Speechwriter crafted many of Nixon’s addresses

Raymond Price Jr., a speechwriter and confidant of Richard M. Nixon who crafted some of the most consequential addresses of Nixon’s presidency, including his final, anguished public remarks as commander in chief when he announced his resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal, died Tuesday at a hospital in New York City. He was 88.

As a campaign aide, chief White House speechwriter, friend and literary collaborator, Price was a fixture of Nixon’s inner circle from the 1968 election that propelled him to the Oval Office to Nixon’s death in 1994 at age 81.

Before joining Nixon, he had been editorial page editor of the New York Herald Tribune, whose opinion section reflected a moderate Republican political outlook. A literary stylist known for his everpresent pipe, he was appreciated within the White House for what Nixon called the “grace notes” adorning the speeches he penned.

They included Nixon’s first speech during the 1968 primary, invoking “the lift of a driving dream”; his first inaugural address, in which he spoke of a nation “rich in goods, but ragged in spirit; reaching with magnificent precision for the moon, but failing into raucous discord on earth . ... caught in war, wanting peace”; and the solemn remarks he delivered on national television on Aug. 8, 1974, announcing that he “shall resign the Presidency effective at noon tomorrow.”

Price — who described the speechwriting process as highly collaborative, with Nixon making meticulous revisions and adding flourishes to render the speeches his own — was among the president’s most steadfast defenders during and after the scandal precipitated by the burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in 1972. The ensuing coverup ultimately ensnared Nixon himself.

In a memoir, “With Nixon” (1977), Price conceded that there had been “abuses of power, obstruction of justice, lies and deceits.” But whatever criminality had marred the Nixon administration, he insisted, was no worse than transgressions committed by previous Democratic presidents.

Raymond Kissam Price Jr. was born in New York City on May 6, 1930.