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David Gergen | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Gergen at the 2013 World Economic Forum | |
| Counselor to the President | |
| In office May 29, 1993 – June 28, 1994 | |
| President | Bill Clinton |
| Preceded by | Clayton Yeutter |
| Succeeded by | Mack McLarty |
| White House Communications Director | |
| In office June 17, 1981 – January 15, 1984 | |
| President | Ronald Reagan |
| Preceded by | Frank Ursomarso |
| Succeeded by | Michael A. McManus Jr. |
| In office July 4, 1976 – January 20, 1977 | |
| President | Gerald Ford |
| Preceded by | Margita White |
| Succeeded by | Gerald Rafshoon (1978) |
| White House Staff Secretary | |
| In office January 20, 1981 – June 17, 1981 | |
| President | Ronald Reagan |
| Preceded by | Richard Hutcheson |
| Succeeded by | Richard Darman |
| White House Director of Speechwriting | |
| In office February 6, 1973 – August 9, 1974 | |
| President | Richard Nixon |
| Preceded by | Ray Price |
| Succeeded by | Robert Hartmann |
| Personal details | |
| Born | David Richmond Gergen May 9, 1942 Durham, North Carolina, U.S. |
| Died | July 10, 2025 (aged 83) Lexington, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Political party | Independent (after 2017)[1] |
| Other political affiliations | Republican (before 2017) |
| Spouse | Anne Gergen (m. 1967) |
| Relations | Kenneth J. Gergen (brother) |
| Children | 2 |
| Parent | John Jay Gergen (father) |
| Education | Yale University (BA) Harvard University (LLB) |
| Signature |  |
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David Richmond Gergen (May 9, 1942 – July 10, 2025) was an American political commentator and longtime presidential adviser who served during the administrations of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton.[2] He was later a senior political analyst for CNN[3] and a professor of public service and the founding director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. Gergen was also the former editor at large of U.S. News & World Report[4] and a contributor to CNN and Parade Magazine. He was twice a member of election coverage teams that won Peabody awards: in 1988 with MacNeil–Lehrer (now PBS News Hour), and in 2008 with CNN.
Gergen joined the Nixon White House in 1971, as a staff assistant on the speech-writing team, becoming director of speechwriting two years later.[5] He served as director of communications for both Ford and Reagan, and as a senior adviser to Clinton and Secretary of State Warren Christopher.[6] He graduated with honors from Yale and Harvard Law School, and was awarded 27 honorary degrees.
Early life
David Gergen was born in Durham, North Carolina to John Jay Gergen, the chairman of the mathematics department at Duke University from 1937 to 1966, and Aubigne Munger (née Lermond).[7][8] He was the youngest of four children. One of his brothers, Kenneth J. Gergen, is a psychologist and professor emeritus at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.[9]
Education
Gergen was educated at Durham High School, a former public high school in his hometown of Durham where he edited the school newspaper, Hi-Rocket.[10] After high school graduation, he went to Yale University, from which he earned his B.A. degree in American studies in 1963, and was a member of the Manuscript Society. At Yale, he was managing editor[11] of the Yale Daily News, whose staff at the time included Joe Lieberman, Stephen Bingham, Robert G. Kaiser, and Paul Steiger.[12] Gergen received his LL.B. degree from Harvard Law School in 1967 and married Anne Elizabeth Gergen, a native of London, England, the same year.[13]
Life and career
For three summers, Gergen was an intern in the office of North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford, where he became deeply involved in civil rights efforts. Gergen called this work his "most satisfying experience in public service."[14] He served in the U.S. Navy for three-and-a-half years and was stationed on a ship home-ported in Japan. Gergen wrote in his book of his time as a damage control officer on a repair ship, USS Ajax: "Learning to control damage, it turned out, was the best possible preparation for my coming years in the White House".[6]
Political activity
Gergen began his political career in 1971 when he went to work for Richard Nixon as a staff assistant in the office of speechwriters headed by Ray Price—a group which included Pat Buchanan, Ben Stein, and William Safire. In 1973, became the director.[2]
In 1974, Gergen took a brief hiatus from the White House to write speeches for Treasury Secretary William E. Simon. Gergen wrote in his book, "For me it was a great trade—the Treasury team taught me all about free markets and fiscal discipline." Gergen returned to the White House in 1975 as director of communications for President Gerald Ford.[15] In 1980, Gergen was an adviser to the George H. W. Bush presidential campaign and went on to join the Reagan White House in 1981. Beginning as a staff director, he eventually became director of communications. In 1993, Gergen returned to the White House, serving as counselor to President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Warren Christopher.[6][16][17]
Journalism
Gergen was a senior political analyst for CNN and often appeared on Anderson Cooper 360 and Erin Burnett OutFront.
