Richard Nixon

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Richard Milhous Nixon

(January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. He was also the 36th Vice President (1953–1961) serving under Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nixon redefined the office of Vice President, making it for the first time a high visibility platform and base for a presidential candidacy. He is the only person to have been elected twice to the Vice Presidency and twice to the Presidency, and the only president to have resigned that office. His resignation came in the face of imminent impeachment related to the Watergate first break-in and subsequent Watergate scandal.

Nixon is noted for his diplomatic foreign policy, especially relaxed with the Soviet Union and China, and ending the Vietnam War. He is also noted for his middle-of-the-road domestic policy that combined conservative rhetoric and, in many cases, liberal action, as in his environmental policy.

As president, Nixon imposed wage and price controls, indexed Social Security for inflation, and created Supplemental Security Income (SSI). The number of pages added to the Federal Register each year doubled under Nixon. He advocated gun control and eradicated the last remnants of the gold standard. Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and implemented the Philadelphia Plan, the first significant federal affirmative action program. As a party leader, Nixon helped build the GOP, but he ran his 1972 campaign separately from the party, which perhaps helped the GOP escape some of the damage from Watergate. (See History of United States Republican Party.)

Nixon attended Fullerton High School from 1926-28 and Whittier High School from 1928-30. He graduated first in his class; showing a penchant for Shakespeare and Latin. He won a full tuition scholarship from Harvard; but since it did not cover living expenses, Nixon's family was unable to afford to send him away to college. Nixon attended Whittier College, a local Quaker school where he co-founded the Orthogonian Society, a fraternity that competed with the already established Franklin Society. Nixon was elected student body president. A lifelong football buff, Nixon practiced with the team assiduously but spent most of his time on the bench. In 1934, he graduated second in his class from Whittier and went on to Duke University School of Law, where he received a full scholarship.

Nixon returned to California, passed the bar exam, and began working in the small-town law office of a family friend in nearby La Mirada. The work was mostly routine, and Nixon generally found it to be dull, although he was entirely competent. He later wrote that family law cases caused him particular discomfort, since his reticent Quaker upbringing was severely at odds with the idea of discussing intimate marital details with strangers.

It was during this period that he met his wife Pat, a high school teacher; they were married on June 21, 1940. They had two daughters Tricia and Julie.

During World War II, Nixon served as an officer in the Navy. He received his training at Quonset Point, Rhode Island, and Ottumwa, Iowa, before serving in the supply corps in the South Pacific. There he was known as "Nick" and for his prowess in poker, banking a large sum that helped finance his first campaign for Congress.

Nixon was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1946, defeating Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis for California's 12th Congressional district. During his two terms, he became well known as a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee, particularly for his leading role in the Alger Hiss case.

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Vice Presidency:

In 1952 he was elected Vice President on Dwight D. Eisenhower's ticket, although he was only 39 years old.

One notable event of the campaign was Nixon's innovative use of television. Nixon was accused by nameless sources of misappropriating money out of a business fund for personal use. He went on TV and defended himself in an emotional speech, where he provided an independent third-party review of the fund's accounting along with a personal summary of his finances, which he cited as exonerating him from wrongdoing, and he charged that the Democratic Presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson, also had a slush fund (see Memoirs of Richard Nixon, page 99). This speech would, however, become better known for its rhetoric, such as when he stated that his wife Pat did not wear mink, but rather "a respectable Republican cloth coat," and that although he had been given a cocker spaniel named "Checkers" in addition to his other campaign contributions, he was not going to give it back because his daughters loved it. As a result, this speech became known as the "Checkers speech" and it resulted in a flood of support, prompting Eisenhower to keep Nixon on the ticket.

Nixon reinvented the office of Vice President. Although he had no formal power, he had the attention of the media and the Republican party. He demonstrated for the first time that the office could be a springboard to the White House; most Vice Presidents since have followed his lead and sought the presidency (exceptions being Nelson Rockefeller, and Spiro Agnew.) Nixon was the first Vice President to actually step in to temporarily run the government. He did that three times when Eisenhower was ill: on the occasions of Eisenhower's heart attack on September 24, 1955; his ileitis in June 1956; and his stroke on November 25, 1957. His quick thinking was on display on July 24, 1959, at the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow where he and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had an impromptu "kitchen debate" about the merits of capitalism versus communism.

