Dead Presidents

Happy Birthday to Richard Milhous Nixon!  It seems that everybody has an opinion on Richard Nixon.  There are certainly a lot of reasons to dislike Nixon, but he also possessed some extraordinary talents.  At times, it is difficult to defend Nixon because he was forced to resign the Presidency in disgrace due to the Watergate scandal.  However, we often neglect to do what President Clinton urged at Nixon’s 1994 funeral: “to remember President Nixon’s live in totality” so that Americans could move past the days of “judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career”.

The 37th President of the United States was born 99 years ago today, on January 9, 1913 in a small home that his father ordered from a Sears & Roebuck catalogue and built in Yorba Linda, California.  Nixon was born into a Quaker family and his mother was devoutly religious.  The future President’s childhood was not easy.  The Nixon family was poor and every business venture that Nixon’s father attempted seemed to fail.  Nixon was the second of five children — all boys — and as a young boy he watched tuberculosis claim the lives of a 7-year-old younger brother and his 23-year-old older brother.

Always smart, naturally hard-working, and exceptionally tenacious, Nixon excelled at Whittier High School in Southern California and then Whittier College, where he played football, was the captain of the debate team, and student body president.  In 1934, Nixon graduated second in his class from Whittier and entered Duke University Law School in North Carolina, which he graduated from in 1937 third out of 25 students.

Returning to California after graduating from Duke, Nixon passed the bar exam and began practicing law in Whittier.  At one point, Nixon attempted to start a company that sold frozen orange juice but his business had the same luck that Nixon’s father’s businesses had — it failed.  When the United States entered World War II in 1941, Nixon — who had worked for one of the National Youth Administration projects created by FDR’s New Deal in order to earn extra money at Duke — took a job with the Office of Price Administration in Washington, D.C.  It was during this experience that Nixon’s Republican beliefs were solidified as he grew frustrated with what he saw as bureaucratic waste and inefficiency from a bloated federal government.

In June 1942, Nixon enlisted in the United States Navy.  After basic training and Officer Candidate school, Nixon was stationed for a bit in Iowa before he was granted his request to be moved closer to the front lines.  Because Nixon was a Quaker, he could have easily requested a deferment due to the pacifist nature of his faith, but Nixon felt duty-bound to fight for a cause that he believed in.  Nixon was shipped out to the South Pacific where he helped organize operations and logistics on Bougainville Island and Green Island in present-day Papua New Guinea.  While Nixon was not directly engaged in combat, he served with honor and distinction and rose to lieutenant commander by the time he left the Navy in March 1946.

Almost immediately upon returning home to California, Republican businessmen in Los Angeles County recruited the 33-year-old veteran to challenge Rep. Jerry Voorhis, a five-term incumbent in California’s 12th Congressional district.  Nixon’s stunning upset of Voorhis skyrocketed him into Washington.  Nixon’s rise was meteoric, and helped by his active role in drafting the Taft-Hartley Act (as a freshman in the House of Representatives, no less) and becoming a passionate anti-Communist with a visible role as a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee.  By 1950, Nixon was a national figure with his controversial targeting of former State Department official Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy.  Hiss wasn’t charged with espionage due to the statute of limitations, but he was convicted of perjury for lying to Congress about his connection to the Soviets.

Riding a wave of popularity as a Communist fighter and Cold Warrior, Nixon defeated a fellow member of California’s Congressional delegation, Helen Gahagan Douglas, for a seat in the United States Senate.  Nixon’s campaign against Douglas was almost solely based on painting her as a Communist, or Communist-puppet at best.  Due to his lack of reluctance to get down-and-dirty with the campaign, the 1950 Senate campaign was where Nixon earned his nickname, “Tricky Dick”.

