Hail to the Chiefs Part XXXVII: Moby Tricky Dick
"Tin soldiers and Nixon coming. We're finally on our own. This summer I heard the drumming. Four dead in Ohio." -Neil Young
"There is an old Vulcan proverb: 'Only Nixon can go to China.'" - Star Trek VI
"Always give your best; never get discouraged; never be petty. Always remember others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself." - Richard Nixon
Asking a POTUS geek who their favorite president is can be a difficult question. As for who I think the BEST president was...Abraham Lincoln, hands down. Now which one I like best as a human being...that would be Harry Truman. (With John Adams a close second.) Harry was a history geek himself, and I could easily see having a beer with him and a few laughs over the foibles of Franklin Pierce.
However then there is a third category. There is one president that has been an obsession of mine from the beginning. One I studied more than any of the others. The Moriarty, the white whale: Richard Milhous Nixon.
My presidential hobby/obsession began when I was in 5th grade, and decided I wanted to BE president some day. I was totally shocked to discover that one president had been forced to resign to prevent being impeached....a.k.a. FIRED. A corrupt politician! Can you BELIEVE it? (I was also equally shocked at around the same age to find out that rock stars sometimes....GASP.....used drugs.) I was also intrigued. How did this villain get elected? Why did he have to resign?
In my high school American History class, one option for our final was to write an essay on the cycles of American history. Pretty much the theory was that there are times in history where reform is prevalent, and there are times of trying to maintain the status quo. I was happily plugging along with the essay, everything seemed to be falling into place perfectly until there was the one president who stubbornly refused to fall into a neat little category. *insert footage of me yelling in a Captain Kirk-like manner" "NIXOOOOOOOON!!!!!!!!"
That same year, Nixon died. I was treated to my first presidential funeral. I voraciously gobbled up all the footage, and read all the articles. It was the first time I started to think there might be some sort of an actual human being behind the mustache-twirling villain image I had in my head.
A lot of my writing my senior year of high school focused on my nemesis. For an extra credit assignment in a British literature class, I did a parody of the Jonathan Swift poem "Satirical Elegy of a Late Famous General." The original starts out "His Grace! Impossible! What, dead! Of old age too and in his bed!" Mine called "Satirical Elegy of a Late Famous President" began "The Chief! My goodness! What, dead? He died of a stroke and not shot through the head?" That same year my friends and I collaborated on a story that we later titled "Nixon's Inferno." One of my favorite parts was Nixon was condemned to supervise a McDonald's playland, while H.R. Haldeman mopped the floor nearby. To my 17 year old mind, that was definitely Hell.
Then a few years ago, I went to see the play "Frost/Nixon." The beginning of the play starts with some excerpts from famous Nixon speeches. I found myself silently mouthing along to them, so many of the passages I know by heart, the same way I would to songs from a musical.
I was a bit surprised when I stopped writing about LBJ and started researching Nixon how much my mood improved. I was downright gleeful. I figure this is how Batman must feel when the Joker shows up after a week of battling some lesser known adversary like Egghead. When I told my mother I was writing about Nixon she said "Already?" And then paused and added "Well...you HAVE been researching him your whole life!"
25 years after my Nixon obsession began, I had some new questions to bring to the table. You'd be hard-pressed to find a historian who would disagree with the fact that Nixon belongs near the bottom of the presidential rankings, or at least in the below average range. My big question is, why? What about his administration was uniquely bad? After being better acquainted with the other 42 men that held the office mere corruption isn't enough of an answer. I have some ideas, and I'll be curious to hear yours as well.
Richard Milhous Nixon was born January 9, 1913 in Yorba Linda, California. He was the 2nd of 5 sons to Midwestern transplants Frank and Hannah Milhous Nixon. His mother, a fan of English monarchs, named him after Richard the Lion-Hearted. (Although an argument can be made that Richard III might have been more appropriate.) Frank at one point owned a lemon farm that failed to turn a profit. Nixon would later claim that after his father sold the farm, oil was found on it. This was not accurate.
When the farm failed the Nixons moved to the nearby town of Whittier and ran a store and gas station. Whitter was a pretty straight-laced town. Most of the population, including the Nixon family, were Quakers. Young Richard was a very sober little boy, always wearing a tie to school. When he wasn't in school, he was usually helping out in his father's store. The closest thing Nixon had to a hobby was his music lessons. He played both violin and piano. He preferred playing piano.
Nixon did show an avid interest in politics at an early age. He was 11 when the Teapot Dome scandal emerged. He commented "When I get big, I'll be a lawyer they can't bribe."
Two of Nixon's brothers died young. His younger brother Arthur died of what was probably meningitis, and older more charismatic brother Harold died of tuberculosis when Nixon was 20. A lot of the Nixon biographers credit these deaths to Nixon's grim determination: that he had to be 3 sons in one to make up for the brothers that had died. It also meant that even though Nixon qualified to go to Harvard, he'd have to attend Whittier College instead.
Like Lyndon Johnson, Nixon did not make it into the lone social club on campus: The Franklins. So, also like Johnson, he created his own: The Orthagonians. He was involved in many extra-curriculars, most successfully on the debate team. He also lead a crusade to allow dancing on campus, even though he did not like to dance himself. Nixon was usually very perceptive of the political climate of wherever he was, which made him an expert at practicing "the art of the possible."
After graduation he got a scholarship to go to Duke University Law School. Nixon pretty much kept to himself, living in a little shack off campus. He graduated 3rd in his class. The hope was to get a job in a New York law firm, but he didn't get an offers. Nixon also applied for the FBI and decades later found out he would have made it in, except for budget cuts. Instead, Nixon went back to Whittier and joined a law firm.
In order to start making more connections with the community, Nixon got involved in community theater. He proved to be a halfway decent actor, and surprised people in one role when he was able to burst into tears on cue. In one play he met a lovely high school teacher named Pat Ryan. For Nixon, it was "love at first sight." For Pat....not so much. On their very first date Nixon asked Pat to marry him. She turned him down. He hung in there and became a borderline stalker, even driving Pat to dates with other men. Eventually she relented and they got married in 1940.
In 1942, to try and get some new opportunities outside of Whittier, and to give Nixon some of his first experience working in government, they moved to Washington D.C. and both got jobs in the Office of Price Administration. Eventually Nixon enlisted in the Navy. Due to his Quaker background, Nixon could have been exempted from service. Indeed, his Quaker relatives were not happy with this choice. Nixon's job was mostly managing supplies in cargo boats in the South Pacific. He never saw combat. However he did learn how to play poker. He got so good at it that a good chunk of his first congressional campaign would be funded with his poker winnings.
