Dead Presidents

At 9:08 PM on April 22, 1994, Richard Milhous Nixon died at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in New York City.  Four days earlier, the 81-year-old former President had suffered a massive stroke at his home in Park Ridge, New Jersey, and swelling in his brain left him in a deep coma.  Nixon, whose wife Pat had died less than a year earlier, had a living will instructing doctors not to use a ventilator or life-sustaining procedures in order to prolong his death, and he died with his daughters, Tricia and Julie, nearby.

Nixon’s death came just a few months before the 20th anniversary of his historic resignation due to the Watergate scandal and while he was forever tainted by the actions which led him to resign the Presidency, he had continued to lead an active life, writing books, traveling, and remaining one of the nation’s top experts on Russia and China.  While most Presidents who succeeded Nixon in the White House kept their distance from the Republican who had been the 37th President, the Democrat who became the 42nd President a year before Nixon died had surprisingly sought Nixon’s advice on foreign relations, particularly when it came to dealing with Russia’s Boris Yeltsin.  Nixon was flattered by Clinton’s outreach, happy to dispense advice, and impressed by Clinton’s intelligence and work ethic.

It was President Clinton who announced the death of President Nixon to the nation in a short speech from the White House Rose Garden nineteen years ago tonight.  In his remarks that night, two hours after Nixon had died, Clinton said:

“It’s impossible to be in this job without feeling a special bond with the people who have gone before, and I was deeply grateful to President Nixon for his wise counsel on so many occasions on many issues over the last year.  His service to me and to our country during this period was like the rest of his service to the Nation for nearly a half century: He gave of himself with intelligence and devotion to duty.  And his country owes him a debt of gratitude for that service…

To be sure, he experienced his fair share of adversity and controversy.  But his resilience and his diligent desire to give something back to his country and to the world provide a lesson for all of us about maintaining our faith in the future.  In spite of everything, that faith led President Nixon to leave his mark on his times as few national figures have done in our history and led him to continue to serve right up to the end of his life.  Indeed, no less than a month before his passing, he was still in touch with me about the great issues of this day.”

Richard Nixon was the first death of a former President of the United States in 22 years — the last President to die before Nixon was Lyndon Johnson in 1973, so it had been a generation since Americans had experienced the pageantry and traditions of a Presidential funeral.  Nixon, however, declined the offer of a State funeral, meaning it would be another decade — until the State funeral of Ronald Reagan in 2004 — until the American public experienced a ceremony with all the trappings of most modern Presidential funerals.  Nixon preferred a simple ceremony in which his body would lie in repose at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California before a relatively short outdoor service prior to his burial next to his wife, just steps away from the house that the former President was born in.

Despite Richard Nixon’s resignation and the stain of Watergate, between 60,000 and 75,000 people waited for hours in an uncharacteristically heavy rainfall in Southern California to pass by the former President’s closed casket and pay their respects inside the lobby of his Presidential Library.  On April 27th, dignitaries from around the world, including all five living Presidents — Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton — as well as Nixon’s former Vice President Spiro Agnew and opponent in the bitter 1972 Presidential campaign, George McGovern, gathered for Nixon’s funeral in Yorba Linda.  Officiated by the Reverend Billy Graham, Nixon was eulogized by California Governor Pete Wilson, an emotional Senator Bob Dole, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who noted that Nixon “achieved greatly; suffered deeply.”

President Clinton gave the main eulogy and attempted to recognize Nixon’s achievements while healing some of the wounds of Watergate and the worst of Richard Nixon by casting aside partisan differences:   

“As a public man, he always seemed to believe the greatest sin was remaining passive in the face of challenges, and he never stopped living by that creed…

Oh, yes, he knew great controversy amid defeat as well as victory.  He made mistakes, and they, like his accomplishments, are a part of his life and record.  But the enduring lesson of Richard Nixon is that he never gave up being part of the action and passion of his times.  He said many times that unless a person has a goal, a new mountain to climb, his spirit will die.  Well, based on our last phone conversation and the letter he wrote me just a month ago, I can say that his spirit was very much alive to the very end.

That is a great tribute to him, to his wonderful wife, Pat, to his children and to his grandchildren, whose love he so depended on and whose love he returned in full measure.  Today is a day for his family, his friends, and his nation to remember President Nixon’s life in totality.  To them, let us say: may the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to a close.

May we heed his call to maintain the will and the wisdom to build on America’s greatest gift, its freedom, and to lead a world full of difficulty to the just and lasting peace he dreamed of.

As it is written in the words of a hymn I heard in my church last Sunday, ‘Grant that I may realize that the trifling of life creates differences, but that in the higher things we are all one.’  In the twilight of his life, President Nixon knew that lesson well.  It is, I feel, certainly a fate he would want us all to keep.

And so, on behalf of all four former Presidents who are here — President Ford, President Carter, President Reagan, President Bush — and on behalf of a grateful nation, we bid farewell to Richard Milhous Nixon.”

Later that night, President Nixon was buried — underneath a small headstone reading “The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker” — next to his wife Pat in a simple plot just steps away from the backdoor of the house that his father built and that the 37th President of the United States had been born in on a January day in 1913.

Speaking of suits, that last question, about whether I would wear a suit as President, reminds me of my favorite Presidential book, Bob Greene’s wonderful Fraternity: A Journey In Search of Five Presidents (BOOK•KINDLE).  In the book, Greene sets out to visit with five former Presidents who are in different stages of retirement.  Although he is unable to see the ailing Ronald Reagan, Greene spends time with Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush and gives the reader interesting insights on how they live and what their lives are like after being the most powerful and recognizable person in the world.

