The G. Gordon Liddy I Knew

The scene was surreal. It was in the early 1990s. I was playing the piano in our living room for a room full of people after dinner and dessert.

Standing next to me singing was a person whom, in the post-Watergate years of the 1970s and 1980s, I considered to be evil incarnate, a criminal without remorse who committed crimes and dirty tricks to reelect Richard Nixon as president.

His name: G. Gordon Liddy, who passed away after a long illness on Monday, March 30.

I was playing the song, “If I Loved You,” the beautiful ballad from Rogers and Hammerstein’s 1950s Broadway classic musical, “Carousel.” Liddy shocked me and everyone in the room with a deep, mellifluous vibrato voice. At the end of the song, my wife joined in and provided harmony to the last dramatic ending of the song. The reaction: An immediate standing ovation, all from a bunch of liberal Democrats who not too long before had thought they hated Gordon Liddy and what he did for Richard Nixon.

Then it hit me. If anyone had told me twenty years before that twenty years later Gordon Liddy would be in my living room singing “If I Loved You,” with my wife harmonizing and me playing the piano and me joining in a standing ovation when he was done, I would have been, let us say, dubious.

How did this happen?

In the late 1980s, I was introduced to Mr. Liddy by his tax accountant (also mine) over lunch. After lunch, Gordon invited me to come on his new radio talk show to debate him on the issues. His show had quickly become popular and nationally- syndicated, heard across the country by millions. I began making weekly appearances for the next 10 years in his Vienna, Virginia studio, where we would debate the issues of the day.

I quickly realized the major positive impact our debates had on so many in this national audience. When I was on business travel, over and over again cab drivers in cities across the country would hear my voice after I asked to go to a particular location, turn and say: “Are you Lanny Davis? I love listening to you and Liddy debate on the radio.”

We always had serious and respectful debates. But there was also good humor. After a year or so of doing these appearances, Liddy began one show by playing a song one of his listeners had written, recorded, and sent to him. It began, I think, with the lyric: “Lanny…Lanny…. the liberal’s liberal.” Then he would introduce me as “my good friend, Lanny Davis, the liberal’s liberal, defending the indefensible.”

And off we would go each week — vigorously, strongly disagreeing most of the time, especially about guns (he was a strong NRA supporter). But never interrupting each other. Always respectful. No personal attacks.

So, it was this experience over many years with G. Gordon Liddy that taught me the truth of the comment former President Clinton made to President George W. Bush during the 2004 White House ceremony to unveil the official portraits of Mr. Clinton and First Lady Mrs. Clinton. Clinton thanked Bush from the podium in the East Room for his gracious welcome. Then Clinton looked down at Bush and said (I am paraphrasing):

“Wouldn’t it be great if everyone stuck to using words in political debates about those we disagree with — “right vs. wrong” and not “good versus evil”?

Bush, I saw, nodded yes, and the two did a virtual fist pump.

When I heard about the sad passing of Gordon early this week, I remembered this bipartisan moment between Clinton and Bush, and then, all the similar moments between Liddy and me while we debated on the air. What Liddy proved about the ability to disagree agreeably could not be more important in the wake of Donald Trump’s polarizing presidency.

Liddy did a lot of bad things for Nixon. But he taught me the politics of civil discourse and disagreement is still possible in this country. Joe Biden has already taught us that. I suspect that Gordon Liddy in his final years would agree that Biden’s way is the better way.