![]() He lashed back by comparing his tormentors to “hunters who drink beer, don’t vote and lie to their wives.” That triggered a new barrage, this time from the gun lobby, many of whose members do vote, causing the governor to shift into reverse: “My response was inartful,” he admitted, “and could leave a false impression of disrespect for the National Rifle Association and its many members. Mario Cuomo of New York had received a barrage of vitriolic letters from opponents of a bill he supported to require motorists to wear seat belts. Alsop, on the way home, set me semantically straight: “Read your Dickens the Artful Dodger in ‘Oliver Twist’ was a young con man.” I raced to my big Funk & Wagnalls dictionary: although the adverb artfully had a secondary sense of “with art or skill adroit,” most of the synonyms for artful could be modifiers of Machiavelli: “cunning, crafty, sly, wily, deceitful” and most painful to a Nixon aide “tricky.” Its antonyms were “artless, candid, ingenuous, innocent.”Ībout 15 years later, a new and strikingly different antonym for artful appeared. I took that to be a compliment, akin to artistic. ![]() ![]() The elegant Clifford steepled his fingers and, smiling at me, gave his one-word conclusion: “ Artful.” My “second” in the dinner-table debate was Stewart Alsop, the hawkish columnist who would later become my mentor in journalism Clifford’s second was Clayton Fritchey, the liberal columnist who had been a spokesman for Adlai Stevenson, an eloquent candidate of whom it was said “he would rather write than be president.” After Clifford finished cooly eviscerating the policy, Fritchey asked, “But what did you think of the speechwriting?” Long ago in a social-cultural community that no longer exists Georgetown in Washington, circa 1971 dowager queens like Polly Wisner would hold small, elegant dinners with government officials and mover-shaker pundits who combined profound disagreements on policy with a civility that sometimes led to friendship.Īt one of these, Clark Clifford speechwriter for Truman, defense chief for Johnson took issue with a Nixon speech I had helped draft on Vietnamization.
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