Nixon is the first former President that Greene visits and the author is surprised to find out that Nixon never took off his suit jacket while in the Oval Office and, nearly 20 years after his resignation, the former President still worked in a suit jacket and tie — even if he was sitting in his home office all day and working alone on a book that he was writing.  ”It isn’t a case of trying to be formal,” Nixon told Greene, “But I’m more comfortable that way.  I’ve done it all my life.  I don’t mind people around here in the office, particularly younger people — they usually take their coats off.  But I just never have.  It’s just the way I am.  I work in a coat and tie — and believe me, believe it or not, it’s hard for people to realize, but when I’m writing a speech or working on a book or dictating or so forth, I’m always wearing a coat and tie.  Even when I’m alone.  If I were to take it off, probably I would catch cold.  That’s the way it is.”

In a way, however, Nixon’s formality isn’t all that surprising.  After all, there are many photos of a relaxing Nixon walking the beach along the Pacific Ocean near his home in San Clemente, California, La Casa Pacifica sans suit coat and tie, but in suit pants and wingtips.

Later in Fraternity, when Bob Greene visited with former President George H.W. Bush, he was struck by how down-to-earth and relaxed the supposedly-patrician, WASPish 41st President was.  Greene decided to tell Bush about Nixon’s personal suit-and-tie rule and get another President’s opinion, so I’ll share that excerpt from Fraternity, a book that I’ve recommended countless times and will undoubtedly recommend again:

“Mr. Nixon said that he permitted the men in his office to take their suit coats off, but that he never did, because he wouldn’t like the way it made him feel,” I (Greene) said.

“I never did, in the Oval Office,” Bush said.

“You didn’t take your suit coat off?” I said.  Bush was still jacketless as we sat and talked.

“No,” Bush said.

“When you were alone?” I asked.

“THAT’S what you’re talking about — Nixon wouldn’t even take his jacket off when he was alone?” Bush said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Oh,” Bush said, looking toward the ceiling as if trying to picture this.  ”I see,” he said, sounding as if he found the notion quite peculiar.

He thought for a second.  ”I might have taken it off when I was alone in the Oval Office,” he said.  ”But when people were there, I put a jacket on.”

“But Mr. Nixon said that wherever he was, not just in the Oval Office, when he was alone working on a speech by himself or something, he would keep his suit jacket on,” I said.  ”He had to have it on.”

“No,” Bush said, remembering his own routine in the White House.  ”I think I would go in there to the Oval Office on a Saturday morning when nobody was there, and I wouldn’t wear a jacket.  At he house, the living quarters part of the White House, that’s different, too.  I mean, I’d walk around there in a bathrobe.  I mean, you know, the bedroom?  You’re not going to wear a suit.”

So, there you go, more than you’ll ever need to know about Presidents and suits.  Again, you’re missing out if you’ve never read Bob Greene’s Fraternity: A Journey In Search of Five Presidents (BOOK•KINDLE).  It is my favorite Presidential book because I love how Greene presents the Presidents he visits as people.  Instead of simply looking at what they did or did not do, Greene asks the Presidents he talks to — Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Bush 41 — exactly what I would want to ask a President:  ”What did it feel like?”  I am confident that it is a book that many of my readers would really love.

•This is an Historically Accurate Transcription starring President Lyndon B. Johnson and President-elect Richard Nixon•

NIXON: Let me get this straight — you’re saying I should tape every conversation I have in the Oval Office?
LBJ: Absolutely.  It’s the only way to go.
NIXON: I don’t know, Lyndon.  It seems like something that could bite me in the ass.
LBJ: Not a chance in Hell.  You’re going to be the President of the United States.  You can burn the tapes and cover things up, if necessary.
NIXON: It doesn’t seem right.  It seems like a risky move.
LBJ: Don’t be a pussy…it will make writing your memoirs much easier.
NIXON: Should I make it known that I record conversations?
LBJ: Hell no!  Just do it!  What’s the worst that could happen?  Some asshole will get mad that their voice was recorded?  Boo-fucking-hoo.  Tell them that you’ll give them a copy of them chatting with the President so they look cool in front of their friends.
NIXON: What if Congress catches wind of it?  It seems like I might be changing the nature of Presidential record-keeping and risking Executive Privilege.
LBJ: Dick…hahahaha…I said “Dick”!  Anyway, Dick…hahahaha..
NIXON: Dude…
LBJ: Okay, sorry.  Seriously, fuck Congress.  What can they do?
NIXON: Impeach me?
LBJ: They never ACTUALLY impeach anyone.  Especially since your Vice President is going to be that crooked retard Spiro Agnew.
NIXON: Good point.  He’s from Maryland.  Nobody wants a President from Maryland.
LBJ: Maryland doesn’t want a President from Maryland.
NIXON: Maryland is where Virginia and Pennsylvania stores garbage and sex offenders.
LBJ: If states were people, Maryland would be the creepy homeless guy who gives handjobs for crack money.
NIXON: Maryland is to Baltimore what bad parenting is to serial killers.
LBJ: Maryland gave Hepatitis to West Virginia and now they both make people sick.
NIXON: Okay…but back to the tapes…are you SURE this is a good idea?
LBJ: It’s a slam dunk.  Tape the conversations, have them transcribed, make copies, and you’ll never have anything to worry about.  Nobody ever got in trouble for telling everyone exactly what happened.
NIXON: But what if…
LBJ: No “what ifs”, Dick…hahahaha…”Dick”…just take my advice.  Shit, you act like you’re going to mastermind a criminal conspiracy and then try to cover it up from the Oval Office.  Tape the conversations and make sure not to make a bunch of anti-Semetic or borderline racist statements that will be preserved for history and kept in the National Archives.  Why does this seem so hard to you?
NIXON: I just have a bad feeling about this.  I feel like Maryland smells.
LBJ: Maryland eats dick sandwiches for breakfast and gets beat up regularly by Delaware.
NIXON: There’s a petition going around from women named Mary.  They want their name removed from “Maryland” because it’s insulting to everyone named Mary.
LBJ: What are they going to call it?  Shitland?
NIXON: Alright, we get the joke already, Maryland sucks.
LBJ: Dick.
NIXON: What?
LBJ: I wasn’t saying your name, I was using the adjective most fitting when describing you.