At 33, Nixon was elected to the House of Representatives and just a few days before he turned 38 years old, he was now Senator Nixon.  Yet, he continued to rise.  In 1952, the most respected military leader in the world. the man who commanded the D-Day Invasion of France in World War II, and the most admired person in the nation, Dwight D. Eisenhower decided to seek the Republican nomination as President.  Once Eisenhower was nominated, it was almost a foregone conclusion that he would win the election.  On Election Day 1952, Eisenhower was going to be 62 years old and a moderate Republican from the Midwest, so Ike balanced the ticket in every way by choosing Nixon as his running mate.  Nixon was young, he was conservative, and he balanced everything geographically by coming from California. 

Nixon almost didn’t make it to Election Day 1952, however.  During the campaign, the New York Post reported that wealthy supporters had given Nixon a secret $18,000 fund that he used for personal expenses.  Many Republicans urged Eisenhower to dump Nixon from the ticket, and Ike seriously considered it.  But on September 23, 1952, Nixon took the extraordinary and unprecedented step of taking his case to the people of the United States.  In a 30-minute speech broadcast on televisions throughout the nation, Nixon explained everything he owned, how much money he had, how much he was worth, and what his obligations were while vehemently denying the Post’s story.  There was a special fund set up by supporters, but Nixon insisted that he had never used a cent for personal expenses.  Nixon did admit to one gift — a cocker spaniel named “Checkers” that was given to his daughter Tricia by a supporter in Texas.  Looking into the camera and into the homes of Americans across the country, Nixon said of Tricia’s pet dog, “I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.”  Switchboards and telegram offices were inundated with messages of support for Nixon, and when he met with Eisenhower the very next day, Ike smiled at him and simply said, “You’re my boy!”.

Inaugurated as Vice President on January 20, 1953, Richard Nixon had celebrated his 40th birthday less than two weeks earlier, making him the second-youngest Vice President in American History (President Buchanan’s VP, John C. Breckinridge, was 36 years old when he was inaugurated).  Vice President Nixon took a more active role in the Eisenhower Administration than almost any of his predecessors had previously possessed.  Twice during his eight years as Vice President, it appeared as if Nixon might have to assume the Presidency due to President Eisenhower’s 1955 heart attack and a minor stroke in 1957 that temporarily impaired the President.  Nixon also played a visible part in the famous “Kitchen Debate” with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at an American exhibition in Moscow and when his vehicle was attacked by protesters during a visit to several South American countries in 1958.

As the 1960 Presidential election approached, Nixon was the clear front-runner for the Republican nomination.  Despite his loyal service over the previous eight years, Nixon was somewhat hindered by lukewarm support from President Eisenhower, who didn’t immediately endorse Nixon while the Vice President was still battling Republican challengers for the nomination and really hurt Nixon by saying, “If you give me a week, I might think of one” when a reporter asked Ike for an example of major decisions or issues that Nixon had played a big part in.  Still, Nixon claimed the Republican nomination and faced the Democratic nominee, Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy, in the general election.

Nixon and Kennedy were both young men in 1960.  Even after six years in Congress and eight years as Vice President, Nixon was just 47 years old on Election Day 1960.  JFK was four years younger.  Both men were energetic, relentless campaigners and the race was a close one all the way up until Election Day.  Nixon exhausted himself during the campaign by following through on a pledge to campaign in all 50 states of the union and was hospitalized for nearly two weeks with a serious infection.  Although JFK was fair enough to suspend his campaign during Nixon’s hospitalization, the Vice President was robbed of any momentum he had gained after clinching the nomination at the Republican National Convention.

What is best-remembered is the very first nationally-televised Presidential debates.  Nixon and Kennedy engaged in four debates prior to Election Day and 120 million Americans watched at least one of them.  Most Americans (more than 70 million) either watched or listened to the first debate, on September 26, 1960. Those who listened to the debate on the radio considered Nixon to be victorious, but those who watched on television had a very different opinion — and the effect that the televised debate had on American politics permeates every aspect of contemporary politics, whether it is Presidential, Congressional, state, or local.  JFK was tanned, fit, and dressed sharply, and even though it was watched in black-and-white, Kennedy definitely looked better.  Nixon had only been out of the hospital for a few days and had lost a noticeable amount of weight, he refused to wear television makeup so he looked pale and unshaven, and underneath the klieg lights the Vice President — who had a problem with sweating profusely in almost any situation — simply looked like a sick man.  With that first debate, image became an indelible aspect of American politics.

