The make-or-break moment for Richard Nixon came during the presidential election of 1952. He was a hotshot rookie Senator from California, and General Dwight D. Eisenhower had chosen him as his vice-presidential running mate. The ticket had been officially nominated at the Republican National Convention. Then news broke that Nixon had a secret fund created by various wealthy friends and supporters. It was not the biggest scandal that had ever taken place in American politics, but it was serious enough to embarrass Eisenhower, who sent signals to Nixon that he wanted him to withdraw from the ticket. Not only that, but Ike presumed Nixon would resign from the Senate as well. Had Nixon done so, he would have become a small footnote in history. But Nixon was way too bold, way too cunning to slink away with his tail between his legs. He instead booked a live television appearance and gave what would become known as the “Checkers” speech. More than 60 million Americans tuned in. It was the largest television event ever aired, to that date.
While Nixon was explaining his finances in great detail to the American public, he uttered a bunch of corny lines, including, “Pat doesn’t have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat, and I always tell her she’d look good in anything.” He also said that one of his benefactors had sent the family a cocker spaniel that one of his daughters had named Checkers, “and you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it.” Nixon concluded his remarks with a call to action. He told viewers to contact the Republican National Committee and tell them (not Ike!) whether or not he should withdraw from the nomination. And of course the phones rang off the hook in favor of Nixon remaining on the ticket. He went on to serve eight years as Vice President under Ike. In 1960 Vice President Nixon ran for President and lost in a nail-biter to JFK. Two years later Nixon ran for governor of California — and lost. Then, in 1968, he ran for President once again and won. Then he got re-elected in 1972 in a landslide. And of course, two years later, he became the only U.S. president in history to resign, because of the Watergate scandal.
Richard Milhous Nixon, also known as Dick Nixon, also known as Tricky Dick, was born in 1913 in Yorba Linda, California. His childhood was just as dismal as you would imagine. He wasn’t born in a log cabin, but he would have been born in one if log cabins still existed in the early 20th century. The family was poor. His father was a citrus farmer who was unable to turn a profit despite being in Southern California. He had three brothers, two of whom died of very young of tuberculosis. To his credit, Nixon made the most of his circumstances. He excelled in a number of extracurricular activities in high school and college, including music, theater and football. After graduating from Whittier College he attended Duke University on a scholarship and earned a law degree. He married Pat, whose maiden name was Thelma Ryan. They had two daughters. In the early 1940s the couple moved to the nation’s capital, where Nixon worked for the federal government. During World War II Nixon served in the Navy and was stationed in the South Pacific. He received several medals and commendations. While stationed overseas during the war he ran a concession stand.
After the war Nixon returned to California, where he practiced law and sought employment with the federal government. In 1946, with the backing of a group supporters called the “Committee of 100” or the “Amateurs” (a precursor of Tea Party in more modern times) Nixon ran for Congress against a five-term entrenched Democrat and won. During the campaign Nixon falsely accused his opponent of being in bed with Communists. As a freshman congressman Nixon joined the House Un-American Activities Committee and began hunting for Communists in government agencies. One of Nixon’s targets was Alger Hiss, who may or may not have been a spy for the Soviets. Hiss had been accused by Whittaker Chambers, who was an unreliable source because he kept changing his story. According to the book, Hiss was indeed a spy. But he was not ever convicted of espionage, only perjury.
When he became President, Nixon inherited an unwinnable war in Vietnam. Rather than finding a way to end the fighting, he instead expanded the conflict into Laos and Cambodia, destabilizing those countries and making everything worse. He and Henry Kissinger, who was Nixon’s Secretary of State as well as his National Security Advisor, dropped lots of bombs on all three countries. All the while he was lying to the American people about it.
He also lied to the American people about Watergate. The scandal first surfaced in 1972, during Nixon’s re-election campaign, when a bunch of dudes got arrested breaking into the offices of Democratic National Headquarters to bug the phones. Watergate is the name of the large complex of office buildings and residential apartments that housed the Democratic offices at the time.
Like a dirty snowball rolling down a hill, the story just got bigger and bigger. At the height of the drama, the Watergate matter was being investigated by a federal Grand Jury, Senate and House committees, and a Special Prosecutor, Archibald Cox, whom Nixon fired in October 1973, in what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre.
It was the Senate committee that found out about the tapes. Yes, in the immortal words of Dick Cavett, Nixon had been “bugging himself,” and there was a huge fight over the tapes that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ordered Nixon to turn them over. The tapes revealed that Nixon had in fact been involved in a cover-up from the beginning, and that he had been lying about it from the get-go. There was also an 18-and-a-half-minute gap on one of the tapes that Nixon probably erased himself, the contents of which, to this day, are yet unknown.