•This is an Historically Accurate Transcription starring President Richard Nixon and Elvis Presley•

NIXON: Thanks for coming by, Elvis.  I know that it’s your birthday today and my birthday is tomorrow, so I figured we’d have ourselves a little party.
ELVIS: No problem, Mr. President.  You know I dig your Oval Office parties!  Can you turn the tape recorder off, though?  You know how I roll…
NIXON: Of course, we wouldn’t want to get ourselves in trouble.  Oh wait, I’m the President!  I can’t get in trouble.  Did you bring what I asked? 
ELVIS: Yes, sir.  Wait a second…who is this guy with the glasses?  Is he a Narc?  This guy gonna turn us in?  I don’t like guys with glasses.
NIXON: Well, you had glasses on when you came in.  They are right there on the table.
ELVIS: Those aren’t glasses.  Those are shades, man.  Seriously, he can stay, but can you have him stop looking at me?
NIXON: Wow…check out those cuff links!  That is the definition of bling, Elvis.
ELVIS: Man, these are diamonds created from the cremated bones of Tyrannosaurus Rex legs.  You know how much these cost?
NIXON: How much?
ELVIS: I don’t know, Dick…I was fucking HIGH AS HELL when I bought them!
NIXON: (Laughs)  That reminds me…did you bring the sticky-icky?  Let’s get this party started.  I might even take my suit jacket off!
ELVIS: Oh, I brought it.  This creepy dude with glasses has to leave, though.
NIXON: He’s fine, Elvis.  Let’s hotbox the Oval Office and get some girls in here.  I want to dance.  Dick Nixon wants to get down!
ELVIS: Creepy guy with glasses can stay, but I’ll karate chop him if he doesn’t stop looking at me.  Where’s the Memphis Mafia…they brought the girls.  You wanna roll a blunt for us, Dick?
NIXON: Absolutely.  Happy Birthday, King.
ELVIS: Thank you, thankyouverymuch.  Happy Birthday, Mr. President

•This is an Historically Accurate Transcription starring Vice President Richard Nixon and Cuban Leader Fidel Castro at the U.S. Capitol•

NIXON: Well, this is awkward.
FIDEL: Indeed it is.
NIXON: So, I’m Richard Nixon, Vice President of the United States.
FIDEL: Pleased to meet you, Mr. Vice President.  I’m Fidel Castro, half-Revolutionary, half-statesman, and 100% absofuckinglutely awesome.  Want a cigar?
NIXON: No thank you, nothing against your fine people and their tobacco products, but it’s probably laced with AIDS and poverty. 
FIDEL: ¿Que?
NIXON: You know, personally, I LOVE the idea of Communism.  I just want to throw that out there.  It’s Eisenhower who is making a big to-do about you and your kick-ass Revolution.
FIDEL: Ah, this must be why they call you “Tricky Dick”!  You tell me what I want to hear and I’m supposed to be charmed, right?  I’m told that you’re the biggest opponent of Communism in the United States.
NIXON: That’s what my enemies want you to think.  It’s the damn Kennedy family!  They are always trying to bring Dick Nixon down.
FIDEL: Wouldn’t fighting Communism make you look good to Americans, Dick?  I can call you “Dick”, right?
NIXON: Yes, you may.  Can I call you “Fred”?
FIDEL: Of cour…wait, no…why would you call me “Fred”?
NIXON: No reason.  Anyway, it would seem that fighting Communism would make me look good, but those damn Kennedys are up to something.  You know, I’ll probably be running for President against Jack Kennedy next year.
FIDEL: Yes.  It should be interesting. 
NIXON: No, it should be my turn to be President!  That is what it should be, Fred.  But the damn Kennedys are conspiring against me.  They are going to buy that election, just watch.  Also, the Jews.
FIDEL: What about the Jews?
NIXON: You know…money…Jews…dishonesty…corruption.
FIDEL: You’re just saying random words and hoping that I’ll fall into your stereotyping.
NIXON: See, they’ve gotten to you, too.  Those goddamn Kennedy Jews.
FIDEL: It’s been nice talking to you, Mr. Vice President, I really must be going…
NIXON: Listen, Fred, they are going to invade Cuba.
FIDEL: Wait…what?  Who is?
NIXON: The Kennedys — all of the brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews — the whole fucking clan.  There are like 6000 of those sumbitches.  They are going to use their big-ass Kennedy teeth for weapons and land a yacht on the Cuban coast to try to bring you down.
FIDEL: So, you are telling me that the Kennedy family is personally going to try to invade Cuba.  Sounds unlikely.
NIXON: That’s what I hear.  I’m just trying to help you, Fred. 
FIDEL: It’s “Fidel”…my name is “Fidel”. 
NIXON: Yes, but in English that is translated to “Fred”.
FIDEL: No, it totally isn’t translated to “Fred” in English.  Back to this “invasion”.  Where do you get this information?
NIXON: The Jews.  Also, they are going to try to assassinate you.  With poison ink pens and exploding cigars.  They have some Bugs Bunny-type shit that they’re going to use. 
FIDEL: Alright, again, nice meeting you, Mr. Vice President.
NIXON: Three words - “Bay of Pigs”.  BAHIA DE COCHINOS, FRED!
FIDEL: (Walking away) Goodbye and good luck in 1960, sir.
NIXON: (Turning away) Buy a Gillette, you fucking Commie.