After his years in public service, Gergen worked as a political journalist, commentator, and editor. After leaving the White House in 1977, he worked as a freelance writer and, in 1978, as the first managing editor of Public Opinion, a magazine published by the American Enterprise Institute. From 1985 to 1986, he worked as an editor at U.S. News & World Report, where he became editor at large after his service in the Clinton administration. There, he worked with publisher Mort Zuckerman to achieve record gains in circulation and advertising.[2]
Gergen's career in television began in 1985, when he joined the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour for Friday night discussions of politics, where he remained a regular commentator for five years.[2] In addition to CNN, he was a frequent guest on NPR and CBS’ Face the Nation. He wrote for Parade Magazine and was published in an array of other publications including The New York Times and Newsweek.[4] Twice he was a member of election coverage teams which won Peabody awards in 1988 with MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour and in 2008 with CNN.
Academia
Gergen taught at Duke University from 1995 to 1999 and then joined the Harvard University faculty in 1999. He was also a professor of public service at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he taught courses on leadership, public service, and U.S. politics.[18] During election years, he co-taught a course called Contemporary Issues in American Elections with Elaine Kamarck.[19] In January 2014 he taught a Harvard short-term course in New York City titled "Leadership for a Livable City."[20]
At Harvard Kennedy School, he served as the co-director of the Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership, which seeks to enhance leadership teaching and research.[21] The Center helps to provide scholarships to 100 fellows a year, preparing them to serve as leaders for the common good.
Gergen served as the inaugural Isabella Cannon Distinguished Visiting Professor of Leadership at Elon University and was a fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics in 1984.[22][23]
Books
Gergen is the author of the New York Times bestseller book Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton, published in 2000. The book recounts his time in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton administrations. Gergen argued that, as the 21st century began, the success of the United States as a country would depend heavily upon the success of a new generation in power. Drawing upon his many experiences in the White House, he offered seven vital elements that future leaders must possess: inner mastery; a central, compelling purpose rooted in moral values; a capacity to persuade; an ability to work within the system; a sure, quick start; strong, prudent advisers; and a passion that inspires others to carry on the mission.[6] Gergen's second book, Hearts Touched with Fire: How Great Leaders are Made, was published in 2022.
- Gergen, David (September 6, 2000). Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-684-82663-9.
- Gergen, David (May 10, 2022). Hearts Touched with Fire: How Great Leaders are Made. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-982-17057-8.
Personal life and death
Gergen and his wife Anne Elizabeth Gergen, a family therapist, married in 1967. They lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts and had two children.[4]
In December 2024, Gergen's daughter revealed that Gergen had Lewy body dementia.[24] He died at a retirement home in Lexington, Massachusetts, on July 10, 2025, at age 83.[25]
Awards and memberships
Gergen was active on many non-profit boards, and served on the boards of Yale and Duke Universities. Among them were Teach for America, City Year, Schwab Foundation, the Aspen Institute, and the advisory board for the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He also chaired the advisory board for the new School of Law at Elon University. He was a member of the D.C. Bar, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the North American executive committee for the Trilateral Commission.[4] Gergen was awarded 27 honorary degrees.[26]
Non-profit boardsGergen was a member of the following non-profit boards:[27]
| Advisory rolesGergen also served as an advisor to the following groups:[27]
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See also
References
- David Gergen, Master of the Game
- Kelly, Michael (31 October 1993). "David Gergen, Master of The Game" – via NYTimes.com.
- "CNN - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos". CNN. Retrieved 2023-03-24.
- "David Gergen Biography". Archived from the original on June 6, 2017. Retrieved June 26, 2019.
- "Executive Office of the President". 23 December 2014.
- Gergen, David. Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership Nixon to Clinton. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
- "3 Nieces Serve As Bridesmaids Of Anne Wilson". The New York Times. November 5, 1967. Retrieved May 1, 2010.
