‘Paid Manipulator’ in 1973, Pulitzer Prize Winner in 1978

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The opinion columns of The New York Times are supposed to be a place for lively debate.

Sometimes, the liveliest debate is over the columns. Especially when the opinions are conservative.

There has been an uproar over the hiring of Bret Stephens as an Opinion columnist, as there was an uproar over the hiring in 2008 of William Kristol. “Of the nearly 700 messages I have received since Kristol’s selection was announced — more than half of them before he ever wrote a word for The Times — exactly one praised the choice,” wrote Clark Hoyt, who was then The Times’s public editor.

But today’s reaction looks muted compared with the hornet’s nest that was stirred in 1973 when the publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, brought William Safire aboard — directly from the Nixon White House — without even first informing his cousin, John B. Oakes, the truly liberal editor of the editorial page.

Mr. Safire, a speechwriter and special assistant to President Richard M. Nixon, did not disappoint those waiting to pounce.

On April 17, 1973, Mr. Nixon declared that “real progress” was being made in getting to the bottom of the Watergate scandal. “I condemn any attempt to cover up in this case, no matter who is involved,” said Mr. Nixon, who was very much involved, as it would later turn out.

As far as Mr. Safire could see, the president had triumphed. And on that note, he began writing his “Essay” column on the Op-Ed page: “For Richard Nixon, this is comeback time — and when it comes to comebacks, the world’s leading expert has just made his appearance on the right side of the Watergate investigation.”

David Halberstam, a highly respected journalist and former Times correspondent, told the publisher — known as Punch — that he had made a mistake hiring Mr. Safire. “He is a paid manipulator,” Mr. Halberstam said, just warming up.

“A few years ago when you had just taken over the paper you were handed a tough decision on the West Coast edition,” Mr. Halberstam told Mr. Sulzberger. “You said — ‘It’s a lousy paper. Close it.’ So Punch, this time the play is to you. It’s a lousy column and it’s a dishonest one. So close it. Or you end up just as shabby as Safire.”

Mr. Sulzberger demurred.

“I appreciate that you feel I am prepared to make a ‘tough decision,’” the publisher responded, “but right now, as far as I’m concerned, one is not necessary in this case. While I have not always agreed with Bill, I think he is developing a style of his own and that he is reflecting a philosophy. I remain confident that over the years he will be an important contributor.”

But there was no inconspicuous retreat from the initial stumble.

“That is what is called ‘being really wrong,’” Mr. Safire wrote eight months later. “Not mistaken, not slightly off base, not relatively inaccurate — but grandly, gloriously, egregiously wrong.”

It was hardly the end of the line. Mr. Safire was to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for his columns about Bert Lance, President Jimmy Carter’s budget director, who resigned amid charges that he had personally traded on his ties with the president. The “Essay” column ran until 2005. Mr. Safire’s other column, “On Language,” ran until 2009.

And something besides his briefly-lived contrition explained why a few hearts softened in the Washington bureau, where Mr. Safire worked.

On the Fourth of July 1974, members of the bureau and their families gathered at the home of the editor Doug Robinson in Maryland. Bill Kovach was among them.

“Safire was the only one who saw Jim Naughton’s young son fall into the pool and thrash around,” Mr. Kovach recalled. “He swept past me and others and leaped fully clothed into the pool and pulled the boy out.”

In the book “Safire’s Washington,” the columnist admitted that his wife, Helene, had pushed him in to save the boy. But the result was the same. “It was hard to hate me after that,” he wrote.