Ray Price (speechwriter)

Ray Price
White House Director of Speechwriting
In office
December 31, 1970 – February 6, 1973
PresidentRichard Nixon
Preceded byJim Keogh
Succeeded byDavid Gergen
Personal details
BornRaymond Kissam Price Jr.
(1930-05-06)May 6, 1930
New York City, U.S.
DiedFebruary 13, 2019(2019-02-13) (aged 88)
New York City, U.S.
PartyRepublican
EducationYale University (BA)

Raymond Kissam Price Jr. (May 6, 1930 – February 13, 2019) was an American writer who was the chief speechwriter for U.S. President Richard Nixon, working on both inaugural addresses, his resignation speech, and Gerald Ford's pardon speech.[1] After leaving politics, he was the long-time president of the Economic Club of New York, and worked as a consultant.

Life and career

Price was born in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to Raymond and Beth Price, née Porter. His father was a stockbroker. He was raised in Morris Plains, New Jersey, where he started an amateur newspaper. Price graduated from Yale University in 1951. There, he was a member of the Conservative Party of the Yale Political Union, belonged to Skull and Bones, and was one of the founding members of the reconstituted Calliopean Society. While at Yale, he also served as a research assistant to William F. Buckley Jr. during the latter's writing of God and Man at Yale and on Prescott Bush's unsuccessful 1950 Senate campaign.[1][2]: 173 

Price served in the Navy during the Korean War.[1] He began his journalism career at Collier's magazine in New York City, where he served as assistant to the editor from 1955 to 1957.

He then worked briefly as a reporter for Life magazine in 1957 before joining the New York Herald Tribune, also in New York City, where he was a member of the editorial staff from 1957 to 1964 and subsequently served as editor of the editorial page from 1964 to 1966.

Price became assistant to Richard M. Nixon in 1967, serving in that capacity through 1969, then as special assistant from 1969 to 1973, and as special consultant in 1973–1974 and again in 1980. He served as chief speechwriter for President Nixon throughout this period. During Nixon's presidential campaign of 1968, the candidate made use of the contrasting style of two speechwriters (the other being Pat Buchanan) with Price becoming known to colleagues as "Mr Outside" because his work was aimed at broadening Nixon's appeal.[3] Price was renowned for his loyalty to Nixon, despite being a political moderate and an erstwhile supporter of Lyndon B. Johnson.[1]

Price wrote a retrospective on the presidency titled With Nixon[4] and assisted Nixon in the writing of several books. John Dean mentioned Price as one person suspected (falsely) of having been Deep Throat. For 19 years, Price was the president of the Economic Club of New York.[5] After leaving the White House, he worked as an assistant to William S. Paley, operated a consulting firm, and served on a number of presidential commissions. He also was a Fellow at the John F. Kennedy Institute of Politics at Harvard University in 1977, and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute that same year. In 1978, he served as Nixon Professor at Whittier College in Whittier, California.

In 1992, Price briefly returned to speechwriting to pen George H.W. Bush's acceptance speech for the 1992 Republican nomination.[1]

Memberships

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Martin, Douglas (February 14, 2019). "Raymond K. Price Jr., a Key Nixon Speechwriter, Is Dead at 88". The New York Times. Retrieved February 14, 2019.
  2. ↑ Robbins, Alexandra (2002). Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-72091-7.
  3. ↑ Schell, Jonathan (June 2, 1975). "The Time of Illusion". The New Yorker. Retrieved April 27, 2020.
  4. ↑ New York : Viking Press, 1977. ISBN 0-670-77672-6
  5. ↑ Shapiro, Gary (2007-06-07). "A Century Of Serious Conversation". The New York Sun. Retrieved 2008-11-23.

Further reading

  • The New York Times Book Review, November 20, 1977;
  • Newsweek, November 28, 1977;
  • New York Review of Books, April 6, 1978.
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