William Safire, columnist was 79

The New York Times columnist of three decades died today of pancreatic cancer at a hospice. Safire had been a speech writer for President Richard Nixon and an influential conservative columnist, as well as the author of four novels. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his columns in the New York Times, which reports today:

There may be many sides in a genteel debate, but in the Safire world of politics and journalism it was simpler: there was his own unambiguous wit and wisdom on one hand and, on the other, the blubber of fools he called “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”

He was a college dropout and proud of it, a public relations go-getter who set up the famous Nixon-Khrushchev “kitchen debate” in Moscow, and a White House wordsmith in the tumultuous era of war in Vietnam, Nixon’s visit to China and the gathering storm of the Watergate scandal that drove the president from office.

Then, from 1973 to 2005, Mr. Safire wrote his twice weekly “Essay” for the Op-Ed Page of The Times, a forceful conservative voice in the liberal chorus. Unlike most Washington columnists who offer judgments with Olympian detachment, Mr. Safire was a pugnacious contrarian who did much of his own reporting, called people liars in print and laced his opinions with outrageous wordplay.

Safire wrote the On Language column in the NYT Magazine from 1979 until earlier this month.

Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Reuters at NYT.com