After leaving the military in 1946, Nixon began his first congressional campaign in California against incumbent democrat Jerry Voorhis. Voorhis was the inspiration for the character of Jefferson Smith in the Capra movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." The term "McCarthyism" didn't exist yet. That same year Joe McCarthy was running for his first term in the senate. Nixon surmised that playing on people's fear of communism would be his path to victory. So he strongly implied that Voorhis was a communist. Years later he admitted that he never REALLY thought Voorhis was a communist but he just had to win. In the same freshman class of Congress that year was John F. Kennedy. In 1948 Gerald Ford would be elected to his first term in the House.
1948 was also when Nixon rose to prominence. He was a member of the House Committee of UnAmerican Activities and lead accusations against former state department employee Alger Hiss. The accusations were that he was a communist spy. The hearings were a gamble on Nixon's part, and they gamble paid off. He became known nation-wide for his anti-communist efforts.
In 1950 Nixon ran for the senate against Helen Gahagan Douglas. He dubbed her "The Pink Lady." She dubbed him "Tricky Dick." JFK privately donated $1000 towards Nixon's campaign on behalf of his father. It should be noted that at the time, Robert Kennedy was working for Joseph McCarthy.
Nixon was senator just 2 years when he was selected to be Eisenhower's running mate. It was thought that Nixon would bring in the more conservative branch of the party. Also with concerns about Eisenhower's age, it helped to have a young vital running mate. Some women even found Nixon sexy. Had a good chuckle when Stephen Ambrose tripped all over himself trying to explain this in his first Nixon bio. The Ambrose explanation was that the appeal was his unattainability. I think he was young, he had wavy black hair, he was seen as a straight arrow. Plus tall dark and repressed....what better sex symbol for a conservative woman in the 1950's?
Of course there was the one snag in the campaign. There was some issues with one of the funds for Nixon's campaign. It was perfectly legal, but caused enough uproar that Eisenhower debated dropping Nixon from the ticket. Nixon wound up salvaging the situation by laying out his finances piece by piece in a speech that is now famously known as "The Checkers Speech." One stroke of brilliance was ending the speech with the mention of the dog Checkers....not just because of the personal touch, but because mentioning the dog was something that FDR used to do frequently. So really it was one more way of sticking it to the Democrats. The speech proved to be wildly successful. Although Pat was totally mortified at having their private finances paraded on national TV. Eisenhower would be furious that because of the speech, all presidential and vice-presidential candidates would now be expected to display their financial records as well. Eisenhower never totally forgave Nixon for the incident.
Nixon was one of the most active vice-presidents in U.S. History. Probably what he was most famous for at the time was being sent on good will trips around the world. Unlike LBJ, who saw the whole world as American-wannabes.....Nixon learned a tremendous amount from his travel, both from talking to world leaders and also from some interactions with ordinary citizens.
Usually the trips were fairly glamorous. Nixon loved all the pomp and ceremony. However in 1958 a trip to South America he encountered some anti-American protests. Caracas, Venezuela was the worst. Both Pat and Richard Nixon got drenched with tobacco spit. Then their car got clobbered with rocks, injuring one of Nixon's travel companions. Nixon got respect for keeping a cool head during that trying situation.
The relationship between president and vice-president is rarely overly positive. Nixon had to deal with Eisenhower's wishy-washyness over whether to keep him on the ticket for 1956. I'd say the two men were never close....but that doesn't mean much with Nixon. Nixon pretty much had one friend: Bebe Rebozo. And even then, part of the pleasure for Nixon was to go some place and not have to talk. Plus he later admitted in the 70's that during his administration, even Bebe would call him "Mr. President" at all times.
Nixon did earn some respect by keeping calm, but not seeming too eager to take over, during Eisenhower's various health crises such as a stroke and a heart attack. At the time, Eisenhower was the oldest U.S. president ever. (A few decades later Ronald Reagan would beat that record.) The Eisenhower administration inspired the creation of the 25th amendment that clarifies what the procedure should be if the President is incapacitated, and the policy of filling a vacancy in the vice-presidency.
In hindsight, the 1960 election seems like a foregone conclusion. However the race was very very close. I was recently watching an early episode of "Mad Men" and was struck by this line: "He's young, handsome, a Navy hero. Honestly, it shouldn't be too difficult to convince America that Dick Nixon is a winner."
Kennedy had some interesting insight on Nixon during the 1960 campaign. Once he was asked if he was exhausted, and he responded that he wasn't, but he figured that Nixon was. "Because I know who I am and I don't have to worry about adapting and changing. All I have to do at each stop is be myself. But Nixon doesn't know who he is, and so each time he makes a speech he has to decide which Nixon he is, and that will be very exhausting."
Nixon did have a shape-shifting quality. On each campaign there would be comments about a "new" Nixon or "the real Nixon." I sometimes wonder if Nixon himself knew who he really was in the end. To quote Peter Sellers "There USED to be a me....but I had it surgically removed."
Probably the fatal turning point for Nixon in the 1960 election was the first debate with Kennedy. Nixon had been hospitalized for a knee infection. He came to the debate pale, with his usual 5 o'clock shadow, refusing to wear make-up, and in clothes that were now too large for him. Nixon's own mother called him up after the debates because she found his appearance alarming. The irony was, Nixon was actually a very healthy person. He rarely even took a day off due to illness, even when he was president. Kennedy, on the other hand, who we now know was plagued by Addison's disease, and other health problems. However he came tanned and looking young and vibrant. People who saw the debates thought that Kennedy won. People who heard them, thought that Nixon won. And even if you look at text of the debates, Nixon comes off as the better speaker. It was key moment to just how crucial television and visuals were becoming to American politics.
At first after the 1960 defeat, Nixon and his family moved to California. In 1962 Nixon ran for governor of California against Pat Brown. Really the position would not have been a good fit for Nixon, who had no interest in domestic politics. When he was defeated, he lost his temper and informed the press "You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because gentleman, this is my last press conference!"
The Nixons moved to New York City. Nixon took a position at a prestigious law firm. Besides getting rich, this gave him the opportunity to travel, and prepare for his political comeback. Probably the first major step in that comeback was when he appeared on the Jack Paar show and played the piano:
As a piano player, I've always found Nixon's piano playing to be a bit disturbing and sad....he couldn't even relax enough to remove his shoulders from his ears then. It reminded me of Salieri in "Amadeus." Jerry Ford got a kick out of Nixon's piano playing. "There was a zest to his sing-a-longs. He pounded down on the keys full-force as if playing harder would make it sound better."
During the late 60's, Nixon even hired a comedy writer from the Jack Paar Show, Paul Keyes, to help write one-liners for his speeches. Paul Keyes would later orchestrate the "Sock it to ME?" cameo on Laugh-In. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qRZvlZZ0DY] Laugh-In producer George Schlatter later commented "Nixon said ... that appearing on Laugh-In is what got him elected - and I believe that. And I've had to live with that."