Richard Nixon was so awkward and unusual that, sometimes, it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for him. 

I previously shared a story about Richard Nixon’s road trip on Election Day in 1960 when he took a random drive to Tijuana while millions of Americans were deciding whether to send him or John F. Kennedy to the White House.  On one of the most important days of his life, Nixon just wanted to get away.

Years later, at the beginning of 1974 — after he had finally made it to the White House — President Nixon was trying to enjoy a short break for the New Year’s holiday.  Nixon was staying at his home in Southern California, La Casa Pacifica, and decided to head to Palm Springs to stay at the home of his friend, the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, Walter Annenberg.

While driving from San Clemente to Palm Springs with his wife, Pat, his daughter, Tricia, and his son-in-law, Ed Cox, Nixon found himself wanting to escape, or at least feel normal for a few minutes.  In remote Banning, California, he had his car stop at a restaurant — McDonald’s.

It’s here that you have to feel a little bit for Nixon.  His trip to McDonald’s was in the midst of the Watergate scandal and despite trying to feel normal, Nixon couldn’t have felt anything but lonely.  While his family went inside to enjoy what was likely their first taste of McDonald’s in years, Nixon told someone his order.

As everyone ate their food in McDonald’s, the most isolated of Presidents waited for his meal and then, fittingly, the President of the United States ate his hamburger alone in his car.  Being normal never felt as lonely to anyone as it did to Richard Milhous Nixon.

On November 8, 1960, millions of Americans went to the polls in what would become one of the closest Presidential elections in American History:  John Fitzgerald Kennedy versus Richard Milhous Nixon.

That morning, Kennedy voted in Boston and Nixon voted in Whittier, California.  The candidates had spent months canvassing the nation, working to get every last vote — and every last vote was needed.  For the past several weeks, Kennedy and Nixon had criss-crossed the country, debated one another, and been working non-stop to be elected the 35th President of the United States.

After they voted that day, there were results to monitor, precincts to watch, election day problems to take care of, and many other things to worry about.  Imagine being on the cusp of the Presidency — with a 50/50 chance of being elected the next President of a superpower in the grip of the Cold War, with the threat of Communism and nuclear weapons hanging over your head, and the hopes of hundreds of millions of people pinned on either your victory or defeat.  Imagine being in the position of John F. Kennedy or Richard Nixon on November 8, 1960.  What would you do? 

John F. Kennedy put the control of his campaign in the hands of his younger brother, Bobby, and then took a nap.

And Richard Nixon took a road trip to Mexico.

Once Nixon voted that morning at a private home in a quiet Whittier neighborhood, he had been scheduled to head to the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles (where Bobby Kennedy would be assassinated eight years later) for the Election Day vigil and the long wait for the returns which would indicate whether he would be moving into the White House or facing an early retirement. 

Nixon was finished voting by 8:00 AM and hopped into his black Cadillac limousine to be driven to the Ambassador.  Several blocks away from the polling place, Nixon ordered the limousine to stop.  Along with a military aide and a Secret Service agent, Nixon jumped out of the limo and into a white convertible follow-up car driven by an officer from the Los Angeles Police Department.  Nixon took the LAPD officer’s place, got behind the wheel and ditched the press which had been following him.

Driving to La Habra, California, Nixon made a quick visit with his mother, making sure she had voted for her son in the Presidential election.  Nixon drove south along the Pacific Coast Highway, with no specific destination.  He stopped for gasoline in Oceanside and told a gas station attendant — startled to see the Vice President of the United States on a joyride on the very day that he stood for election as President — “I’m just out for a little ride.”  Nixon confided that it was his only source of relaxation.

As the group of four men, with Nixon in the driver’s seat, reached San Diego — over two hours away from Nixon’s campaign headquarters at L.A.’s Ambassador Hotel — Nixon pointed out that he hadn’t been to Tijuana in at least 25 years.

As David Pietrusza wrote in his recap of Nixon’s road trip, “Richard Nixon — the ultimate control freak — was winging it on the most important day of his life.”  Not only that, but the sitting Vice President of the United States and the man who many Americans were choosing to become the next President, impulsively decided to leave the entire country while those voters were still at the polls.

In Tijuana, Nixon and his party headed to a restaurant called Old Heidelberg.  Despite the fact it was owned by a German, Border Patrol agents told Nixon that it was the best place in Tijuana for Mexican food.  Joined at the last moment by Tijuana’s Mayor, Xicotencati Leyva Aleman, Nixon, his military aide, a Secret Service agent, and an average LAPD officer ate enchiladas in Mexico while John F. Kennedy took a nap in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.

When Nixon’s press secretary Herb Klein was asked about the missing candidate, he had to tell reporters that Nixon often took some private moments on hectic days such as Election Day.  Really, though, Klein had no clue where Nixon was, eventually admitting that the Vice President was “driving around without any destination”. 

After lunch in Tijuana, Nixon and his companions headed back north towards the United States border crossing.  The LAPD officer took over driving duties as Nixon sat in the convertible’s passenger seat.  A shocked Border Patrol guard shook hands with the Vice President and asked the man who was currently on the ballot for the Presidency, “Are you all citizens of the United States?”.

