William Safire, a ‘public relations go-getter,’ dies

William Safire, former speechwriter to President Nixon, died Sunday. He was 79. “He was a college dropout and proud of it, a public relations go-getter who set up the famous Nixon-Khrushchev ‘kitchen debate’ in Moscow, and a White House wordsmith in the tumultuous era of war in Vietnam,” The New York Times wrote. Before joining the Nixon administration in 1968, Safire started his own PR firm. He also wrote a twice-weekly political column for The Times ‘ op-ed pages, which earned h…