The Withering Away of the Totalitarian State and Other Surprises.

KIRKPATRICK, Jeane J. [William Safire].

$200.00

Item Number: 127827

Washington, D.C: The AEI Press, 1990.

First edition of this work by Ambassador Kirkpatrick, who played a major role in the foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration. Octavo, original boards. Association copy, inscribed by the author in the year of publication on the front free endpaper, “To Bill Safire Columnist extraordinaire. With admiration and friendship. Jeane Kirkpatrick. December, 1990.” The recipient, William Safire was an important American author, columnist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter. He joined Nixon’s campaign for the 1960 Presidential race, and again in 1968. After Nixon’s 1968 victory, Safire served as a speechwriter for him and Spiro Agnew. He authored several political columns in addition to his weekly column “On Language” in The New York Times Magazine from 1979 until the month of his death and authored two books on grammar and linguistics: The New Language of Politics (1968) and what Zimmer called Safire’s “magnum opus,” Safire’s Political Dictionary. Safire later served as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board from 1995 to 2004 and in 2006 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Richard Rossiter.

Jeane Duane Kirkpatrick was a diplomat and political scientist who played a major role in the foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration. An ardent anticommunist, she was a longtime Democrat who became a neoconservative and switched to the Republican Party in 1985. After serving as Ronald Reagan's foreign policy adviser in his 1980 campaign, she became the first woman to serve as United States Ambassador to the United Nations. She was known for the "Kirkpatrick Doctrine", which advocated supporting authoritarian regimes around the world if they went along with Washington's aims. She believed that they could be led into democracy by example. She wrote, "traditional authoritarian governments are less repressive than revolutionary autocracies." She sympathized with the Argentine government during the Falklands War when President Reagan came out in support of Margaret Thatcher. Kirkpatrick served on Reagan's Cabinet on the National Security Council, Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, Defense Policy Review Board, and chaired the Secretary of Defense Commission on Fail Safe and Risk reduction of the Nuclear Command and Control System. She wrote a syndicated newspaper column after leaving government service in 1985, specializing in analysis of the activities of the United Nations.