Remembering Tricky Dick

On April 22, 1994, 17 years ago today, President Richard Milhous Nixon died at the age of 81. Nixon suffered a severe stroke at 5:45 pm EDT on April 18, 1994, while preparing to eat dinner in his Park Ridge, New Jersey home. It was later doscovered that a blood clot resulting had formed in one of the upper areas of his heart, then broken off and traveled to his brain. He was taken to New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan, initially alert, but unable to speak or to move his right arm or leg. Damage to the brain caused swelling (cerebral edema) and Nixon slipped into a deep coma. On April 22, 1994, he died at 9:08 pm, with his daughters Tricia and Julie at his bedside.



Nixon's legacy will continue to be the subject of much discussion. Alternately described as a genius in the area of international affairs, a social activist who frustrated his conservative base, and a petty and vindictive man who held long-standing grudges, Nixon was a tragic figure of Shakespearean proportions.

No other American held office in the executive branch of the federal government as long as Richard Nixon. He is the only person in to appear on the Republican Party's presidential ticket five times. (He ran for President three times and for Vice-President twice, winning each time except in 1960, when John F. Kennedy defeated him for the Presidency.)

Although he did not achieve all that he had hoped for in the Middle East, Nixon was probably responsible for removing the Soviets from the region and initiating a long peace process. He opened up diplomatic relations with China and improved relations with the Soviet Union. Domestically, he reduced segregation in schools, ended the gold standard, presided over a lower crime rate, and pioneered positive environmental measures. But that pesky thing known as the Watergate scandal brought about his resignation from office, and tarnished the presidency and the trust that people had in their elected leaders.

Though often referred to as a conservative in politics, Nixon had many detractors on the political right. For example, columnist George Will questioned Nixon's conservatism, citing wage-and-price controls as "the largest peacetime intrusion of government in the economy in American history, surpassing even the dreams of the New Dealers".

Nixon had a complex personality. He was very secretive and awkward and was inclined to distance himself from people. He was formal in all aspects, to the extent of wearing a coat and tie even when home alone. Some historians have described him as having a narcissistic and paranoid personality. Biographer Elizabeth Drew called Nixon a "smart, talented man, but most peculiar and haunted of presidents." Author Richard Reeves described Nixon as "a strange man of uncomfortable shyness, who functioned best alone with his thoughts. He assumed the worst in people, and he brought out the worst in them."

George McGovern, Nixon's Democratic opponent in 1972, said of Nixon in 1983, "President Nixon probably had a more practical approach to the two superpowers, China and the Soviet Union, than any other president since World War II. I think, with the exception of his inexcusable continuation of the war in Vietnam, Nixon really will get high marks in history."