“Years later, after I had dropped off a speech draft in the Oval Office, [Nixon] read it and muttered, ‘For God’s sake, Buchanan, get some lift into it!’ As I reached the door, he said loud enough to hear, ‘Why can’t I get speechwriters like Wilson’s?’ Not until I was outside the Oval Office did I retort, sotto voce, ‘Wilson wrote his own speeches. Toward the end of that final Pat book was a reliving of the funeral for Spiro Agnew, who as vice president roared with Buchanan’s prose to become a hero of the right. As The Baltimore Sun wrote, “The closest thing to a national celebrity [at graveside] was Patrick J. Buchanan, the populist former Republican presidential candidate who long ago co-wrote the speeches that made Agnew a sensation, alliterative anthems that may forever define his legacy.”
Author: Bucky Fox
Published at: 2025-06-21 21:48:42
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