Even with the setbacks, the Presidential election on November 8, 1960 was one of the closest in American History.  A shift of just a small amount of votes in a few key states would have guaranteed a victory for Nixon.  As it was, widespread voter fraud was alleged in Texas (home of JFK’s running mate, powerful Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson) and Cook County, Illinois (where it’s almost certain that the dominant machine of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley pulled some strings and pushed some buttons to ensure that JFK won Illinois).  Many of Nixon’s supporters and friends advised him to challenge the clearly shady results, but Nixon refused and insisted that the country needed to be stable and that challenging the Presidential election would result in turmoil both at home and abroad.

After JFK was inaugurated, Nixon went home to California to make some money by practicing law and by writing.  In 1962, he challenged California’s popular Democratic Governor Pat Brown.  Just two years after losing the Presidency by the narrowest of margins, Nixon was soundly defeated by Governor Brown in the gubernatorial race.  Not only was it a stunning setback, but it seemed to be the final nail in the coffin of Nixon’s once-promising political career.  As he conceded the election to Brown at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles the next morning, Nixon was visibly irritated, humiliated by the loss, and angry at the press.  To the reporters gathered in the ballroom, Nixon rambled about his press coverage and told the assembled media, “As I leave you I want you to know — just think how much you’re going to be missing.  You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”

And just like that, it seemed that the shooting star which Richard Milhous Nixon’s political career appeared to be had somehow burned itself out.  Nixon went into a sort of self-imposed political exile.  He and his family moved to the East Coast and Nixon made some good money practicing law in New York.  He did a little bit of campaigning for Barry Goldwater in the Republican’s doomed 1964 Presidential campaign against President Lyndon B. Johnson.  He went to the dinner and cocktail parties that he actually despised attending, but he did it to quietly build support, to listen to the people, and to reconnect to the political life which he seemed to have been forever stripped of.

We know what happened.  In 1968, he easily won the Republican nomination and narrowly defeated Democratic nominee Hubert H. Humphrey to finally win the White House after the incumbent President, Lyndon Johnson, declined to seek reelection and JFK’s brother, New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated after the California Primary.  In 1972, Nixon was reelected by one of the largest popular and electoral vote margins in American History.  Throughout his term, Nixon’s brilliance in formulating policies and engaging in international diplomacy was hindered by his domestic paranoia and his inability to just be satisfied with winning as opposed to destroying his opponents, or, as he would call them, his “enemies”.

There was a bungled burglary at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex.  There was a cover-up and a concerted effort to obstruct justice and evade the consequences of the actions of the President and his Administration.  People went to jail, a nation was torn apart, the institutions that we were supposed to trust became untrustworthy, and the Presidency and the politics surrounding the Presidency would never be the same again.

Finally, when Nixon could no longer fight; when he knew he could no longer count on anyone’s support; when he knew that the tapes which implicated him in the crimes that he denied were impossible to hide, Nixon did what he said he would never do.  He quit.  A month later, his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned Nixon in order to get the country moving forward.  It was unpopular and probably cost Ford a chance to be elected President in his own right, but almost every historian and politician from both sides of the aisle now feel that Ford’s actions were not only correct, but courageous.

When Nixon left the White House in August 1974 and returned to La Casa Pacifica in San Clemente, it seemed to be the final exile.  While he somehow resurrected himself after his disastrous defeat in the 1962 California gubernatorial campaign, there was definitely no coming back from Watergate.  Nixon was radioactive — political suicide for anyone who got too close.