The 1968 presidential campaign was a whole different universe than Nixon's previous campaign in 1960. With the anti-war movement, urban riots, and a severely polarized American population, the country seemed on the edge of civil war. Nixon had learned from his mistakes in 1960. He worked hard, but not to the point of exhaustion, so that he still looked tanned, rested and in control. Instead of having debates, he would have staged forums where he'd get asked questions that would make him look good. Throughout the campaign he claimed to be promoting a spirit of clarity and candor. "Let me make this perfectly clear..." And statements like that were usually followed by arguments that were as clear as mud. (Reminds me a bit of a childhood friend who would start a sentence with "I'm not trying to be mean..." before she'd say something particularly vicious.) Nixon was the law and order candidate, but in a weird way, he was also the candidate that claimed he would end the war. "Peace with honor." Whereas his opponent, Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, despite misgivings about Vietnam, had to spout the Johnson party line.
Nixon won the election with just 500,000 votes more than Humphrey. 3rd party candidate (and notorious segregationist) Governor George Wallace of Alabama carried 5 states....a rarity for a 3rd party candidate. Just another example of how divided the nation was.
Nixon's first inaugural address was deceptively conciliatory. "We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another---until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices. For its part the government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways--to the voices of quiet anguish, the voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart--to the injured voices, the anxious voices, the voices that have despaired of being heard."
Pretty words, but in reality the exact opposite of what happened during the Nixon administration. Nixon not only alienated the voices of the opposition such as the anti-war movement, he also managed to alienate quite a few of the key players in the Republican Party itself.
I was having a conversation with a writer friend the other day about how in a truly good story, not only do you have a villain that is worthy of the hero....you have a hero that is worthy of the villain. Nixon is one of the more notorious villains in U.S. History. So my friend asked me, who would his hero be? The first name that popped out: Daniel Ellsberg.
Dr. Daniel Ellsberg's history of working with the government went back to 1964. He was working for the Pentagon and was on duty during the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. He spent time working in Vietnam as a civilian to get a firsthand idea of what was going on in the conflict. Later he worked for the RAND think tank. Initially, Ellsberg very much towed the party line.
However by the late 1960's Ellsberg was beginning to have his doubts. He could see the difference between what was happening in Vietnam, and the lies that were being presented to the public. Also due to his time in Vietnam, Ellsberg took the war more personally. He had a conversion experience of sorts in 1969. He began going to anti-war demonstrations. The one that affected him most was a group of men that were preparing to go to jail, rather than serve in Vietnam.
Ellsberg decided to do an act of Civil Disobedience. Due to his high security clearance, he had access to all sorts of reports proving what was really going on. Ellsberg xeroxed over 7000 pages of documents that would come to be known as "The Pentagon Papers." They did not show the Kennedy, Johnson OR Nixon administrations in a favorable light. He then distributed the documents to newspapers, and to sympathetic members of Congress. Sixteen newspapers published portions of the papers. Senator Mike Gravel put 4000 pages of it into the record of his subcommittee, so it would be included in the public record.
Nixon and his advisors went berzerk. They tried, without success, to block publication of "The Pentagon Papers." Outrage of Ellsberg led to the formation of "The Plumbers"....so named so that they would stop leaks of information. Really, they were Nixon's thugs. There were various schemes to discredit Ellsberg: a failed plan to dose him with LSD before a speech, a breakin to Ellsberg's psychiatrists office to try and prove he was a pervert (they found nothing), illegal wiretapping of his phones...the list goes on and on. The result was, while Ellsberg was fully prepared to go to jail, his trial was declared a mistrial. The Plumbers would continue to antagonize people and groups on Nixon's enemies list. Most famously, on June 17, 1972, they would botch a burglary of the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel....but more on that later.
One reason Nixon desired everybody to shut up and behave at home, was because his real interest was foreign affairs. He made it "perfectly clear" from pretty early on that he wanted to basically be his own Secretary of State. The main focus was on Vietnam. Nixon hoped to reduce war resistance by limiting the draft to 19 year olds only. Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger decided the best route to victory in Vietnam was to illegally bomb the crap out of Cambodia. While this did temporarily cut off the supply line for North Vietnam, at best it just delayed their ultimate victory 2 years later. The other result of the bombing was that it enabled the rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. Satirical song-writer would later comment "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."
What Nixon and Kissinger did do that eventually helped bring an end to the Vietnam War, was to establish diplomatic ties with China. Since the communist takeover of China in 1949, the United States recogized Taiwan, "The Republic of China"....one tiny island, to be the official government of China. Rather ridiculous. Also, the cooling of relations between the Soviet Union and China, the timing was good. Therefore Nixon, who had built a career on being anti-communist, opened diplomatic ties with communist China. It was the high point of his entire administration, and one that still resonates today. I was listening to an episode of "This American Life" about Americans that live in China. One American actually had the experience of someone shouting "You haven't had a good president since Nixon!" (On a side note, in 1987 American composer John Adams wrote an opera about the event called "Nixon in China." The entire opera can be viewed on youtube. Here is a sample:
Nixon and Kissinger also worked to establish "detente" with the Soviet Union....pretty much a fancy French word for "tolerating and not nuking each other." The Soviet Union was far more open to negotiation due to fear of the United States forming an alliance with China. There was some progress, but Nixon's clout diminished over his second term as his administration became consumed by the Watergate Scandal.
For the most part, Vietnam ended on Nixon's watch as well. In 1973 there was finally a successful negotiation to release American prisoners. American troops would leave, but North Vietnamese troops were allowed to stay where they were. Didn't take a genius to see the South Vietnamese government was doomed. Partly the war ended when it did because Congress finally stopped funding it. In the Stephen Ambrose biography he comments that "...nearly all the names on the left-had side of the Vietnam Wall in Washington commemorate men who died in action while Richard Nixon was their commander in chief, and they died after he had decided that the war could not be won."
On the home front, except for working to limit the funding of Great Society programs, Nixon's record is surprisingly liberal. He's even been called "the last liberal president" by activist Noam Chomsky. (And why that history paper in high school was such a bear to write....it didn't fit the pattern.) This wasn't out of any sort of convictions on Nixon's part, but merely because he had to work with a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress during his entire administration. Under the Nixon administration, we saw the founding of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Mine Health and Safety Act, and Title IX which is best known for providing equal opportunities for women in high school and college sports. Nixon also declared himself a Keynesian (almost unheard of for a Republican to do) and temporarily instituted wage and price controls to try and get a handle on the country's economic problems.
