Nixon liked Churchill's wordy ways
Source: Agencies |
January 13, 2010, Wednesday
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FORMER United States President Richard Nixon never considered himself a great orator. It turns out he had a case of Churchill envy.
Preparing for a re-election campaign in 1972, the president worried his rhetoric would cost him and wished for a touch of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's magic with the spoken word.
"The speeches I make are to the great credit of the speech writing team generally highly literate, highly responsible and almost invariably dull," he wrote in a memo to his top aides, which surfaced on Monday in thousands of documents released by the Nixon Presidential Library.
"Now I don't mean to suggest that I should write or sound like Churchill," Nixon said. "He is one of those rare birds where God broke the mold when he died. On the other hand, we can at least learn from him."
He said if it were too arrogant to think of learning from Churchill, he wished to emulate one of Churchill's oratorical influences, New York Democratic congressman William Bourke Cockran.
The president appealed for "illustration, anecdote and colorful words which would inevitably be remembered. I am not talking about gimmicks. I abhor gimmicks and the clever tricks which are fine for governors, mayors, senators, but simply not up to presidential standards."
Preparing for a re-election campaign in 1972, the president worried his rhetoric would cost him and wished for a touch of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's magic with the spoken word.
"The speeches I make are to the great credit of the speech writing team generally highly literate, highly responsible and almost invariably dull," he wrote in a memo to his top aides, which surfaced on Monday in thousands of documents released by the Nixon Presidential Library.
"Now I don't mean to suggest that I should write or sound like Churchill," Nixon said. "He is one of those rare birds where God broke the mold when he died. On the other hand, we can at least learn from him."
He said if it were too arrogant to think of learning from Churchill, he wished to emulate one of Churchill's oratorical influences, New York Democratic congressman William Bourke Cockran.
The president appealed for "illustration, anecdote and colorful words which would inevitably be remembered. I am not talking about gimmicks. I abhor gimmicks and the clever tricks which are fine for governors, mayors, senators, but simply not up to presidential standards."
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