Nixon and company drove to the Mission of San Juan Capistrano, which Nixon called “one of my favorite Catholic places” on the day he faced the only successful Catholic candidate for the Presidency in American History.  Nixon took his three companions on a quick, informal tour of the Mission.  “For a few minutes, we sat in the empty pews for an interlude of complete escape,” Nixon later recalled.

The missing candidate and his three road trip buddies arrived back in Los Angeles before the election results started rolling in.  Nixon had to explain his trip to reporters who had been searching for him all day.  “It wasn’t planned.  We just started driving and that’s where we wound up.”

In his Memoirs, Nixon didn’t go too far into explaining why he escaped on Election Day, but a paragraph about that day is pretty illuminating:

”After one last frenetic week, it was over.  Since the convention in August I had traveled over 65,000 miles and visited all fifty states.  I had made 180 scheduled speeches and delivered scores of impromptu talks and informal press conferences.  There was nothing more I could have done.”

Except escape to Mexico while JFK slept.

It was the crowning moment in Richard Milhous Nixon’s long career of political ups-and-downs.  For the fifth time, Nixon had been a candidate on the national ticket (twice as Vice President, three times as President).  In 1952 and 1956, the focus was on the top of the ticket, Nixon’s running mate, Dwight Eisenhower.  In 1960, Nixon narrowly lost to — and some would say was the victim of theft from — John F. Kennedy.  In 1968, Nixon finally won election to the Presidency, but he did so with some bitterness:  the country was in shambles and the two people he wanted to oppose more than anyone else in the election — Lyndon Johnson and Bobby Kennedy — had respectively quit and been murdered during the turbulent campaign.  Not only that, but in victory, Nixon had garnered only 43.4% of the vote — a full 6 percentage points less than he had earned in his 1960 loss to JFK.

On November 7, 1972, however, Nixon’s “Silent Majority” spoke loud and clear — and truly gave him both a majority victory and a strong mandate for his second term in the White House.  Nixon trounced Democratic Senator George S. McGovern on election night.  His popular vote victory was 61%-38% and Nixon’s margin in the Electoral College was even larger, 520-17.  Nixon won every single state in the country except for Massachusetts.  Nixon even won McGovern’s home state of South Dakota.

As the election returns rolled in and Nixon’s family, supporters, and staff celebrated, the man who had received the votes of 47,169,841 of his fellow Americans that day to be their President noted that he felt “a curious feeling, perhaps a foreboding, that muted my enjoyment of this triumphal moment.”  In his memoirs, Richard Nixon elaborated further, “I am at a loss to explain the melancholy that settled over me on that victorious night…To some extent the marring effects of Watergate may have played a part, to some extent our failure to win Congress, and to a greater extent the fact that we had not yet been able to end the war in Vietnam.  Or perhaps it was because this would be my last campaign.  Whatever the reasons, I allowed myself only a few minutes to reflect on the past.  I was confident that a new era was about to begin, and I was eager to begin it.”

The new era began the next morning.  At 12:00 PM on November 8, 1972, President Nixon gathered his Cabinet in the White House.  Nixon seemed tired and was suffering from a painful toothache.  National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger noted that the President seemed “grim and remote”.  Nixon’s loyal Chief of Staff, H. R. “Bob” Haldeman was at his side as the President nonchalantly thanked his Cabinet and then described his recent readings about Benjamin Disraeli and how Disraeli described a need to refresh the British government and rid it of the “exhausted volcanoes” in William Gladstone’s Cabinet.  Nixon’s Cabinet was perplexed and curious as to where the President was headed.  He had just won a landslide victory in the Presidential election, but he spoke as if he had lost everything. 

After a few more minutes of talking about his plans for a second term that wasn’t “lethargic” such as those of some of his predecessors, Nixon simply stood up and walked out of the Cabinet Room, headed across the South Lawn, boarded Marine One and flew to his Camp David retreat.  When the President stands, everyone stands but as soon as he left the room, the Cabinet sat down and looked at Bob Haldeman, who took over the meeting.  Haldeman handed pieces of paper out to the Cabinet and said, “You’re all a bunch of burned-out volcanoes”.  Then he immediately demanded everyone’s resignation.  Nixon had won one of the biggest victories in American electoral history, and 24 hours later, he was basically firing everyone who had helped him to do so — earlier in the day, he had done the same thing that he did to the Cabinet to his White House staff.

Henry Kissinger summed it up by saying that, “It was as if victory was not an occasion for reconciliation but an opportunity to settle the scores of a lifetime.”  For Richard Nixon, victory was never enough.  He needed destruction.  Nixon got rid of his exhausted volcanoes, but he was sitting on top of another volcano named Watergate.  His abbreviated second term, which had been won the night before, would end less than two years later in his own personal and professional destruction.

The 37th President of the United States was hysterical.  Crumpled in a leather chair in the Lincoln Sitting Room, his favorite of the 132-rooms at his disposal in the White House, Richard Milhous Nixon called for his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger.  Nixon was drinking, Nixon was exhausted, Nixon was physically and mentally unwell and, hours earlier, Nixon had finally realized that he had no other choice but to become the first President in United States history to resign his office.

A Presidential resignation was so unthinkable that nobody had ever agreed on how a President even resigns his office.  Is his resignation effective the moment he makes his decision?  Does he have to sign anything?  If so, who does he hand his resignation into?  What happens to his things?  His belongings, his property, his papers?  Is the Secret Service responsible for his protection?  How does he even get home after leaving the White House?  In fact, after making the decision to step down, Nixon questioned whether a President could resign at all.  None of these questions had ever been contemplated until it became apparent that the Watergate scandal and subsequent cover-up was fatal to the Nixon Administration.