In 1972 the re-election campaign was in full-swing. To this day, thanks to efficient disposal of documents, we can't be sure who exactly made the order to break-in to Democratic Headquarters. It was most likely Attorney General John Mitchell. Nixon, at least initially, was probably not involved directly. He was in Florida with his buddy Bebe when news of the break-in occurred, and at the time he actually laughed it off. What ultimately implicated Nixon was first by ordering a cover-up, and second, by the massive amount of evidence he accumulated against himself thanks to all the White House conversations he secretly recorded. Taping White House conversations was nothing new. We actually have recordings as far back as FDR. Johnson suggested using the taping system as a tool for the memoirs later on. Nixon initially thought it was a dumb idea and had the taping system removed, but later he reconsidered. Ultimately, while the Johnson administration had 600 hours worth of recordings, the Nixon administration would amass over 3000 hours.
Still, even with all of that, he might have gotten away with it if it weren't for those pesky kids at the Washington Post. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were both in their 20's, and were at the bottom of the totem pole for status at the Washington Post. Their relentless investigation of the Watergate Scandal (and solid support from editor Ben Bradlee, and Washington Post owner Katherine Graham) was a major factor in ultimately exposing how enmeshed the Nixon administration was in the scandal. Their most famous source was until recently known as "Deep Throat." His real name was Mark Felt. Woodward met Felt during his days in the Navy. Felt worked for the FBI, and was passed over to head the organization. So his motives in helping out Woodward weren't exactly noble, but were extremely useful.
By 1973 Watergate consumed more and more of Nixon's time. He would try to distract himself and the nation by focusing on foreign affairs....such as trying to negotiate peace between Egypt and Israel, and continued negotiations with the Soviet Union. He also made the orders to help destabilize the socialist Democratically-elected Allende in Chile. The coup that followed resulted in the assassination of Allende and brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet ruling the country until 1990. Nixon had no regrets. In his eyes authoritarian governments were fine as long as they were not communist.
Nixon wasn't the only one in the West Wing with legal problems. Vice President Spiro Agnew began to be investigated of accepting bribes. When Vice-President Agnew resigned, weirdly, the next person in line for the presidency was a Democrat: Speaker of the House Carl Albert. Deciding on a replacement Vice-President was a bit like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Reagan was too conservative, Rockefeller was too liberal, and Ford was just right. Nixon partly saw Ford as insurance against impeachment. He figured nobody would want a perceived light-weight like Ford running the country. On the other hand, the Democrats in Congress found the likable Ford a great option, because they figured he'd be easy to beat in the 1976 presidential election.
In 1973 an 1974 Watergate hearings were on television so much, that one of my friends, who was preschool age, just thought it was a regular TV show. Nixon's behavior became increasingly erratic, and he was drinking to excess. He did whatever he could not to hand over any of the evidence for Watergate, even after it was subpoenaed. He also had no compunctions about sacrificing long time supporters to try and save himself. Ultimately Nixon made the decision to resign when he realized that he didn't even have 10 Republican votes in the house against impeachment.
One month after his resignation, Ford pardoned Nixon. For the rest of Nixon's life, the two were careful not to appear in public together too much, to stop rumors that they had made a deal.
Nixon plugged away at his book, and scheming for yet another comeback, this time as an elder statesman. His wife Pat once asked him how he could manage to keep going. He said "I just get up in the morning to confound my enemies." He'd later tell a journalist "A man is not finished when he is defeated. He's finished when he quits. My philosophy is no matter how many times you are knocked down you get off that floor, even if you are bloody, battered and beaten, and just keep on slugging..."
His comeback really began with the famous Frost-Nixon interviews. The play and the movie would lead you to believe it was an even match. Personally I think David Frost was out of his league. During most of the interviews Nixon runs verbal circles around Frost. However, there are some interesting small moments. Such as when Nixon said "If the president does it, then it is not illegal." When Frost suggests that Nixon might be "the last casualty of the Vietnam War" Nixon is noticably taken aback, and possibly near tears. However, for the most part, thanks to the dissembling and sometimes bald-faced lies from Nixon, the interviews are more interesting for watching how Nixon thinks and operates, than for learning any facts.
In 1981 President Reagan asked the 3 former presidents: Nixon, Ford and Carter, to fly together to Anwar Sadat's funeral. I don't envy poor Jerry Ford 40 hours on a plane with not one but TWO socially awkward ex-presidents. Later, when Bob Dole saw the pictures of the three ex-presidents together he quipped "Did you see the pictures? There they were, See No Evil, Here No Evil and Evil."
By 1990 Nixon did what would have seemed impossible 15 years before: he saw the opening of his presidential library. It was run by his private foundation instead of the National Archives so, much to his delight, he had a lot of control over what sort of materials would be in the library. Currently it is jointly run by NARA and the Nixon Foundation and has become a lot more forthcoming with resources, and has a much more honest display about Watergate.
Richard Nixon died on April 22, 1994 and was buried on the grounds of the Nixon library.
It will be interesting to see what Nixon's legacy is as time goes on. He himself remarked it all depended on who wrote the history books. My take on it is that he caused damage to the American presidency that the United States has never totally recovered from. Although he also proved that sometimes the system works. The combined efforts of the Supreme Court, Congress and the press removed a president from office who was corrupt.
Resources
It was tricky trying to find a solid biography about Nixon. Now that all the tapes are released, I imagine there will be some high quality biographies in the future. I did not want to read the Conrad Black biography as Black is a pretty notorious criminal himself. It will also be interesting to see what sort of biographies emerge from authors who were not alive during the Nixon administration. I've found in my research even the most detached journalist starts to froth at the mouth when Nixon is mentioned. In Stanley Karnow's book "Vietnam: A History" after he's so careful to cover the war from every perspective....he gets downright sarcastic when he talks about Tricky Dick. I'm sure it didn't help that he was on Nixon's enemies list.
"Vietnam A History" - Stanley Karnow
"Nixon Volume 1: The Education of a Politician 1913-1962" "Nixon the Triumph of a Politician 1962-1972" "Nixon Ruin and Recovery 1973-1990" by Stephen Ambrose - a very very different animal from Ambrose's biography on Eisenhower. Ambrose clearly struggles with the subject and struggles to maintain objectivity. Also as the books came out in the 1980's, new information has since emerged. Still, to date, best option for Nixon biographies I have found.
"Final Days" by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein - Interesting as a piece of history but dubious as a source. I found the tone gossipy and the information questionable.
"Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power" by Robert Dallek The most objective out of all the books I read. Focuses on Nixon's foreign policy and his frenemy sort of relationship with Kissinger. I found it interesting that Dallek commented that out of all the president he has written about, Nixon was the most complicated. Personally I thought Johnson was harder.
"Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America" by Rick Perlstein - still wading through this one. Interesting tidbits on Nixon, but so far seems to be best at capturing the political climate of the United States from the late 60's to the mid 70's.
