By John A. Farrell
Apologies, (click here) from the get-go, for remarking on another Trump-Nixon analogy. But one has to go back to Richard Nixon’s presidency to find another White House press secretary so tugged between media and master, and so mocked for his subsequent contortions, as Sean Spicer. That man was Ron Ziegler.
There is much to be said in admiration of Ziegler, who served more than five years in turbulent times and was Nixon’s only press secretary—a significant exhibition of survival techniques and endurance that Spicer will be fortunate to match. He was loyal to a fault—a rare quality in Washington. Almost alone among senior aides, he stood by Nixon when the disgraced president rode Air Force One into the sunset of exile in 1974. And though he hid it well, the often publicly surly Ziegler had a sly, self-deprecating sense of humor. As I rummaged through the files at the presidential library for my upcoming biography of Nixon, I often chanced upon wry exchanges, on tape or paper, that Ziegler had with superiors like Henry Kissinger, who served as Nixon’s national security adviser, or foes like Katharine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post. Perhaps most impressively, Ziegler was a rarity among the California public relations types who staffed the Nixon White House—in that he avoided the criminal wrongdoing, prosecution and imprisonment that many earned in the Watergate scandals....
