characteristically candid takes on some of the era's biggest names in politics.
The rest of the story. Khachigian ends his story in 1990, describing a private, lions-in-winter meeting between Nixon and Reagan who, though close in ideology and only two years apart in age, could not have been more different in personality and style.
His eyewitness account of that little-known encounter between the two former presidents is touching, and an appropriate place for his story about a particular slice of history to end.
Still it deprives the reader of his perspective, thoughts, and judgments about Donald Trump and what he has wrought with his hostile takeover of a Republican Party Khachigian worked so long and hard to make a tribune of principled conservatism.
Trump gets only a few, very brief mentions in the book (at one point, Khachigian notes his appropriation of Reagan's "Make America Great Again" slogan from 1980; at another, he recounts a bid by Russian leaders to influence the 1984 election that Administration officials immediately squelched and investigated, a sharp, if unstated, contrast with You Know Who).
Whatever one's views about Reagan's policies, and Newsmakers was not his biggest fan, it's hard not to feel uplifted -- then sad and despairing -- in comparing the sunny rhetoric and shining optimism about America, as captured in so many words crafted by his speechwriter, with the crude, vicious, punch-down vulgarism and cant disgorged these days by Dear Leader.
Just one, very telling example, from Reagan's farewell address to the 1988 Republican National Convention, as cited in "Behind Closed Doors":
I know I've said this before, but I believe that God put this land between the two great oceans to be found by special people from every corner of the world who had that extra love for freedom that prompted them to leave their homeland and come to this land to make it a brilliant light beam of freedom to the world.
It's our gift to have visions, and I want to share that of a young boy who wrote to me shortly after I took office. In his letter he said, 'I love America because you can join Cub Scouts if you want to. You have a right to worship as you please. If you have the ability, you can try to be anything you want to be. And I also like America because we have about 200 flavors of ice cream.'
Well, truth through the eyes of a child: freedom of association, freedom of worship, freedom of hope and opportunity, and the pursuit of happiness -- in this case, choosing among 200 flavors of ice cream -- that's America, everyone with his or her vision of the American promise.
That's why we're a magnet for the world: for those who dodged bullets and gave their lives coming over the Berlin Wall and others, only a few of whom avoided death, coming in tiny boats on turbulent oceans. This land, its people, the dreams that unfold here and the freedom to bring it all together -- well, those are what make America soar, up where you can see hope billowing in those freedom winds.
When our children turn the pages of our lives, I hope they'll see that we had a vision to pass forward a nation as nearly perfect as we could, where there's decency, tolerance, generosity, honesty, courage, common sense, fairness, and piety. This is my vision, and I'm grateful to God for blessing me with a good life and a long one. "
Sigh.
JR
Check out our conversation with Ken Khachigian via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. The podcast is here. TVSB, Channel 17, at whose podcast studio this interview was recorded, airs the program every weeknight at 8 p.m. and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, broadcasts the show on Monday at 5:30 p.m.
Many thanks to our TVSB friends J.P. Montalvo, Ellie Stayner and Erik Davis for partnering with us on this special episode. Let us know what you think of the format: newsmakerswithjr@gmail.
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