"American Experience: Richard Nixon" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/nixon/
"There is an old Vulcan proverb: 'Only Nixon can go to China.'" - Star Trek VI
"Always give your best; never get discouraged; never be petty. Always remember others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself." - Richard Nixon
Asking a POTUS geek who their favorite president is can be a difficult question. As for who I think the BEST president was...Abraham Lincoln, hands down. Now which one I like best as a human being...that would be Harry Truman. (With John Adams a close second.) Harry was a history geek himself, and I could easily see having a beer with him and a few laughs over the foibles of Franklin Pierce.
However then there is a third category. There is one president that has been an obsession of mine from the beginning. One I studied more than any of the others. The Moriarty, the white whale: Richard Milhous Nixon.
My presidential hobby/obsession began when I was in 5th grade, and decided I wanted to BE president some day. I was totally shocked to discover that one president had been forced to resign to prevent being impeached....a.k.a. FIRED. A corrupt politician! Can you BELIEVE it? (I was also equally shocked at around the same age to find out that rock stars sometimes....GASP.....used drugs.) I was also intrigued. How did this villain get elected? Why did he have to resign?
In my high school American History class, one option for our final was to write an essay on the cycles of American history. Pretty much the theory was that there are times in history where reform is prevalent, and there are times of trying to maintain the status quo. I was happily plugging along with the essay, everything seemed to be falling into place perfectly until there was the one president who stubbornly refused to fall into a neat little category. *insert footage of me yelling in a Captain Kirk-like manner" "NIXOOOOOOOON!!!!!!!!"
That same year, Nixon died. I was treated to my first presidential funeral. I voraciously gobbled up all the footage, and read all the articles. It was the first time I started to think there might be some sort of an actual human being behind the mustache-twirling villain image I had in my head.
A lot of my writing my senior year of high school focused on my nemesis. For an extra credit assignment in a British literature class, I did a parody of the Jonathan Swift poem "Satirical Elegy of a Late Famous General." The original starts out "His Grace! Impossible! What, dead! Of old age too and in his bed!" Mine called "Satirical Elegy of a Late Famous President" began "The Chief! My goodness! What, dead? He died of a stroke and not shot through the head?" That same year my friends and I collaborated on a story that we later titled "Nixon's Inferno." One of my favorite parts was Nixon was condemned to supervise a McDonald's playland, while H.R. Haldeman mopped the floor nearby. To my 17 year old mind, that was definitely Hell.
Then a few years ago, I went to see the play "Frost/Nixon." The beginning of the play starts with some excerpts from famous Nixon speeches. I found myself silently mouthing along to them, so many of the passages I know by heart, the same way I would to songs from a musical.
I was a bit surprised when I stopped writing about LBJ and started researching Nixon how much my mood improved. I was downright gleeful. I figure this is how Batman must feel when the Joker shows up after a week of battling some lesser known adversary like Egghead. When I told my mother I was writing about Nixon she said "Already?" And then paused and added "Well...you HAVE been researching him your whole life!"
25 years after my Nixon obsession began, I had some new questions to bring to the table. You'd be hard-pressed to find a historian who would disagree with the fact that Nixon belongs near the bottom of the presidential rankings, or at least in the below average range. My big question is, why? What about his administration was uniquely bad? After being better acquainted with the other 42 men that held the office mere corruption isn't enough of an answer. I have some ideas, and I'll be curious to hear yours as well.
Richard Milhous Nixon was born January 9, 1913 in Yorba Linda, California. He was the 2nd of 5 sons to Midwestern transplants Frank and Hannah Milhous Nixon. His mother, a fan of English monarchs, named him after Richard the Lion-Hearted. (Although an argument can be made that Richard III might have been more appropriate.) Frank at one point owned a lemon farm that failed to turn a profit. Nixon would later claim that after his father sold the farm, oil was found on it. This was not accurate.
When the farm failed the Nixons moved to the nearby town of Whittier and ran a store and gas station. Whitter was a pretty straight-laced town. Most of the population, including the Nixon family, were Quakers. Young Richard was a very sober little boy, always wearing a tie to school. When he wasn't in school, he was usually helping out in his father's store. The closest thing Nixon had to a hobby was his music lessons. He played both violin and piano. He preferred playing piano.
Nixon did show an avid interest in politics at an early age. He was 11 when the Teapot Dome scandal emerged. He commented "When I get big, I'll be a lawyer they can't bribe."
Two of Nixon's brothers died young. His younger brother Arthur died of what was probably meningitis, and older more charismatic brother Harold died of tuberculosis when Nixon was 20. A lot of the Nixon biographers credit these deaths to Nixon's grim determination: that he had to be 3 sons in one to make up for the brothers that had died. It also meant that even though Nixon qualified to go to Harvard, he'd have to attend Whittier College instead.
Like Lyndon Johnson, Nixon did not make it into the lone social club on campus: The Franklins. So, also like Johnson, he created his own: The Orthagonians. He was involved in many extra-curriculars, most successfully on the debate team. He also lead a crusade to allow dancing on campus, even though he did not like to dance himself. Nixon was usually very perceptive of the political climate of wherever he was, which made him an expert at practicing "the art of the possible."
After graduation he got a scholarship to go to Duke University Law School. Nixon pretty much kept to himself, living in a little shack off campus. He graduated 3rd in his class. The hope was to get a job in a New York law firm, but he didn't get an offers. Nixon also applied for the FBI and decades later found out he would have made it in, except for budget cuts. Instead, Nixon went back to Whittier and joined a law firm.
In order to start making more connections with the community, Nixon got involved in community theater. He proved to be a halfway decent actor, and surprised people in one role when he was able to burst into tears on cue. In one play he met a lovely high school teacher named Pat Ryan. For Nixon, it was "love at first sight." For Pat....not so much. On their very first date Nixon asked Pat to marry him. She turned him down. He hung in there and became a borderline stalker, even driving Pat to dates with other men. Eventually she relented and they got married in 1940.
In 1942, to try and get some new opportunities outside of Whittier, and to give Nixon some of his first experience working in government, they moved to Washington D.C. and both got jobs in the Office of Price Administration. Eventually Nixon enlisted in the Navy. Due to his Quaker background, Nixon could have been exempted from service. Indeed, his Quaker relatives were not happy with this choice. Nixon's job was mostly managing supplies in cargo boats in the South Pacific. He never saw combat. However he did learn how to play poker. He got so good at it that a good chunk of his first congressional campaign would be funded with his poker winnings.
After leaving the military in 1946, Nixon began his first congressional campaign in California against incumbent democrat Jerry Voorhis. Voorhis was the inspiration for the character of Jefferson Smith in the Capra movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." The term "McCarthyism" didn't exist yet. That same year Joe McCarthy was running for his first term in the senate. Nixon surmised that playing on people's fear of communism would be his path to victory. So he strongly implied that Voorhis was a communist. Years later he admitted that he never REALLY thought Voorhis was a communist but he just had to win. In the same freshman class of Congress that year was John F. Kennedy. In 1948 Gerald Ford would be elected to his first term in the House.