- "Gergen Mathematics Lectures at Duke". Archived from the original on 2010-02-04.
- "Swarthmore College Faculty Page". July 8, 2014. Retrieved June 26, 2019.
- Perry Deane Young (15 June 2005). "He shoulda been Deep Throat". Indyweek.com. Retrieved 6 April 2016.
- "Marketing the President". The New York Times. 13 September 1981.
- "Where Have You Gone, Joseph Lieberman? - The New Journal". 30 October 2000.
- "David Gergen". Archived from the original on September 29, 2011. Retrieved June 26, 2019.
- "CNN Profiles: The real David Gergen". CNN. September 21, 2012.
- "Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum".
- "David Gergen, Master of THE GAME". The New York Times. 31 October 1993.
- "Gergen move to State leaves officials spinning". tribunedigital-baltimoresun. 29 June 1994.
- Harvard Kennedy School. "HKS Faculty Biography". Archived from the original on 2011-08-11. Retrieved 2009-02-24.
- Harvard Kennedy School. "Harvard Kennedy School - Contemporary Issues in American Elections". Retrieved June 26, 2019.
- "MLD-332M: Leadership for a Livable City". 2013-2014 Course Listing. Harvard Kennedy School. Archived from the original on 2014-02-22. Retrieved November 21, 2014.
- "Center for Public Leadership - Harvard Kennedy School". Archived from the original on 2013-03-05.
- "Gergen advises emerging leaders". Retrieved June 26, 2019.
- "David R. Gergon". The Institute of Politics at Harvard University. 25 April 2025.
- "My father, David Gergen, has dementia. Here are his reflections on the path forward for our country". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
- Haberman, Clyde (July 13, 2025). "David Gergen, Washington Veteran Who Advised Four Presidents, Dies at 83". The New York Times. Vol. 174, no. 60579. p. A25. Retrieved July 11, 2025.
- Edward Helmore (13 July 2025), David Gergen, ex-adviser to Republican and Democratic presidents, dies aged 83, The Guardian
- "David Gergen Biography". davidgergen.com. Archived from the original on 2008-05-24. Retrieved 2009-02-08.
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David Gergen, Adviser to Presidents and Political Commentator, Dies at 83
He served under Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton before becoming a top editor and a familiar TV pundit. “Centrism doesn’t mean splitting the difference,” he said.
David Gergen, an inside-the-Beltway veteran who helped shape the public images of four presidents, mostly Republicans, and who, after a turn as a magazine editor, trod a well-worn path from political insider to television commentator, died on Thursday in Lexington, Mass. He was 83.
His death, at a retirement community, was caused by Lewy body dementia, his son, Christopher, said. Mr. Gergen previously lived in Cambridge, Mass.
It was Mr. Gergen who devised a line in the 1980 presidential election that helped secure victory for the Republican candidate, Ronald Reagan, over Jimmy Carter, the incumbent Democrat. In that era of high inflation, onerous interest rates and a national psyche wounded by Iran’s holding of 52 Americans hostage, Mr. Carter was already on the ropes. The clincher came in a televised debate a week before the election, when Mr. Reagan asked viewers a Gergen-suggested question that hit political pay dirt: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
For many Americans, the answer was no.
“Rhetorical questions have great power,” Mr. Gergen said years later.
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“It’s one of those things that you sometimes strike gold,” he said. “When you’re out there panhandling in the river, occasionally you get a gold nugget.”
Mr. Gergen mined as many of those nuggets as he could writing speeches, briefing news reporters, creating communications strategies and helping to set the agenda for four presidents: the Republicans Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and Mr. Reagan and then a Democrat, Bill Clinton.
With Mr. Reagan, for instance, he was widely credited with softening the in-your-face conservative rhetoric that some of the president’s far-right aides wanted in speeches. Mr. Clinton hired him in 1993 to help righten a White House weakened after a series of political missteps. Mr. Gergen helped, but he lasted barely a year — a poor fit in an administration where some regarded him as an interloper and in a divided capital where Republicans deemed him a turncoat.
Still, when Mr. Gergen bade government farewell in the mid-1990s, he was generally praised by the presidents he had served. Significantly, he was untainted by the troubles that undermined each of them — from the multi-tentacled Watergate scandal that forced Mr. Nixon’s resignation to the cloud over Mr. Ford for pardoning Mr. Nixon, from the arms-for-cash operation known as Iran-contra that damaged Mr. Reagan to the dubious Whitewater real estate investment that hurt Mr. Clinton.
