Rarely Safe, Very Rarely Sorry

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

Safire irks liberals, surprises conservatives and pleases himself

Consternation and even outrage from his new colleagues greeted William Safire when he joined the New York Times as a columnist in 1973. Safire was triply suspect: he had come directly from White House speechwriting for Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, for whom he had coined press-baiting phrases like "nattering nabobs of negativism"; he was an aggressively conservative Republican at the generally liberal Times; and he was a writer scarcely versed in journalism who for nearly two decades had been pursuing careers in television production and public relations. Recalls Executive Editor A.M. Rosenthal: "Almost everybody on the paper and all the journalists outside were sneering."

Now, as Safire, 53, nears his tenth anniversary at the Times in April, his twice-weekly "Essay" on politics, distributed to more than 500 daily newspapers, is considered virtually required reading in the inner circles of Government and journalism. Says one admiring rival, Robert Novak, co-author with Rowland Evans of one of the nation's best-known columns: "Safire is the most readable columnist in Washington and the one I can least afford to miss."

In the tightrope-walking act of writing a column, Safire has the Washington gifts of balance and timing. He can manage to be topical without sounding like every other pundit; he can venture into quirky subjects without seeming irrelevant. He knows how to provoke readers enough that they keep reading, but not so much that they angrily turn the page. He is a master of both puckish wit and ear-splitting indignation, yet on matters of moral consequence he can write with majestically measured restraint. He boasts of having taken the scalps of Cabinet members, congressional leaders and diplomats, yet he is quicker to offer a correction, or to let a target answer back, than almost any other eminent columnist.

Safire is widely acclaimed as a stylist. Indeed, his weekly columns on language in the Sunday Times Magazine and more than 100 other newspapers evoke more mail, much of it combative, than his weekday political "Essay." Says Safire: "When people notice I have made an error, their eyes light up." Enamored of puns, literary allusions, grand metaphors and other wordplay, Safire at his giddiest can let his love of sound undermine his efforts to make sense. An example: "Thus one who lobbies expertly for the rights of female derelicts might be called a shopping-bag-lady knifethrower." He is usually most effective when simplest, writing blunt, mock-macho prose. Recounting in January the confession of a former Communist "mole," American Aristocrat Michael Straight, Safire cracked, "How delicious it must have been for a Red under the bed to deride Joe McCarthy for looking for Reds under the bed." In a column labeled "The Midterm Crisis," Safire counseled: "Mr. Reagan must dispense with his I-am-not-a-shnook defensiveness."

Safire is probably the most well-rounded of the nation's conservative columnists. Unlike Patrician William F. Buckley, Safire has the common touch. Unlike the relentlessly self-righteous James J. Kilpatrick, Safire has a playful sense of humor, even about issues of state. Unlike Patrick Buchanan, who appears to approach every subject in a preconceived rage, Safire seems open-minded. Indeed, he says, "I enjoy going against the grain." As a result, he has won the respect of some leading Democrats. Even Carter Administration Budget Director Bert Lance, whose questionable financial dealings were savaged in columns that won Safire the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1978, now says: "As long as he writes about someone else, I consider him the best."

Largely self-taught yet diversely accomplished, Safire dropped out of Syracuse University after his sophomore year in 1949 to become a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune Syndicate, then shifted to news and other producing for radio and TV. Next came a dozen years in public relations, with occasional forays into politics. One notable triumph: contriving to have Vice President Nixon conduct his 1959 "kitchen debate" with Soviet Party Boss Nikita Khrushchev at a model-home exhibit that had been set up in Moscow by a Safire client. More recently, apart from his Times column, Safire has tried his hand at fiction (the 1977 bestseller Full Disclosure) and nonfiction (1978's Safire 's Political Dictionary and 1982's Good Advice, a compilation of aphorisms, co-edited by his brother Leonard Safir).

