Bryce Harlow, Former Aide to Ike, Nixon, Dies at 70

Former presidential counselor and speech writer Bryce N. Harlow, who served in key positions in the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations, died today. He was 70.

Officials at Arlington Hospital, where Harlow was admitted Jan. 21, said the cause of death was chronic obstructive lung diseases.

“He was quite a man, a political activist who spent a lifetime in service to his country,” said Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole in a brief eulogy on the Senate floor. “He never hesitated to offer his services when problems on Capitol Hill or the White House seemed too big to solve.”

A familiar figure in congressional and government circles, he was a gentle, courtly man known for a soft-sell approach to politics.

Harlow was the first man appointed to the White House staff after Richard M. Nixon was elected President in 1968. He handled the delicate job of congressional relations and served also as a presidential counselor with the assignment of devising long-term strategy on domestic problems.

He quit the government after a year to return to a private lobbyist’s job, but Nixon tapped him to return when the Watergate scandal forced resignations of key staffers.

Nearly two decades earlier, Harlow had served in the Eisenhower Administration.

As a member of Eisenhower’s legislative liaison team, Harlow was frequently credited with knowing more about the legislative process and what makes it tick than anyone else in Washington.

Harlow also was a speech writer, known as Eisenhower’s “meat-and-potatoes man” after satisfying the President’s demand for a “meat-and-potatoes speech people can understand.”

Harlow often used his height--5 feet, 4 inches--as a source of self-deprecating humor. “Don’t wait for the rest of me,” he once told a group of newspaper editors. “I’m standing up.”