When Kissinger answered the President’s summons on the evening of August 7th, 1974, he found that Nixon was nearly drunk, sitting in a darkened room, and lost in thought.  Throughout the nearly 200 years of America’s life only 35 other human beings had held the office that Nixon was holding and Nixon was in the unique position of being the only one to decide on resignation.  Nixon was the only person in the history of human existence that had to do what he was forced into doing. 

Nixon was a ferociously introspective person — a man who hated people but loved politics.  Not only did he love politics, but he was extraordinarily skilled at it.  Some would say that Richard Nixon was a terrible politician, but the results prove otherwise.  When he was 33 years old Nixon was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.  At 38 he was one of California’s United States Senators.  Before he turned 40, he was elected Vice President of the United States alongside Dwight Eisenhower.  A bad politician doesn’t accomplish that much that quickly.  Nixon was narrowly defeated for the Presidency in 1960 by John F. Kennedy and lost a race for Governor of California in 1962 to incumbent Pat Brown, but a bad politician would not have won his party’s nomination for either of those offices. 

The most overlooked barometer of Nixon’s political skill is the fact that he ran for President in three different elections (1960, 1968, and 1972), won two of them, and lost the popular vote in 1960 to John F. Kennedy by just .2% nationwide.  During Richard Nixon’s career, more Americans cast votes in favor of sending him to the White House than Franklin Delano Roosevelt who won an unprecedented four terms.  Over three elections, Nixon received 113,059,260 votes for President — nearly 10 million more than FDR (103,419,425 votes over four elections).  A bad politician couldn’t trick people into casting 113 million votes to make him their leader and allow him to become the most powerful man in the world.

Yet, for all of Richard Nixon’s immense political skills, intelligence, ability, and achievements, he allowed his uncontrollable paranoia to destroy him.  Nixon didn’t need help to win re-election in 1972, but he authorized dirty tricks against the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic nominee, George McGovern.  Nixon and his top aides covered up the break-in at the DNC headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., and by the summer of 1974, it was revealed that a secret White House taping system held evidence of the cover-up.  Still, Nixon continued to fight, believing that he could win back the American people and once again come back from disaster as he had done many times before.  This time was different, however.  There was no comeback from this scandal.  If Nixon did not resign, he would be impeached and found guilty in a Senate trial.  If Nixon did not resign, he would probably go to prison.  When the impossibility of survival was finally understood by the President, the man who had told Americans “I am not a quitter” realized that he had to quit.

•••

In the last days of July 1974, most of President Nixon’s aides came to the conclusion that Nixon’s position was untenable and that resignation was imminent.  When Republican Congressional leaders indicated that they would no longer support Nixon and would vote for articles of impeachment, all hope was lost and Vice President Gerald Ford — in office for less than 8 months — began preparations to assume the Presidency.  Nixon held out the longest, but he was so out of touch that he was losing the ability to exercise the powers of his position.  For weeks, the day-to-day operations of the White House — and, really, the Presidency itself — were handled by General Alexander Haig, a four-star Army general and the White House Chief of Staff.  Haig was a longtime holdout in the futile attempt to save Nixon’s Presidency, but the damning evidence that was revealed almost daily in the final weeks of Nixon’s administration left Haig no choice but to attempt to orchestrate a somewhat dignified exit for Nixon and smooth transition for Ford. 

At times in those last few weeks, Nixon brooded in the Lincoln Sitting Room or his secret hideaway office in the Old Executive Office Building across the street from the White House.  Even in the White House summer, Nixon would sit in one of the two rooms with a fire burning in the fireplace scribbling memos to himself on his familiar yellow legal pads.  The President would drink scotch and get drunk quickly; he was famously unable to handle his low-tolerance for alcohol very well.  Often, an aide or valet would find Nixon loudly blaring his favorite music — the score from the 1950’s documentary “Victory at Sea”.  Other times, Nixon would listen to the tapes from his Oval Office recording system that were bringing his Presidency down around him, rewinding, fast-forwarding, listening again-and-again to his own voice saying the things now coming back to haunt him.

Aides throughout the White House and staff from other departmental agencies worried about the President’s ability to function and continue to lead the country while in his current mental state.  Discussions were quietly held about whether it was necessary to attempt to invoke the 25th Amendment of the Constitution, which calls for the Vice President to assume the powers of the Presidency if the President is somehow incapacitated and unable to discharge the heavy everyday responsibilities of his office.  Nixon was barely sleeping, drinking heavily, and making bizarre, rambling late-night phone calls to subordinates throughout the Executive Branch of the United States government.  Nearly everyone who knew his condition questioned the President’s capacity to function.

There were also serious questions about whether or not Nixon, in a desperate attempt to hold on to power, might use the military to protect himself and the White House.  Tensions were already high in the streets of Washington, D.C. with protesters loudly demonstrating and calling for Nixon’s resignation.  High-ranking officials in the Department of Defense and the White House privately worried about the possibility that Nixon would ring the streets around the White House with tanks and armored personnel carriers, ostensibly to protect the Executive Mansion from acts of civil disobedience, but also to set up a fortress-like barrier that might allow him to remain in the White House in the case of a Congressional or Supreme Court-ordered removal from office.

Most startling of all is the fact that in the week before his resignation, Nixon’s inability to efficiently or appropriately wield executive power had dwindled so far that Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger urged General George S. Brown, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to not take military orders directly from the President.  In an attempt to save the country from any extra-constitutional power grab by a desperate President, the military chain-of-command took the extra-constitutional step of removing the President from the loop.  Schlesinger also investigated what his options would be if troops had to forcibly remove the President from office.  The Defense Secretary’s plan was to bring the 82nd Airborne to Washington from Fort Bragg, North Carolina if that was necessary.