Safire, a native New Yorker, his British-born wife Helene and their son Mark, 18, and daughter Annabel, 17, have been based in Washington since he joined Nixon's staff in 1969. They occupy a two-story Georgian house in suburban Chevy Chase, Md.; the children have attended public and private schools. Safire does most of his writing at his congenially cluttered Times office. Though he often transgresses the expense-account mores of Washington at lunch, bolting a hot dog and a frozen yogurt, he and Helene attend one or more dinner parties a week, mingling with such non-right-wing friends as veteran Correspondents Daniel Schorr, Marvin Kalb and Bernard Kalb and AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland.

At the Times, Safire is admired as a thorough reporter. Admits Rosenthal: "He is often ahead of the news departments on stories." Yet Safire occasionally nettles colleagues by getting too far ahead, treating opinion as proven fact. For example, in three columns in December he endorsed as all-but-certain truth the unverified suspicion that the KGB may have directed the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in May 1981.

To the annoyance of fellow conservatives, Safire is equally freewheeling in attacking the competence and judgment of members of the Reagan Administration whenever he happens to disagree with them. He has upbraided Presidential Pollster Richard Wirthlin for accepting a polling contract from Americans who sympathize with the Palestine Liberation Organization and scoffed at National Security Adviser William Clark as "living proof that still waters can run shallow." Safire has repeatedly criticized the Administration as acquiescent on foreign policy, particularly for its pledge to withdraw military support from Taiwan and its lifting of sanctions against construction of a natural gas pipeline from the Soviet Union to supply Western Europe. Says he: "I am a hard-liner and a hawk. When Reagan caves in, I berate him."

Almost alone among conservative columnists, moreover, he has refused to utter the ritual invocation that any departure by Reagan from right-wing dogma must be a result of his having been misled by aides. Repeatedly, Safire has been willing to put the onus for policy shifts squarely on the President. In January he wrote of what he regarded as Reagan's waffling in the State of the Union address: "He chose to be somebody else, or everybody else."

Safire views Reagan with personal affection and predicts eventual success for the President's economic programs. But with a reasoning that is heretical by conservative standards, he forecasts that prosperity will make Reagan retire rather than run again. Says Safire: "I think he will choose to go out a winner." If Reagan does stand down, Safire will look for the most conservative candidate that he believes has a chance to win. He adds: "At this stage, I kind of like Jack Kemp."

Safire has two seemingly all-but-blind loyalties. One is to Israel, for which he admits to being an unyielding apologist, though he called for the resignation of Defense Minister Ariel Sharon within days of the September 1982 massacre of Palestinians in Israeli-supervised camps in Beirut. The other devotion is to his Nixon White House colleagues, on whose behalf he has unabashedly likened Watergate to comparatively trivial scandals that he rechristened Lancegate, Billygate, Franklingate, Rheingate and even, in a term that some might use to describe his own rhetoric once in a while, Doublebillingsgate.

Occasionally Safire is guilty of a more serious offense, in the view of the Times. Says Editor Rosenthal: "Sometimes he goes too far on innuendo, even for a columnist." For example, on very scant evidence, Safire has unfairly suggested that Senator John Glenn is anti-Israel. He couples such impetuousness with a merry disregard for consistency. He quotes with self-satisfaction a line from Walt Whitman's Song of Myself: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself."

But arousing emotions, even at the expense of making incautious judgments, is Safire's deliberate goal. Says he: "I try to write not for the history books but for that morning's paper. If I am angry or moved, why not let it show?" That un-Times-like approach brings him perhaps $100,000 a year from the columns and twice that from books and public appearances (minimum speech fee: $12,000). Exuberant in his success and in a freedom of opinion enjoyed by few journalists and fewer presidential aides, Safire says he feels no envy toward fellow conservatives now ensconced in White House executive suites, no yearning to return to the political fray. He asserts, with characteristic zest: "High office would be a step down."

-- By William A. Henry III.

Reported by David S. Jackson/ Washington and Jack E. White/ New York

With reporting by David S. Jackson, Jack E. White This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.