William Safire
The New York Times columnist, Nixon speechwriter and legendary wordsmith died today at age 79.
Among other things, he coined the phrase "nattering nabobs of negativism," the term Spiro Agnew used in blasting the media. In 1959, as a public relations executive, he steered Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev into a Moscow exhibit of the American kitchen where they had their famous "kitchen debate."
Safire won the Pulitizer Prize for columns on then President Jimmy Carter's budget director, Bert Lance, who was forced to resign because of shady business dealings.
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