1948 was also when Nixon rose to prominence. He was a member of the House Committee of UnAmerican Activities and lead accusations against former state department employee Alger Hiss. The accusations were that he was a communist spy. The hearings were a gamble on Nixon's part, and they gamble paid off. He became known nation-wide for his anti-communist efforts.
In 1950 Nixon ran for the senate against Helen Gahagan Douglas. He dubbed her "The Pink Lady." She dubbed him "Tricky Dick." JFK privately donated $1000 towards Nixon's campaign on behalf of his father. It should be noted that at the time, Robert Kennedy was working for Joseph McCarthy.
Nixon was senator just 2 years when he was selected to be Eisenhower's running mate. It was thought that Nixon would bring in the more conservative branch of the party. Also with concerns about Eisenhower's age, it helped to have a young vital running mate. Some women even found Nixon sexy. Had a good chuckle when Stephen Ambrose tripped all over himself trying to explain this in his first Nixon bio. The Ambrose explanation was that the appeal was his unattainability. I think he was young, he had wavy black hair, he was seen as a straight arrow. Plus tall dark and repressed....what better sex symbol for a conservative woman in the 1950's?
Of course there was the one snag in the campaign. There was some issues with one of the funds for Nixon's campaign. It was perfectly legal, but caused enough uproar that Eisenhower debated dropping Nixon from the ticket. Nixon wound up salvaging the situation by laying out his finances piece by piece in a speech that is now famously known as "The Checkers Speech." One stroke of brilliance was ending the speech with the mention of the dog Checkers....not just because of the personal touch, but because mentioning the dog was something that FDR used to do frequently. So really it was one more way of sticking it to the Democrats. The speech proved to be wildly successful. Although Pat was totally mortified at having their private finances paraded on national TV. Eisenhower would be furious that because of the speech, all presidential and vice-presidential candidates would now be expected to display their financial records as well. Eisenhower never totally forgave Nixon for the incident.
Nixon was one of the most active vice-presidents in U.S. History. Probably what he was most famous for at the time was being sent on good will trips around the world. Unlike LBJ, who saw the whole world as American-wannabes.....Nixon learned a tremendous amount from his travel, both from talking to world leaders and also from some interactions with ordinary citizens.
Usually the trips were fairly glamorous. Nixon loved all the pomp and ceremony. However in 1958 a trip to South America he encountered some anti-American protests. Caracas, Venezuela was the worst. Both Pat and Richard Nixon got drenched with tobacco spit. Then their car got clobbered with rocks, injuring one of Nixon's travel companions. Nixon got respect for keeping a cool head during that trying situation.
The relationship between president and vice-president is rarely overly positive. Nixon had to deal with Eisenhower's wishy-washyness over whether to keep him on the ticket for 1956. I'd say the two men were never close....but that doesn't mean much with Nixon. Nixon pretty much had one friend: Bebe Rebozo. And even then, part of the pleasure for Nixon was to go some place and not have to talk. Plus he later admitted in the 70's that during his administration, even Bebe would call him "Mr. President" at all times.
Nixon did earn some respect by keeping calm, but not seeming too eager to take over, during Eisenhower's various health crises such as a stroke and a heart attack. At the time, Eisenhower was the oldest U.S. president ever. (A few decades later Ronald Reagan would beat that record.) The Eisenhower administration inspired the creation of the 25th amendment that clarifies what the procedure should be if the President is incapacitated, and the policy of filling a vacancy in the vice-presidency.
In hindsight, the 1960 election seems like a foregone conclusion. However the race was very very close. I was recently watching an early episode of "Mad Men" and was struck by this line: "He's young, handsome, a Navy hero. Honestly, it shouldn't be too difficult to convince America that Dick Nixon is a winner."
Kennedy had some interesting insight on Nixon during the 1960 campaign. Once he was asked if he was exhausted, and he responded that he wasn't, but he figured that Nixon was. "Because I know who I am and I don't have to worry about adapting and changing. All I have to do at each stop is be myself. But Nixon doesn't know who he is, and so each time he makes a speech he has to decide which Nixon he is, and that will be very exhausting."
Nixon did have a shape-shifting quality. On each campaign there would be comments about a "new" Nixon or "the real Nixon." I sometimes wonder if Nixon himself knew who he really was in the end. To quote Peter Sellers "There USED to be a me....but I had it surgically removed."
Probably the fatal turning point for Nixon in the 1960 election was the first debate with Kennedy. Nixon had been hospitalized for a knee infection. He came to the debate pale, with his usual 5 o'clock shadow, refusing to wear make-up, and in clothes that were now too large for him. Nixon's own mother called him up after the debates because she found his appearance alarming. The irony was, Nixon was actually a very healthy person. He rarely even took a day off due to illness, even when he was president. Kennedy, on the other hand, who we now know was plagued by Addison's disease, and other health problems. However he came tanned and looking young and vibrant. People who saw the debates thought that Kennedy won. People who heard them, thought that Nixon won. And even if you look at text of the debates, Nixon comes off as the better speaker. It was key moment to just how crucial television and visuals were becoming to American politics.
At first after the 1960 defeat, Nixon and his family moved to California. In 1962 Nixon ran for governor of California against Pat Brown. Really the position would not have been a good fit for Nixon, who had no interest in domestic politics. When he was defeated, he lost his temper and informed the press "You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because gentleman, this is my last press conference!"
The Nixons moved to New York City. Nixon took a position at a prestigious law firm. Besides getting rich, this gave him the opportunity to travel, and prepare for his political comeback. Probably the first major step in that comeback was when he appeared on the Jack Paar show and played the piano:
As a piano player, I've always found Nixon's piano playing to be a bit disturbing and sad....he couldn't even relax enough to remove his shoulders from his ears then. It reminded me of Salieri in "Amadeus." Jerry Ford got a kick out of Nixon's piano playing. "There was a zest to his sing-a-longs. He pounded down on the keys full-force as if playing harder would make it sound better."
During the late 60's, Nixon even hired a comedy writer from the Jack Paar Show, Paul Keyes, to help write one-liners for his speeches. Paul Keyes would later orchestrate the "Sock it to ME?" cameo on Laugh-In. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qRZvlZZ0DY] Laugh-In producer George Schlatter later commented "Nixon said ... that appearing on Laugh-In is what got him elected - and I believe that. And I've had to live with that."
