Few presidential aides have had the span of service and impact that Anthony "Tony" Dolan had.
Dolan died Monday at the age of 77 from natural causes.
Dolan's wide circle of friends were surprised and saddened by the announcement.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who caught the eye of influential Republicans in the 1970s — including the late William J. Casey and William F. Buckley Jr. — Dolan joined the Ronald Reagan White House in 1981 as a top speechwriter.
Dolan would later become a confidante and adviser in the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations.
In the 1970s, Dolan became famous as a crusading reporter for Connecticut's Stamford Advocate, where his series on the influence of organized crime on local police earned him the Pulitzer Prize.
The Yale graduate's reporting led to the firing or early retirement of no fewer than seven city officials and spawned eight federal investigations of Stamford's city government.
From there, the young journalist joined the White House speechwriting staff in 1981, served all eight years with President Reagan, and rose to be his chief speechwriter, where played a major role in nearly all of the president's major addresses.
"No one exceeded Tony's embrace of the conservative principles that underlaid the in generation that sought to defeat statist government here in the U.S, or especially as represented by the regressive Soviet regime," Ken Khachigian, also a top Reagan speechwriter, recalled to Newsmax.
In Dolan's post-Reagan incarnation, he seemed to align himself with people who proved critically important in modern history.
As an aide to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2001, he was at the Pentagon as it was suddenly devastated by a plane commandeered by Muslim terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001.
Fabienne Sintes, Washington correspondent for Radio France, told Newsmax that Dolan "was on a 9/11 broadcast I did a few years later, and his account of what he saw at the Pentagon brought that day back to our listeners and was nothing less than chilling."
Dolan served as a a top strategist for Newt Gingrich's bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 and later went on to be a fierce advocate for Donald Trump.
Dolan worked for Donald Trump in all three of his presidential bids. Shortly after Trump's inauguration in January 2017, he tapped Dolan as a special assistant working with adviser Stephen Miller.
Again this year, in his second term, Trump appointed Dolan as his special assistant for domestic policy for the White House Domestic Policy Council.
Like his late brother Terry, Tony Dolan was virtually brought up on conservatism and Catholicism.
He loved to reminisce about their father introducing them to Barry Goldwater when he spoke in Connecticut in the early 1960s and later met fellow Nutmeg State resident William F. Buckley Jr.
When Tony worked for Reagan in the 1980 campaign, brother Terry launched the National Conservative Political Action Committee and was targeting Democrat senators for extinction with brass-knuckled independent expenditures. It was no surprise Republicans captured control of the Senate for the first time in 40 years.
"The liberals better watch out for those Dolan boys!" was an oft-repeated line on the right in the 1980s. Terry and Tony also had a sister, Maiselle Dolan Shortley, who worked in different Republican administrations.
Tony Dolan was a fixture on Washington's political scene — often spotted late at night at Georgetown's Cafe Milano.
On one such occasion I was dining with Tony, who bragged about having escorted glamorous actress Bo Derek to several events.
He suddenly reached for his cellphone, tapped a saved number, and said: "Bo, my dear, I've got someone here who doesn't believe I took you out. Will you talk to him, please?" She did.
Dolan's love of country drew him to politics — a passion that put this most talented man at the very pinnacle of American power over a very long period.
Khachigian characterized him best: "He was an artful wordsmith and fearless soldier for conservative causes."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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