William Safire, a speechwriter for President Richard M. Nixon and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist for The New York Times who also wrote novels, books on politics and a Malaprop\u2019s treasury of articles on language, died at a hospice in Rockville, Md., on Sunday. He was 79.<\/p>\n
The cause was pancreatic cancer, said Martin Tolchin, a friend of the family.<\/p>\n
There may be many sides in a genteel debate, but in the Safire world of politics and journalism it was simpler: there was his own unambiguous wit and wisdom on one hand and, on the other, the blubber of fools he called \u201cnattering nabobs of negativism\u201d\u009d and \u201chopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
He was a college dropout and proud of it, a public relations go-getter who set up the famous Nixon-Khrushchev \u201ckitchen debate\u201d\u009d in Moscow, and a White House wordsmith in the tumultuous era of war in Vietnam, Nixon\u2019s visit to China and the gathering storm of the Watergate scandal, which drove the president from office.<\/p>\n