While Nixon’s aides and fellow government officials worried about his mental health and ability to lead, Nixon’s family worried about his physical well-being.  The President was exhausted, erratic, and not sleeping well at all.  He downed sleeping pills, drank scotch, and continued sitting alone in one of his two favorite offices.  Nixon attempted to put on a brave face for his family, but they too were weary of the process and his wife Pat’s health was already precarious.  Nixon sometimes found solace in the company of his daughters Tricia and Julie and their respective husbands, Edward Cox and David Eisenhower (grandson of the late President Dwight Eisenhower). 

Yet the toll was terrible on the family and while Nixon’s daughters were supportive and urged him to continue fighting, both Cox and Eisenhower felt that their father-in-law needed to resign for the good of the country and the good of their family, and worried that the President might not leave the White House alive.  On August 6, 1974, Edward Cox called Michigan Senator Robert Griffin, a friend of Nixon’s who was urging resignation.  Notifying the Senator that Nixon seemed irrational, Griffin responded that the President had seemed fine during their last meeting.  Cox went further and explained, “The President was up walking the halls last night, talking to pictures of former Presidents — giving speeches and talking to the pictures on the wall.”  Senator Griffin was flabbergasted and even more taken aback when Cox followed that bombshell with a worried plea for help, “The President might take his own life.”

White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig also worried about suicide.  A few days earlier, the despondent President and his Chief of Staff were alone when Nixon started talking about how disgraced military officers sometimes fall on their sword.  To Haig, the Army General, Nixon said, “You fellows, in your business, you have a way of handling problems like this.  Somebody leaves a pistol in the drawer.”  Haig was stunned.  Then sadly — bitterly — Nixon said, “I don’t have a pistol.”

Haig was trying to steer the President towards as dignified of an exit as possible in such a dire situation.  Already dealing with the first Presidential resignation, what he definitely wanted to prevent as Chief of Staff was the first-ever Presidential suicide.  Haig worked with the President’s Navy doctors to limit Nixon’s access to pills and tranquilizers.  When Haig mentioned his worries about a Nixon suicide to White House counsel Fred Buzhardt, Buzhardt said he didn’t think Nixon was the type to commit suicide.  Buzhardt believed Nixon was actually a deeply religious man privately, but the White House counsel also thought that Richard Nixon would continue fighting, as he always had, until the ship went down.  Alexander Haig just wanted to keep the President alive.

In his office in the Old Executive Office Building on the evening of Tuesday, August 6th, Nixon met with Haig and Press Secretary Ron Ziegler to inform them that he was definitely resigning before the end of the week and that he would announce the decision in a speech to the nation on Thursday evening from the Oval Office.  Nixon, Haig, and Ziegler discussed ideas for the resignation speech and during a moment of contemplative silence, Nixon looked up at his two loyalists and said, “Well, I screwed it up good, real good, didn’t I?”. 

•••

The morning of August 7th began with Haig notifying Vice President Ford that Nixon’s resignation was imminent and that Ford would be assuming the Presidency within 48 hours.  Though Nixon had told Haig and Ziegler that his decision was irrevocable, the last obstacle to resignation was still Nixon’s indecisiveness, which was a result of the unwavering support from his daughters, Tricia and Julie.  Throughout the day of August 7th, Nixon seemed calm, but said more than once that he had not made up his mind about resignation yet, which worried his exhausted Chief of Staff.  Haig had barely slept over the last four days and he hoped that the President’s meeting with Senate leaders that afternoon would seal the resignation decision.  It did.  During the meeting, Nixon learned that he had virtually no support in either the House of Representatives or the Senate and that staying in office would damage him personally and be dangerous for the country.  After the meeting, Nixon told his loyal secretary Rose Mary Woods that he had no other choice but to resign, and then he directed her to inform his family.  Nixon’s family learned of his final decision from his secretary, and she also told them that the President didn’t wish to discuss the situation when they met for dinner later.  Before Nixon sat down to eat with his family that night, he simply said, “We’re going back to California.”

It was after dinner that night when Nixon summoned Henry Kissinger to the Residence of the White House and sat with his Secretary of State in the Lincoln Sitting Room.  Though the two leaders had worked tirelessly together on foreign policy during Nixon’s administration, they didn’t necessarily like each other.  Nixon was often jealous of Kissinger’s popularity and dismissive of his personality.  Kissinger thought the President was bitterly mean at times, and unnecessarily paranoid about Kissinger’s loyalty.  They worked well together, but more often than not, they downplayed the other’s role in crafting the administration’s foreign policy when speaking to others.  Nixon didn’t trust Kissinger and Kissinger was often angered by Nixon’s irrational behavior, especially in the past few days as the Secretary of State believed the President’s problems had paralyzed the country’s foreign affairs.

On this night, however, Nixon and Kissinger simply talked.  They discussed their accomplishments, their failures, their philosophies and disagreements, and Nixon urged the diplomat to stay on as Secretary of State and provide Gerald Ford with the same service he had provided Nixon.  Sitting there in the smallest room of the White House, Nixon asked Kissinger about how he would be remembered.  Although he had made mistakes, he felt that he had accomplished great things for his country.  Nixon was worried that his legacy would be Watergate and resignation, but he desperately wanted to be thought of as a President who achieved peace.  Kissinger insisted that Nixon would get the credit he deserved.

President Nixon started crying.  At first, it was a teary-eyed hope that his resignation wouldn’t overshadow his long career, but soon, it broke down into sobbing as the President lamented the failures and the disgrace he had brought to his country.  Nixon — a man who never wore his Quaker religion on his sleeve — turned to Kissinger and asked him if he would pray with him.  Despite being Jewish, Kissinger felt he had no choice but to kneel with the President as Nixon prayed for peace — both for his country and for himself. 

