History’s Undelivered Speeches

HISTORY This Week

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🗓️ 7 August 2023

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

August 8, 1974. President Richard Nixon sits in the Oval Office, addressing the American people. He tells them: I’m going to resign. The news is shocking, but not unexpected. Today, it might even seem inevitable. But in the days leading up to the big decision, Nixon himself didn’t know what he would do. At night he roamed the halls of the White House, torturously weighing his options. He even ordered a speechwriter to draft a statement announcing his refusal to resign. Sally Helm sits down with political speechwriter Jeff Nussbaum to talk about this curious kind of a document: a speech that could’ve changed history if only it had been given. They discuss what Nixon, and two other speech givers, would have felt preparing multiple drafts, as they faced an uncertain future, and how the world would be different had these speeches been given.

Special thanks to our guest: Jeff Nussbaum, author of Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches That Would Have Rewritten History.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The History Channel, original podcast.
0:04.8	History this week, August 8, 1974.
0:10.0	I'm Sally Helm.
0:12.1	Good evening. This is the 37th time I have spoken to you from this office.
0:20.4	Tonight will be the last time that President Richard Nixon speaks to the American people
0:25.9	from the Oval Office. He sits in front of a bluish curtain between two flags looking
0:31.3	down at the pages of his speech. Nixon has come to the end of the road, much as he hates to admit it.
0:39.0	I have never been a quitter. The leave office before my term is completed is apparent to every
0:46.4	instinct in my body. But he says he has to put the American people first.
0:54.0	Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective that known tomorrow.
1:00.8	This moment, Nixon's decision, this whole speech, they all now seem inevitable.
1:08.8	Of course, President Richard Nixon resigned because of the Watergate scandal. What else could he have
1:13.5	done? But that is not the feeling inside the White House in August of 1974.
1:20.8	Nixon is making the hardest decision of his life.
1:25.6	And he's acting erratic. He's not sleeping. He's pacing the halls, literally muttering to
1:32.5	the portraits of the former presidents, trying to figure out what to do, resign or not resign.
1:42.1	His speech writer would later write, on this most final, most personal decision of his presidency,
1:48.3	Nixon obviously was going to keep reassessing, keep re-examining, possibly reverse himself.
1:56.9	Things are so uncertain that there is an alternative speech by Nixon's speech writer on the president's
2:04.7	desk. It makes an argument against his resignation, the exact opposite of the speech he'll eventually
2:14.4	give. Today, we bring you a conversation with Jeff Nussbaum, political speech writer and author
2:22.4	of the book Undelivered. We look at the speech Nixon never gave, and at two other historical
	...

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