Then a funny thing started happening in the 1980s.  People started asking Nixon for advice, particularly on foreign relations, especially in regards to China and the Soviet Union.  Nixon began speaking to groups, writing books, and somehow shaping his legacy.  He built a Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, with his birthplace — that little house his father bought from Sears and built himself — on the grounds.  Sometimes President George H.W. Bush would call him for advice.  When his Library was finished, there was a remarkable scene — Nixon alongside Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush.  Nixon was no longer radioactive; he was an elder statesman.

In 1993, a young Democrat, Bill Clinton, moved into the White House.  Clinton was a  college student and young adult during Nixon’s Presidency.  He worked for George McGovern, Nixon’s opponent in 1972.  The new First Lady, Hillary Clinton, was a staff member on the House Judiciary Committee that prepared to impeach Nixon prior to his resignation in 1974.  Yet, they reached out to Nixon.  They invited him to the White House.  Clinton would call Nixon for hours to discuss Russia and China.  Nixon said he had never been treated better by a President than Bill Clinton.

In June 1993, Nixon’s wife, Pat, died.  Nixon hadn’t always been the greatest husband, but his love for Pat was obvious and enduring.  The first time he met her in 1937 — literally on their very first date — Nixon proposed marriage.  She though he was insane and turned him down, but Richard Nixon was tenacious and determined.  When she dated other guys, Nixon volunteered to drive her on her dates, to make sure that she was safe.  He was in love and she soon reciprocated that love.  They were married in 1940 and had two daughters.

The Presidency took a toll on Pat Nixon, too.  She suffered strokes in 1976 and 1983 and Nixon painstakingly waited on her, helped her with her therapy, and challenged her to work harder at overcoming her impairment.  When she died, Nixon was devastated.  There is video of Nixon at her funeral, inconsolable.  An 80-year-old man with big, heaving sobs of pure despair and loneliness.  Nobody who witnessed it could be anything besides touched.  Nixon’s rival in the 1972 campaign, George McGovern, was the victim of many of “Tricky Dick’s” dirtiest tricks, and stunned at how hard Nixon was taking the loss.  When a reporter asked McGovern why he would show up at Pat Nixon’s funeral after everything he had to deal with from her husband, McGovern was almost disgusted.  “You can’t keep campaigning forever,” said McGovern.

Nixon died exactly ten months after Pat Nixon passed away.  While sitting at his writing desk in Saddle River, New Jersey, surrounded by books and the yellow legal pads he always jotted notes down on, Nixon suffered a stroke on April 18, 1994.  By the time Nixon was transported to the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan, he was paralyzed on his right side, unable to speak or see.  Soon afterward, he slipped into a deep coma and never awakened.  At 9:08 PM on April 22, 1994, Richard Milhous Nixon died at the age of 81.

Instead of a state funeral in Washington, D.C, Nixon’s was flown in one of the planes that is usually Air Force One back to California.  Thousands of mourners braved heavy rain to line up and pay their respects at Nixon’s closed casket at it lied in repose in the lobby of the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda.  At the funeral for the former President, outside of his Library and in the shadow of his birthplace, family, friends, and dignitaries gathered.  There were former aides and associates, enemies and opponents, and every living President, former President, Vice President, and former Vice President.  Nixon’s first Vice President, Spiro Agnew, had resigned in disgrace a few months before Nixon did, but even he attended.

In the front row were Nixon’s five successors — President Ford, President Carter, President Reagan (in his last official public appearance before Alzheimer’s began taking its heavy toll), President George H.W. Bush, President Clinton, and their respective First Ladies.  President Clinton and California Governor Pete Wilson spoke of reconciliation and forgiveness and Nixon’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, uttered a sentence that was just as true of Nixon as it probably was of our nation’s experience with Nixon:  “He achieved greatly, suffered deeply”.

Today, two simple, black gravestones mark the final resting places of Pat Nixon and Richard Nixon.  They are just a few feet from the back door of the house that the 37th President of the United States was born in.  And in that quiet corner of Yorba Linda, the Southern California sun is usually shining on these words “The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker.”