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With Mr. Nixon, Mr. Gergen acknowledged that he had been slow to grasp the president’s guilt. “I was young, and I was too naïve,” he told The Washington Post in 1981. “It hardened me up a lot.”
Years later, he expressed contempt for President-elect Donald J. Trump. “A bully — mean, nasty and disrespectful of anyone in his way,” he wrote in a 2021 column for CNN.
“Centrism doesn’t mean splitting the difference,” he told The Boston Globe in 2020. “It’s about seeking solutions, and you bring people along. I’m happily in that role.”
Mr. Gergen wore his 6-foot-5 frame comfortably and was graced with an easygoing manner, verbal quickness and a ready laugh that made him popular with many White House reporters. He also leaked information often enough to be labeled “the Sieve” by some of them.
That reputation fed speculation that he was Deep Throat, the shadowy figure who provided The Washington Post with insights into the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s. That source, however, was confirmed in 2005 to have been W. Mark Felt, the No. 2 official at the F.B.I.
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Not every journalist was beguiled. Michael Kelly, who was killed in 2003 in the Iraq war, wrote a singularly harsh piece for The New York Times Magazine in 1993. “To be Gergenized,” he said, “is to be spun by the velveteen hum of this soothing man’s soothing voice into a state of such vertigo that the sense of what is real disappears into a blur.”
Mr. Gergen acknowledged to Mr. Kelly that he had often resorted to “selling for the sake of selling.”
The spin “had nothing to do with ideas,” Mr. Gergen said. “It had nothing to do with anything that was real. Eventually, it became selling the sizzle without the steak. There was nothing connected to it. It was all cellophane. It was all packaging.”
His White House tenures intertwined with forays into journalism. In 1978, he became the managing editor of Public Opinion, a magazine published by the conservative American Enterprise Institute. In the mid-1980s, he was the editor of U.S. News & World Report, where he was also a columnist. Over the decades he was a frequent commentator on television, including on “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” on PBS and on public affairs programs on CNN.
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Outside the news media, he taught about politics and public service at Duke University and at Harvard’s Kennedy School, where he was the founding director of the Center for Public Leadership.
Mr. Gergen was the author of a best-selling book, “Eyewitness to Power: The Essence of Leadership, Nixon to Clinton” (2000). The book offered lessons for would-be leaders that tended to be little more than bromides, advising them to develop “a capacity to persuade” and “an ability to work within the system.” He revisited the topic in a 2022 book, “Hearts Touched With Fire: How Great Leaders Are Made.”
David Richmond Gergen was born on May 9, 1942, in Durham, N.C., the youngest of four sons of John Jay Gergen, a longtime chairman of the mathematics department at Duke, and Aubigne (Lermond) Gergen. After schooling in Durham, David went to Yale, where he was managing editor of the student newspaper The Yale Daily News and graduated in 1963 with a bachelor’s degree in American studies. For three summers he was an intern working on civil rights issues for North Carolina’s Democratic governor, Terry Sanford.
He received a law degree from Harvard in 1967 and later that year joined the Navy. He served most of the next three and a half years as an officer on a ship based in Japan. By then he had married Anne Wilson, a Briton whom he had met on a blind date earlier in 1967 while she was touring the United States on a 99-day bus ticket.
In addition to his son, Christopher, his wife survives him along with their daughter, Dr. Katherine Gergen Barnett; two brothers, John and Kenneth; and five grandchildren.
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After Mr. Gergen left the Navy, his contacts helped him land a writing job in the Nixon White House, where he eventually became the chief speechwriter. From Mr. Nixon, he said, he learned that points had to be made over and over: “He used to tell me, ‘About the time you are writing a line that you have written it so often that you want to throw up, that is the first time the American people will hear it.’”
What he did not do for the four presidents he served, Mr. Gergen said, was lie.
“I feel the moment you walk out there and lie to the press, that you’re finished,” he told The Christian Science Monitor in 1981. While not ruling out the possibility of being untruthful in the name of national security, he said, “I think the next day you’d quit.”
“You’re of no value to the president at that point,” he added, “and you’re of no value to anyone else.”
Ash Wu contributed reporting.
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