April 14, 1973: Angry Arguments at White House Correspondents Dinner

Tempers flare at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner. President Nixon and his entourage (including H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and Henry Kissinger—see April 14, 1973) sit stolidly through the evening’s entertainment, which contains plenty of biting Watergate humor, but the real fireworks take place between members of the press and Nixon officials. Edward Bennett Williams, the eminent lawyer whose firm represents both the Washington Post and the Democratic National Committee, gets into a heated sparring match with Nixon speechwriter Pat Buchanan. Buchanan is gloating over the November 1972 re-election landslide (see November 7, 1972), calling Williams a “sore loser.” Williams retorts: “But you did it dirty, Pat. You had to do it dirty. You won, but you had to steal it.” Buchanan says: “The Watergate’s all you had. Some Cubans going in to look at Larry O’Brien’s mail.… You blew it out of proportion.” Williams responds: “Dirty, Pat, dirty election. Aren’t you ashamed? You’re a conservative, and all this law-breaking. And the Washington Post really sticking it to you. Oh, that must have hurt the most.” Buchanan counters: “A little spying. That’s politics.” Buchanan continues by attacking Williams’s client list, which includes ex-Senate aide Bobby Baker and former Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa. “There’s a big difference,” Williams says. “I didn’t run any of my clients for president.” [Bernstein and Woodward, 1974, pp. 285-287]