The 1968 presidential campaign was a whole different universe than Nixon's previous campaign in 1960. With the anti-war movement, urban riots, and a severely polarized American population, the country seemed on the edge of civil war. Nixon had learned from his mistakes in 1960. He worked hard, but not to the point of exhaustion, so that he still looked tanned, rested and in control. Instead of having debates, he would have staged forums where he'd get asked questions that would make him look good. Throughout the campaign he claimed to be promoting a spirit of clarity and candor. "Let me make this perfectly clear..." And statements like that were usually followed by arguments that were as clear as mud. (Reminds me a bit of a childhood friend who would start a sentence with "I'm not trying to be mean..." before she'd say something particularly vicious.) Nixon was the law and order candidate, but in a weird way, he was also the candidate that claimed he would end the war. "Peace with honor." Whereas his opponent, Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, despite misgivings about Vietnam, had to spout the Johnson party line.
Nixon won the election with just 500,000 votes more than Humphrey. 3rd party candidate (and notorious segregationist) Governor George Wallace of Alabama carried 5 states....a rarity for a 3rd party candidate. Just another example of how divided the nation was.
Nixon's first inaugural address was deceptively conciliatory. "We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another---until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices. For its part the government will listen. We will strive to listen in new ways--to the voices of quiet anguish, the voices that speak without words, the voices of the heart--to the injured voices, the anxious voices, the voices that have despaired of being heard."
Pretty words, but in reality the exact opposite of what happened during the Nixon administration. Nixon not only alienated the voices of the opposition such as the anti-war movement, he also managed to alienate quite a few of the key players in the Republican Party itself.
I was having a conversation with a writer friend the other day about how in a truly good story, not only do you have a villain that is worthy of the hero....you have a hero that is worthy of the villain. Nixon is one of the more notorious villains in U.S. History. So my friend asked me, who would his hero be? The first name that popped out: Daniel Ellsberg.
Dr. Daniel Ellsberg's history of working with the government went back to 1964. He was working for the Pentagon and was on duty during the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. He spent time working in Vietnam as a civilian to get a firsthand idea of what was going on in the conflict. Later he worked for the RAND think tank. Initially, Ellsberg very much towed the party line.
However by the late 1960's Ellsberg was beginning to have his doubts. He could see the difference between what was happening in Vietnam, and the lies that were being presented to the public. Also due to his time in Vietnam, Ellsberg took the war more personally. He had a conversion experience of sorts in 1969. He began going to anti-war demonstrations. The one that affected him most was a group of men that were preparing to go to jail, rather than serve in Vietnam.
Ellsberg decided to do an act of Civil Disobedience. Due to his high security clearance, he had access to all sorts of reports proving what was really going on. Ellsberg xeroxed over 7000 pages of documents that would come to be known as "The Pentagon Papers." They did not show the Kennedy, Johnson OR Nixon administrations in a favorable light. He then distributed the documents to newspapers, and to sympathetic members of Congress. Sixteen newspapers published portions of the papers. Senator Mike Gravel put 4000 pages of it into the record of his subcommittee, so it would be included in the public record.
Nixon and his advisors went berzerk. They tried, without success, to block publication of "The Pentagon Papers." Outrage of Ellsberg led to the formation of "The Plumbers"....so named so that they would stop leaks of information. Really, they were Nixon's thugs. There were various schemes to discredit Ellsberg: a failed plan to dose him with LSD before a speech, a breakin to Ellsberg's psychiatrists office to try and prove he was a pervert (they found nothing), illegal wiretapping of his phones...the list goes on and on. The result was, while Ellsberg was fully prepared to go to jail, his trial was declared a mistrial. The Plumbers would continue to antagonize people and groups on Nixon's enemies list. Most famously, on June 17, 1972, they would botch a burglary of the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel....but more on that later.
One reason Nixon desired everybody to shut up and behave at home, was because his real interest was foreign affairs. He made it "perfectly clear" from pretty early on that he wanted to basically be his own Secretary of State. The main focus was on Vietnam. Nixon hoped to reduce war resistance by limiting the draft to 19 year olds only. Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger decided the best route to victory in Vietnam was to illegally bomb the crap out of Cambodia. While this did temporarily cut off the supply line for North Vietnam, at best it just delayed their ultimate victory 2 years later. The other result of the bombing was that it enabled the rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. Satirical song-writer would later comment "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."
What Nixon and Kissinger did do that eventually helped bring an end to the Vietnam War, was to establish diplomatic ties with China. Since the communist takeover of China in 1949, the United States recogized Taiwan, "The Republic of China"....one tiny island, to be the official government of China. Rather ridiculous. Also, the cooling of relations between the Soviet Union and China, the timing was good. Therefore Nixon, who had built a career on being anti-communist, opened diplomatic ties with communist China. It was the high point of his entire administration, and one that still resonates today. I was listening to an episode of "This American Life" about Americans that live in China. One American actually had the experience of someone shouting "You haven't had a good president since Nixon!" (On a side note, in 1987 American composer John Adams wrote an opera about the event called "Nixon in China." The entire opera can be viewed on youtube. Here is a sample:
Nixon and Kissinger also worked to establish "detente" with the Soviet Union....pretty much a fancy French word for "tolerating and not nuking each other." The Soviet Union was far more open to negotiation due to fear of the United States forming an alliance with China. There was some progress, but Nixon's clout diminished over his second term as his administration became consumed by the Watergate Scandal.
For the most part, Vietnam ended on Nixon's watch as well. In 1973 there was finally a successful negotiation to release American prisoners. American troops would leave, but North Vietnamese troops were allowed to stay where they were. Didn't take a genius to see the South Vietnamese government was doomed. Partly the war ended when it did because Congress finally stopped funding it. In the Stephen Ambrose biography he comments that "...nearly all the names on the left-had side of the Vietnam Wall in Washington commemorate men who died in action while Richard Nixon was their commander in chief, and they died after he had decided that the war could not be won."
On the home front, except for working to limit the funding of Great Society programs, Nixon's record is surprisingly liberal. He's even been called "the last liberal president" by activist Noam Chomsky. (And why that history paper in high school was such a bear to write....it didn't fit the pattern.) This wasn't out of any sort of convictions on Nixon's part, but merely because he had to work with a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress during his entire administration. Under the Nixon administration, we saw the founding of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Mine Health and Safety Act, and Title IX which is best known for providing equal opportunities for women in high school and college sports. Nixon also declared himself a Keynesian (almost unheard of for a Republican to do) and temporarily instituted wage and price controls to try and get a handle on the country's economic problems.
