Ken Khachigian, 81, of Orange County, California, was in the room with Reagan and Nixon.
In the fall of 1967, Khachigian was a second-year law student at Columbia University when he wrote a letter to Richard Nixon at his New York law office to volunteer for his presidential campaign. He was hired by Patrick J. Buchanan as an aide and assistant before joining the Nixon White House as a junior speechwriter. After Nixon’s resignation in 1974, Khachigian followed the “Old Man” to his Western White House in San Clemente, where Khachigian helped Nixon compose RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon.
In the summer of 1980, Khachigian transitioned from Nixon’s employ to join Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign as chief speechwriter. He quickly adapted to Reagan’s speaking style and provided him with winning and quotable political language. He helped conceive the rhetorical question “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” which Reagan delivered in his closing argument against Jimmy Carter during a pivotal, televised debate, just one week before the 1980 election. After a brief stint as chief speechwriter, Khachigian declined a permanent role in the Reagan White House, but continued to serve Reagan as speechwriter and “go-to” counsel.
Following a career as a practicing attorney, Khachigian has published Behind Closed Doors: In the Room with Reagan and Nixon (Post Hill Press, 2024). The memoir is rich with historical descriptions, contemporaneous notes from Khachigian’s journals, and direct quotations from both presidents. The author’s close personal relationship with Reagan and Nixon provides depth and texture to his true stories of campaigning, strategizing, politicking, and writing for the two most consequential leaders of the final decades of the twentieth century. Khachigian’s book is a must-read for students of American political history and anyone interested in government or presidential politics. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.
“Ken,” Nixon said to you in the summer of 1990. “[Reagan] grew in the presidency.” What did he mean?
First, Nixon thought that Reagan was not a deep-thinker in his years prior to the presidency, not in the way that Nixon viewed people like himself, people who studied and spent so much time reading and traveling and thinking. He viewed Reagan’s chopping wood and riding horses as not really serious activities. But then, as Reagan took on the presidency, Nixon got to see him in action and see him take on major issues economically and internationally.
Second, he thought Reagan wasn’t a “gut-fighter,” that he didn’t have enough of a willingness to take on a fight in the way that Nixon would take on political fights. I suppose it was unfair but you have to look at the kind of era that Nixon came up in. His contemporaries were Jack Kennedy, Everett Dirksen, Hubert Humphrey, Eisenhower. These were really serious, strong, post-war men who were not quite like Reagan. Reagan didn’t come out of that mold. I think Nixon was pleased to see how Reagan developed.
All that said, Nixon had an extraordinary respect for Reagan’s communications skills and his political abilities. He saw that Reagan was tougher and more resilient and had those nascent character traits that emerged fully in the presidency.
John Connally, whom Nixon had appointed as Treasury Secretary in 1971, was someone Nixon favored throughout the 1970s. Did Connally embody Nixon’s idea of a strong leader?
That’s right. Connally could fill up a room with his personality, so maybe it was in the nature of his home-state culture, Texas culture; Lyndon Johnson was probably the same way. Nixon was taken aback by Connally and how persuasive he was, which was why Nixon brought him aboard in his administration. He felt that Connally had that mental and philosophical strength about him that would fit well in the presidency. But it turned out that Connally didn’t fit like Reagan. Sometimes we’re great judges of what works privately but we mistake that for something that sells nationally. It's the way people are seeing Gavin Newsom right now. Democrats see him as the man in shining armor but it’s unclear how that will work across the country.
What policy issue did Nixon seize upon that propelled him past his political competition?
I think in the 1940s and early 1950s there was a proto-socialist movement in America. Nixon’s position was that post-war America could not stand by while a great, monumental force outside our borders – Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China – took advantage of our weak democratic instincts. This was symbolized by Nixon’s senate campaign in 1950 against California politician Helen Gahagan Douglas, and by Nixon pursuing and exposing Alger Hiss as a communist spy. Whether Nixon saw this crusade as his way to the top, I have no idea. But certainly, I think Nixon saw in his clear-eyed way that international issues were his strength, versus being a great spokesman for domestic matters or economics.
And what about Ronald Reagan—what issue propelled him past his political competition?
I think Reagan was driven by economic issues. Remember that Reagan was an economics major in college. He wanted to educate the American people about economics and how an overpowering government posed a threat to the individual freedoms of Americans. He always talked about how we were one step away from tyranny.
