Free Killing Reagan by Bill O'Reilly Page B

come to tell them off.
    Nixon digs his right hand deep into the pocket of his suit pants. An elaborate chandelier hovers to one side of the room. Reporters sit at a long table in front of him, poised with pencil and paper to write down his words. To his right, television cameras and newspaper photographers prepare to capture this moment of defeat.
    â€œFor sixteen years,” Nixon begins, “you’ve had an opportunity to attack me, and I think I’ve given as good as I’ve taken.”
    A hush fills the small ballroom. Nixon has just crossed a line. It is one thing to confront a journalist about his coverage in private, but to do so in public is taboo. And thanks to all those television cameras, this verbal assault is now being filmed for posterity. Pencils scribble frantically as the reporters eagerly await Nixon’s next words.
    â€œI will leave you gentlemen now. And, uh … You will now write it. You will interpret it. That’s your right. But as I leave you, I want you to know—just think how much you’re going to be missing. You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”
    Fifty-nine seconds. That’s all it takes. Nixon does not field questions. He is whisked from the room and walks quickly out of the hotel, stopping only to shake the hand of a front-desk clerk before stepping into the front seat of a waiting car.
    He is thrilled to have gotten the last word.
    Yet fate will allow him many more press conferences. And if Richard Nixon thinks the media have gotten the best of him in the past, that is nothing compared to what they will do to him in the future.
    *   *   *
    Two years later, television cameras again capture a historic moment. The night is October 27, 1964. Ronald Reagan is eagerly anticipating watching himself on television. The occasion is a speech he taped one week earlier in support of Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater. 7 At first, Goldwater’s people wanted Reagan to deliver the speech live. But Reagan is by now a canny politician, and although he would have liked the spontaneous applause and laughter that he knew each line would engender, he didn’t want to take any chances on making a mistake—thus the live scenario was scrapped.
    â€œNancy and I went to the home of some friends to watch the broadcast,” he will later write of the night that changed his life. Reagan’s presentation for Goldwater was so successful that scribes simply dubbed Reagan’s words “The Speech.”
    Reagan realizes his career is now in public life. After a seven-year break between films, he has made one last motion picture. He played a villain in The Killers , a movie that sank without a trace at the box office. 8
    Even though the speech is a sensation, Barry Goldwater’s advisers did not want Reagan’s talk to air. With the election just one week away, they were terrified that the conservative themes he was espousing would drive some voters into the Democratic camp.
    As the Reagans sit side by side before the television set in the den of their friends’ home, the black-and-white screen flickers, showing him standing behind a podium draped with patriotic bunting. The edited presentation then cuts to the back of the room, allowing the nation to see the audience awaiting his words. Some hold placards. Others wear cowboy hats. All are dressed informally and are meant to look like a homey cross-section of the American public.
    This works perfectly with Reagan’s homespun delivery, the gentle, parental voice that he perfected at those GE factories, after-dinner speeches, and countless other conservative venues across the country. “Unlike most television programs, the performer hasn’t been provided with a script,” he assures the audience as he begins. “As a matter of fact, I have been permitted to choose my own words and discuss my own