In 1972 the re-election campaign was in full-swing. To this day, thanks to efficient disposal of documents, we can't be sure who exactly made the order to break-in to Democratic Headquarters. It was most likely Attorney General John Mitchell. Nixon, at least initially, was probably not involved directly. He was in Florida with his buddy Bebe when news of the break-in occurred, and at the time he actually laughed it off. What ultimately implicated Nixon was first by ordering a cover-up, and second, by the massive amount of evidence he accumulated against himself thanks to all the White House conversations he secretly recorded. Taping White House conversations was nothing new. We actually have recordings as far back as FDR. Johnson suggested using the taping system as a tool for the memoirs later on. Nixon initially thought it was a dumb idea and had the taping system removed, but later he reconsidered. Ultimately, while the Johnson administration had 600 hours worth of recordings, the Nixon administration would amass over 3000 hours.
Still, even with all of that, he might have gotten away with it if it weren't for those pesky kids at the Washington Post. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were both in their 20's, and were at the bottom of the totem pole for status at the Washington Post. Their relentless investigation of the Watergate Scandal (and solid support from editor Ben Bradlee, and Washington Post owner Katherine Graham) was a major factor in ultimately exposing how enmeshed the Nixon administration was in the scandal. Their most famous source was until recently known as "Deep Throat." His real name was Mark Felt. Woodward met Felt during his days in the Navy. Felt worked for the FBI, and was passed over to head the organization. So his motives in helping out Woodward weren't exactly noble, but were extremely useful.
By 1973 Watergate consumed more and more of Nixon's time. He would try to distract himself and the nation by focusing on foreign affairs....such as trying to negotiate peace between Egypt and Israel, and continued negotiations with the Soviet Union. He also made the orders to help destabilize the socialist Democratically-elected Allende in Chile. The coup that followed resulted in the assassination of Allende and brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet ruling the country until 1990. Nixon had no regrets. In his eyes authoritarian governments were fine as long as they were not communist.
Nixon wasn't the only one in the West Wing with legal problems. Vice President Spiro Agnew began to be investigated of accepting bribes. When Vice-President Agnew resigned, weirdly, the next person in line for the presidency was a Democrat: Speaker of the House Carl Albert. Deciding on a replacement Vice-President was a bit like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Reagan was too conservative, Rockefeller was too liberal, and Ford was just right. Nixon partly saw Ford as insurance against impeachment. He figured nobody would want a perceived light-weight like Ford running the country. On the other hand, the Democrats in Congress found the likable Ford a great option, because they figured he'd be easy to beat in the 1976 presidential election.
In 1973 an 1974 Watergate hearings were on television so much, that one of my friends, who was preschool age, just thought it was a regular TV show. Nixon's behavior became increasingly erratic, and he was drinking to excess. He did whatever he could not to hand over any of the evidence for Watergate, even after it was subpoenaed. He also had no compunctions about sacrificing long time supporters to try and save himself. Ultimately Nixon made the decision to resign when he realized that he didn't even have 10 Republican votes in the house against impeachment.
One month after his resignation, Ford pardoned Nixon. For the rest of Nixon's life, the two were careful not to appear in public together too much, to stop rumors that they had made a deal.
Nixon plugged away at his book, and scheming for yet another comeback, this time as an elder statesman. His wife Pat once asked him how he could manage to keep going. He said "I just get up in the morning to confound my enemies." He'd later tell a journalist "A man is not finished when he is defeated. He's finished when he quits. My philosophy is no matter how many times you are knocked down you get off that floor, even if you are bloody, battered and beaten, and just keep on slugging..."
His comeback really began with the famous Frost-Nixon interviews. The play and the movie would lead you to believe it was an even match. Personally I think David Frost was out of his league. During most of the interviews Nixon runs verbal circles around Frost. However, there are some interesting small moments. Such as when Nixon said "If the president does it, then it is not illegal." When Frost suggests that Nixon might be "the last casualty of the Vietnam War" Nixon is noticably taken aback, and possibly near tears. However, for the most part, thanks to the dissembling and sometimes bald-faced lies from Nixon, the interviews are more interesting for watching how Nixon thinks and operates, than for learning any facts.
In 1981 President Reagan asked the 3 former presidents: Nixon, Ford and Carter, to fly together to Anwar Sadat's funeral. I don't envy poor Jerry Ford 40 hours on a plane with not one but TWO socially awkward ex-presidents. Later, when Bob Dole saw the pictures of the three ex-presidents together he quipped "Did you see the pictures? There they were, See No Evil, Here No Evil and Evil."
By 1990 Nixon did what would have seemed impossible 15 years before: he saw the opening of his presidential library. It was run by his private foundation instead of the National Archives so, much to his delight, he had a lot of control over what sort of materials would be in the library. Currently it is jointly run by NARA and the Nixon Foundation and has become a lot more forthcoming with resources, and has a much more honest display about Watergate.
Richard Nixon died on April 22, 1994 and was buried on the grounds of the Nixon library.
It will be interesting to see what Nixon's legacy is as time goes on. He himself remarked it all depended on who wrote the history books. My take on it is that he caused damage to the American presidency that the United States has never totally recovered from. Although he also proved that sometimes the system works. The combined efforts of the Supreme Court, Congress and the press removed a president from office who was corrupt.
Resources
It was tricky trying to find a solid biography about Nixon. Now that all the tapes are released, I imagine there will be some high quality biographies in the future. I did not want to read the Conrad Black biography as Black is a pretty notorious criminal himself. It will also be interesting to see what sort of biographies emerge from authors who were not alive during the Nixon administration. I've found in my research even the most detached journalist starts to froth at the mouth when Nixon is mentioned. In Stanley Karnow's book "Vietnam: A History" after he's so careful to cover the war from every perspective....he gets downright sarcastic when he talks about Tricky Dick. I'm sure it didn't help that he was on Nixon's enemies list.
"Vietnam A History" - Stanley Karnow
"Nixon Volume 1: The Education of a Politician 1913-1962" "Nixon the Triumph of a Politician 1962-1972" "Nixon Ruin and Recovery 1973-1990" by Stephen Ambrose - a very very different animal from Ambrose's biography on Eisenhower. Ambrose clearly struggles with the subject and struggles to maintain objectivity. Also as the books came out in the 1980's, new information has since emerged. Still, to date, best option for Nixon biographies I have found.
"Final Days" by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein - Interesting as a piece of history but dubious as a source. I found the tone gossipy and the information questionable.
"Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power" by Robert Dallek The most objective out of all the books I read. Focuses on Nixon's foreign policy and his frenemy sort of relationship with Kissinger. I found it interesting that Dallek commented that out of all the president he has written about, Nixon was the most complicated. Personally I thought Johnson was harder.
"Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America" by Rick Perlstein - still wading through this one. Interesting tidbits on Nixon, but so far seems to be best at capturing the political climate of the United States from the late 60's to the mid 70's.
"American Experience: Richard Nixon" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/nixon/
"The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers" (documentary)
"All the President's Men" - The movie commentary and the special features actually have some great interviews and insight on Woodward and Bernstein and the whole process of investigating Watergate.