After finishing his prayer, Nixon remained in a kneeling position while silently weeping, tears streaming down the large jowls often caricatured by political cartoonists.  Kissinger looked over and saw the President lean down, burying his face in the Lincoln Sitting Room’s carpet and slamming his fist against the ground crying, “What have I done?  What has happened?”.  Nixon and Kissinger both disliked physical affection and Nixon in particular hated being touched, but Kissinger didn’t know any other way to console his weary, broken boss.  Softly patting Nixon’s back at first, Kissinger embraced Nixon in a hug and held the President of the United States until he calmed down and the tears stopped flowing.  Kissinger helped Nixon up to his feet and the men shared another drink, talking openly about what role Nixon could have in the future as a former President.

When Kissinger returned to his office a little later, he couldn’t even begin to explain what had happened to his top aides, Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger.  Kissinger was saddened and shocked, and Eagleburger noted that he had never seen the Secretary of State so moved by something.  A few minutes later, Nixon called Kissinger’s office and Eagleburger listened in on the call on another extension.  The President was clearly drunk and again thanked Kissinger for visiting him, imploring him to help Ford in the same way he had helped Nixon. 

Before hanging up, Nixon pleaded with Kissinger, “Henry, please don’t ever tell anyone that I cried and that I was not strong.” 

•••

It is telling that even while losing control and finding himself at the end of his rope, President Nixon was concerned about looking weak.  Throughout his long career, Nixon saw himself as a fighter and tried to portray himself as such.  But Nixon also proudly saw himself as a man who had to earn everything he achieved, without any help from anyone else, and despite obstacles constantly being thrown in his path.  Nixon felt that the media was out to get him because he wasn’t charismatic or flashy like his old rival, John F. Kennedy.  Nixon felt that there was something sinister behind every issue he faced, and he went too far in his attempt to destroy those that he felt were trying to destroy him.

Before leaving the White House on August 9th, 1974, Nixon made an impromptu speech to White House employees in the East Room of the mansion.  It is one of the most revealing speeches of any President at any time in history, and it is Nixon without his guard up; Nixon with nothing left to lose.  He talked about his family, his achievements, and his appreciation for the people who worked in his administration.  He rambled at times, and he was clearly saddened by the situation.  And, towards the end of his speech, Richard Nixon — with just minutes left in his Presidency — seemed to have finally learned his lesson:

“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.”

With that, Richard Milhous Nixon and his family walked out on to the South Lawn of the White House, accompanied by the man who would soon assume the Presidency, Gerald Ford and his wife, Betty.  As he boarded the Presidential helicopter, Marine One, Nixon turned around to face the cameras and the White House and the country, smiled wanly, defiantly thrust his trademark peace sign salute into the air over his head and waved goodbye to the Presidency and hello to history.

Exactly 100 years ago today, January 9, 1913, Richard Milhous Nixon was born in a small frame house ordered as a kit from Sears and built by his father, Frank, on a citrus farm in Yorba Linda, California.

From humble beginnings, Nixon would rise to unlikely heights.  Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives at the age of 33.  Sworn in as a U.S. Senator a month before his 37th birthday.  Less than two weeks after his 40th birthday, Nixon was Vice President of the United States, serving two terms in that office under President Eisenhower.  In 1960, Nixon lost his own bid for the Presidency to John F. Kennedy in one of the closest elections in American History.  Two years later, Nixon’s political career seemed to be over after he was beaten badly in a race to become Governor of California.

Over the next few years, Nixon rebuilt himself politically, campaigned for Republicans across the country, and constructed a national political organization with surrogates in every state who owed him a favor.  He called in those favors in 1968 and one of the most turbulent years in American History ended with Nixon’s election as the 37th President.  Four years later, Nixon humiliated his Democratic opponent George McGovern, winning a massive victory in the 1972 election.  In the Electoral College, Nixon won 49 out of 50 states for an Electoral margin of 520-17 (1 faithless elector voted for Libertarian John Hospers).

Despite his easy victory, the inner turmoil and paranoia that had always haunted Richard Nixon was already working against him.  Dirty tricks and Nixon’s need to destroy others were actively destroying his own Presidency — something sped along by a clumsy attempt to cover up crimes and corruption that Nixon recorded himself scheming about with his secret White House taping system.  Nixon tried to hold on to the power that he had worked so long to win, but when his own party let it be known that impeachment and removal from office was in his future, Nixon became the first and only President to ever resign.

After his resignation and the controversial pardon he received from Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon again made a spectacular comeback.  Never again would Nixon hold office or truly win the public’s trust, but as a diplomat and first-rate intellect when it came to foreign relations, Nixon became a valuable elder statesman.  For the last twenty years of his life, until his death in 1994, Nixon was called upon by his successors for advice and for some diplomatic missions, particularly when it came to American relations with Russia and China.  Although the stench of Watergate would never completely dissipate, by the time 81-year-old former President died and was buried just a few feet from that makeshift home he was born in, Richard Nixon had largely rehabilitated his image as a master diplomat and one of the most important figures — for better and worse — of the entire 20th Century.

On the day that Richard Nixon was laid to rest in Southern California, with four other former Presidents (Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush) in the audience, President Bill Clinton asked Americans to consider everything that Nixon had done in his six decades of public service, from his Naval service in World War II to his late-night phone calls just days before his death giving advice on Russia and Boris Yeltsin to Clinton: “May the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to a close.”

Check back on Dead Presidents throughout the day as I share some posts and stories from the archive to honor Richard Milhous Nixon on the 100th anniversary of his birth.