Robert Hartmann, 91, Dies; Wrote Ford’s Noted Talk
Robert T. Hartmann, who wrote the 1974 address in which Gerald R. Ford, assuming the presidency after the resignation of Richard M. Nixon, told the nation, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over,” died on April 11 in Washington. He was 91 and lived in Bethesda, Md.
The cause was cardiac arrest, said his son, Robert.
The memorable phrase coined by Mr. Hartmann, counselor to the president, almost failed to survive. In a three-hour ABC News program in 1985 that examined major events of the previous three decades, Ford spoke of the turmoil of the Watergate scandal, which had brought down his predecessor. He recalled that on Aug. 9, 1974, he bade farewell just before Nixon boarded a helicopter on the White House grounds. “Words weren’t very easy to come by,” he said.
Minutes later, Ford was looking at the proposed text of the nationally televised speech he was to give from the East Room of the White House after taking the oath of office at noon. One line troubled him, the one about the “national nightmare.”
“I thought that was a little harsh,” he told ABC, “and I said, ‘Bob, I think we ought to strike that.’ ”
Mr. Hartmann, in his 1980 book, “Palace Politics,” recalled that he had immediately threatened to resign if the phrase was excised.
“Junk all the rest of the speech if you want to, but not that,” he remembered saying. “That is going to be the headline in every paper, the lead in every story.”
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The cause was cardiac arrest, said his son, Robert.
The memorable phrase coined by Mr. Hartmann, counselor to the president, almost failed to survive. In a three-hour ABC News program in 1985 that examined major events of the previous three decades, Ford spoke of the turmoil of the Watergate scandal, which had brought down his predecessor. He recalled that on Aug. 9, 1974, he bade farewell just before Nixon boarded a helicopter on the White House grounds. “Words weren’t very easy to come by,” he said.
Minutes later, Ford was looking at the proposed text of the nationally televised speech he was to give from the East Room of the White House after taking the oath of office at noon. One line troubled him, the one about the “national nightmare.”
“I thought that was a little harsh,” he told ABC, “and I said, ‘Bob, I think we ought to strike that.’ ”
Mr. Hartmann, in his 1980 book, “Palace Politics,” recalled that he had immediately threatened to resign if the phrase was excised.
“Junk all the rest of the speech if you want to, but not that,” he remembered saying. “That is going to be the headline in every paper, the lead in every story.”