Reagan would tell a story about emceeing a Pillsbury bake-off. As soon as the lady who won the big check walked off the stage, he said, the IRS guy showed up to take his cut. The more Reagan campaigned across the country as a spokesman for General Electric in the 1950s, the more he saw that there was a need to protect the free enterprise system, and so he was a 1950s Democrat who became a 1960s Goldwater Republican as he crisscrossed the country and saw how government was eroding the lives of Americans. Through the subject of economics, Reagan argued that an overwhelming federal government was a huge threat to individual Americans and it resonated with people.
Speechwriter Peter Robinson wrote that Reagan’s staff was divided between “pragmatists” and “true believers.” Do you think Reagan believed his own staff agreed with his policy positions, particularly on economics?
No, he felt that his staff did not understand economics. He was a real crusader in this respect, and he became troubled later when his own staff didn’t have the same crusading zeal. Jim Baker is quoted as saying he was ready to dump supply-side economics before he ever became chief of staff to Reagan, if you can believe that. David Gergen was a Bush guy who didn’t believe in Reagan’s economic policy. Dick Darman never believed in it either. I tended to be a team player. Jim was the chief of staff running the shop and I felt that it was not my job to undercut him. I asserted myself some in 1984, but there were times when I felt like I didn’t want to use up the energy to fight Baker on these issues. “Hey, Khachigian if you’re not willing to sacrifice and come to D.C. and be in the White House every day, then you don’t get to call the shots here.” That was kind of the attitude and I went along with it, but I should have asserted myself more in defense of Reagan’s beliefs. Actually, I didn’t even realize the staff was undercutting him until I wrote this book.
Tell me about your production process as Reagan’s speechwriter.
Our process was really simple: I went into Reagan’s office and talked about ideas and came back with a draft. I had a special relationship with Reagan. The other speechwriters did not. Gergen and Darman exercised all sorts of control over my successors, which was not great. I remember I submitted an outline for the convention speech in 1984 but only because Baker and Darman ganged up on me; they were paranoid I was going to go off on some Right-wing tangent. But typically, Reagan and I collaborated one-on-one based on a conversation.
Has speechwriting changed in a fundamental way since the 1960s?
No. Good, persuasive messaging hasn’t changed since the 1960s. I don’t think I could write for President Trump because he’s his own man and has his own style. He meanders. He goes off on his own tangents. I see they try to write some poetic prose for him but it doesn’t fit with his voice, in my opinion. He would benefit from sticking to his scripts. He uses messaging off the cuff, so the next thing you know, when he’s in the Oval Office, the reporters are firing questions and he’s going off the cuff. I think that dilutes his message. Speechmaking shouldn’t matter whether you’re Teddy Roosevelt or Jack Kennedy or Donald Trump, so long as you have a good central message.
Has the audience for political speeches changed since the 1960s?
Yes, the audience has even less attention span now than ever before. You really do have to stick to something that goes directly to the point and resonates. If you can’t get that through, then you’re stuck. There was such a furor over Joe Biden’s mental abilities. Two bestsellers chased that rabbit. Then it was the election rabbit. Then it was the affordability rabbit. By the time the next election comes around, you’ll need something that resonates with the voters and it’s more and more difficult to break through, especially with young people. Public speaking may not be what it once was.
What effect is achieved with a great political speech?
It wins elections. Remember when Reagan said: “ask yourself: are you better off than you were four years ago?” That resonated over a period of weeks. He used it to great effect on national television and it burrowed its way into the country. A good political speech will change the direction of people’s thinking. But it’s the same for good writing—any good writing will change people’s minds. It’s not easy.
What is the one quality shared by all great speechwriters?
The ability to reflect who they’re writing for. You become a great speechwriter by writing for great speech-givers. In Reagan’s case, it came down to me listening to him and paying attention to how he spoke and how he presented himself – his illustrations and inflections, his use of symbols. A great speechwriter will take his boss’s strengths and project them. I tried to take the essence of what made Reagan so good and put it on paper. I don’t know if I was a great speechwriter. I was a good collaborator for Reagan, I think. We worked well together. We were a great team.
Give a few words of advice to Trump’s second-term speechwriters.
Convince your boss not to top his own story, not to top his own message. It’s like the preacher or Rabbi or priest … you want people to leave remembering just one thing. If he goes off on a tangent, then you leave scratching your head. “What was he talking about?” The president is America’s teacher; he is our educator. Tell the president that you want the people to have learned one or maybe two things. It’s harder than it sounds!
John J. Waters is a lawyer and author of the postwar novel River City One (Simon and Schuster, 2023). He lives in Nebraska, where he was born.
