David Gergen, a veteran CNN contributor and longtime Washington insider who served both Republican and Democratic presidents — and played a key role in Ronald Reagan beating incumbent Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election — died on Thursday in Lexington, Massachusetts. Gergen was 83 years old.
His son, Christopher, told The New York Times on Friday that Gergen’s death was caused by Lewy body dementia.
Gergen first began working at the White House in 1971, where he started on the speechwriting staff for President Richard Nixon; within two years, he was leading the department.
He then served as the director of communications for both President Gerald Ford and President Reagan. The Durham, North Carolina-native is credited with coming up with the memorable line Reagan asked the American people during a televised debate before the election: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
The line resonated with millions of Americans, who were upset with the Iran hostage controversy and the stagflation that hit the Carter Administration, among other issues that led to Reagan’s victory.
Later, in 1993, Gergen jumped to the other side of the political aisle and went to work for President Bill Clinton.
“It was a bolt out of the blue for me when the calls started coming [from the Clinton Administration],” Gergen recalled in an interview with PBS. “I was working for U.S. News and World Report and writing editorials urging the administration to pull itself together. I had great hopes that Bill Clinton would launch a new bipartisan progressive era of reform. I thought that was really important for the country.”
Gergen served as a counselor to the Democratic president, but the pairing between the former Republican advisor and Clinton’s team did not last long, with Gergen exiting the White House after one year.
He had a long second act as a senior political analyst for CNN, after having first started appearing on TV as a Washington pundit in the mid-1980s. He won his second Peabody Award for his coverage of the presidential election in 2008, 20 years after he won his first for his punditry on “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” on PBS.
Before going into politics, Gergen earned his undergraduate degree from Yale University and went on to attend law school at Harvard; he joined the Navy following law school and served the country for three and a half years.
Gergen is survived by his wife, Anne, his son, Christopher, his daughter, Dr. Katherine Gergen Barnett, his two brothers, John and Kenneth, and five grandchildren, according to the Times.