In late July 1974, the House committee recommended three articles of impeachment against Nixon, who resigned in a nationally televised address to the nation on August 9, 1974. Had he not resigned, Nixon most certainly would have been impeached by the full House, convicted in the Senate trial, and removed from office.
In the aftermath of Watergate, literally dozens of Nixon’s men would be convicted of crimes and serve time in prison. Chief among them were Nixon’s 1972 campaign manager, who had been Attorney General, John Mitchell; his Chief of Staff, H. R. “Bob” Haldeman; his domestic affairs advisor, John Ehrlichman; his White House Counsel, John Dean; and many, many others.
It was Gerald R. Ford, not the man who had been elected and re-elected with Nixon, who became our nation’s 38th President. That’s because in Nixon’s first — and worst — presidential decision, he had chosen Spiro Agnew as his vice-presidential running mate. As Governor of Maryland and as Vice President of the United States, Agnew had been taking bribes. This happened during Watergate but was not connected to Watergate. When caught in 1973 he was forced to resign, and Nixon named Congressman Ford to replace him.
All of this and more is described in “Richard Nixon: The Life,” by John A. Farrell, published in 2017. This presidential biography clocks in at 700-plus pages including notes and bibliography. I found the book an absolute pleasure to read. In my view, the author was more or less fair to Nixon. I happen to already know a great deal about Nixon’s presidency and about Watergate, but in this book I learned a great deal about Nixon’s long and extensive career in public life before he became President.
Also documented in the book is what is known today as the “Chennault affair.” According to this book and other sources, Nixon sent Anna Chennault, who was working on his 1968 presidential election campaign, to Paris to sabotage peace negotiations being conducted by the Johnson administration and the North Vietnamese, thus prolonging the Vietnam War. It’s yet another example of Nixon’s malfeasance.
Here is a bit more about our nation’s 37th President:
- He was a Quaker.
- He played piano.
- Both of Nixon’s daughters had notable weddings. Julie married David Eisenhower, grandson of the former President, at Marble Collegiate Church in New York City in 1966, before Nixon’s presidency. Then during Nixon’s presidency Tricia married Edward Cox in the White House Rose Garden, in 1971.
- Nixon has been described as being paranoid, reclusive, anti-social and withdrawn.
- During the Watergate years many reported that he appeared to have been drinking excessively.
- Also during Watergate he made a high-profile trip to China, where he palled around with a bunch of Communists.
- According to the book, he gave his staff strange orders. He presumed they would ignore the really outrageous requests, but he expected everyone to know the difference between a real order and one not to be acted upon.
- He hated journalists and viewed the press and as enemies.
- He had a trademark gesture in which he raised his arms up in the air and made a “V for victory” sign with both hands. It also looked like the peace sign, except Nixon would never let himself be associated with “hippie culture.”
- As President, Nixon presided over the elimination of the gold standard, and he issued wage and price controls in an effort to tamp down inflation. He managed to keep the economy going, but, according to the book, this only forestalled the inevitable downturn that his successors would have to deal with, to their own detriment.
- He called for federal healthcare legislation that was, more or less, just like the Affordable Care Act that would be enacted decades later.
- He appeared on the popular TV show “Laugh-In.”
- He and his wife are mentioned by name in the Rolling Stones song “Rip This Joint,” the second song on the band’s classic 1972 double album “Exile on Main St.”
- He’s also mentioned in the 1975 David Bowie song “Young Americans.”
- And he’s referenced indirectly in Queen’s 1978 single “Bicycle Race.”
- And he’s mentioned in the 1978 movie “Grease.”
- He got the nickname “Tricky Dick” from Helen Gahagan Douglas, his Democratic opponent for Senate in 1950. He had dishonestly accused her of being a Communist who was “pink right down to her underwear.”
- After his loss in the California governor’s race in 1962, he spoke to reporters and made a number of unhinged remarks, including, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.”
- In 1973 he was being investigated for tax fraud, unrelated to Watergate, and spoke to reporters in yet another angry, unhinged rant in which be claimed to have never obstructed justice, and then he said this memorable line: “I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I am not a crook.”
- After resigning from office but before leaving the White House in the helicopter, he spoke to reporters and made even more unhinged remarks, including this bizarre statement: “Others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”
After his presidency, Nixon returned to California before moving to New York City and eventually settling in New Jersey. In retirement, he wrote several books and tried to re-invent himself as an elder statesman, which he wasn’t. Pat died in 1993, and Nixon died in 1994. And good riddance to him, too. In my view, he was a bad man and a bad president. Our world today is still dealing with much of the harm Nixon unleashed, and in my opinion we would all be much better off if he had exited from national politics in 1952, as Ike had wanted.
