Karl Hess: Presidential Speechwriter Turned Homesteader

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So I found that putting together political speeches was the ultimate easy berth for a writer. It's also delightful because it gives you power along with everything else.

PLOWBOY: How long did you write these speeches?

HESS: I don't know centuries. Until 1964. Part of that time, though, I did earn a respectable living as press editor of Newsweek and by editing The Fisherman.

PLOWBOY: For whom did you produce your political speeches?

HESS: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Dwight Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater just about every major Republican of the 50's and 60's. I was Goldwater's principal writer in the '64 campaign. I produced a book for Melvin Laird and speeches for several now-anonymous Secretaries of Defense I don't even remember their names. I even wrote an address for Hubert Humphrey once, despite the fact that he was-and still is-a Democrat. We were both working with a non-partisan political research service at the time a sort of think tank.

PLOWBOY: What would have happened to you if Goldwater had won the Presidential election in 1964?

HESS: I wanted to be Deputy Secretary of Defense for International Affairs because, back then, I was a very dedicated Cold War advocate. And if I'd gotten the job, I would have argued for a pre-emptive strike against both the Soviet Union and Red China.

You see, at the time a lot of Air Force theoreticians wanted to blow China off the map because otherwise-they reasoned, quite sensibly it seemed to them-China would inevitably become the world's foremost nation in industrial production.These militarists' judgment was as goofy as usual, of course, because they were evaluating the Chinese by American standards. They really didn't understand that the Chinese don't want to be Number One they just want to be free. In fact, until very recently, China has sacrificed industrial growth for agricultural production.

Well, anyway I was listening to the wrong advisors at the time and-if I had gotten the job I wanted-I'd have pushed the Cold War as far as possible. I also probably would have used every bit of power I inherited to have the FBI harass and arrest the very people who are now my best friends!

This is all quite ironic, of course, because I really haven't changed that much. It's just that-until sometime after Goldwater lost the '64 election-I never listened to what the New Left people were saying. The first day I did pay attention to their arguments, however, I changed my mind.

PLOWBOY: How could the New Left suddenly turn your political thinking so completely around?

HESS: They had done their homework. Their reasoning was irresistible.

PLOWBOY: But didn't you have access to their thoughts all along?

HESS: No. It's astonishing, but when you circulate in the
political channels through which I moved, all your information about the left comes directly from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And the FBI, as far as I can see, hasn't learned anything new about left-wing politics since the Bureau was founded. It's still operating on suppositions that were obsolete in 1925. So the FBI gives you a version of reality that absolutely cannot be believed only most politicians do believe it.

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