During Nixon's vice-presidency, he became involved in several arguments with President Eisenhower, which later resulted in Eisenhower's hesitation to support Nixon during the 1960 presidential campaign.

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Post Presidency:

1960's Elections:

In 1960, he ran for President on his own but lost to John F. Kennedy. The race was very close all year long, and any number of small episodes could have tilted the results one way or the other, including the televised debates. [1] Nixon campaigned on his experience, but Kennedy said it was time for new blood and suggested the Eisenhower-Nixon administration had been soft on defense. It also didn't help that when asked of major policy decisions that Nixon had helped make, Eisenhower responded: "Give me a week and I might think of one." This hurt his standing early in the campaign, showing that he didn't necessarily have the experience to be president or Ike's firm backing.

In 1962, Nixon lost a race for Governor of California. In his concession speech, Nixon accused the media of favoring his opponent Pat Brown, and stated that it was his "last press conference" and that "You don't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more."



1968 Election

Nixon moved to New York City where he became a well-paid senior partner in a leading law firm, Nixon Mudge Rose Guthrie & Alexander. During the 1966 Congressional elections, he stumped the country in support of Republican candidates, rebuilding his base in the party. In the election of 1968, he completed a remarkable political comeback by taking the nomination. Nixon appealed to what he called the "silent majority" of socially conservative Americans who disliked the "hippie" counterculture and anti-war demonstrators. Nixon promised "peace with honor," and without claiming to be able to win the war, Nixon claimed that "new leadership will end the war and win the peace in the Pacific". He did not explain in detail his plans to end the war in Vietnam, leading Democratic nominee Hubert H. Humphrey and the media to allege that he must have some "secret plan." Nixon did not use the phrase, and stated in his memoirs that he had no such plan. He defeated Humphrey and independent candidate George Wallace to become the 37th President of the United States.

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Presidency 1969-1974


Policies


Once in office, he proposed the Nixon Doctrine to establish a strategy of turning over the fighting of the war to the Vietnamese. In July 1969 he visited South Vietnam, and met with President Nguyen Van Thieu and with U.S. military commanders. American involvement in the war declined steadily until all American troops were gone in 1973. After the withdrawal of U.S. troops, fighting was left to the South Vietnamese army, which was well supplied with modern arms, but whose fighting capability was in question due to inadequate funding, low morale, and corruption. The lack of funding was primarily due to large funding cutbacks by the US Congress.

Nixon ordered secret bombing campaigns in Cambodia in March, 1969 (code-named Menu) to destroy what were believed to be the headquarters and large numbers of soldiers of the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam.

In ordering the bombings, Nixon realized he would be extending an unpopular war as well as breaching Cambodia's "official" (but false) neutrality. During deliberations over Nixon's impeachment, his unorthodox use of executive powers over the ordering of these bombings was considered as an article of impeachment, but the charge was dropped as not a violation of Constitutional powers.

On July 20, 1969, Nixon addressed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin during their historic moonwalk, live via radio. Nixon also made the world's longest distance phone call to Neil Armstrong on the moon. On January 5, 1972, Nixon approved the development of the Space Shuttle program, a decision that profoundly influenced U.S. efforts to explore and develop space for several decades thereafter.
Relations between the Western and Eastern power blocs changed dramatically in the early 70s. In 1960, the People's Republic of China ended the alliance with its biggest ally, the Soviet Union, in the Sino-Soviet Split. As tensions between the two communist nations reached its peak in 1969 and 1970, Nixon decided to use their conflict to shift the balance of power towards the West in the Cold War. In what later would be known as the "China Card", Nixon deliberately improved relations with China in order to blackmail the Soviet Union. In 1971 a move was made to improve relationships when China invited an American table tennis team to China; hence the term "Ping Pong Diplomacy". The US’s response was to support China’s entry into the U.N., something it had always vetoed. In October 1971, China entered the U.N. In 1972, Richard Nixon became the first US president to visit "Red" China though the USA kept a massive naval fleet off of Taiwan. Fearing the possibility of a Sino-American alliance, the Soviet Union yielded to Nixon immediately. The first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks were finally concluded the same year.

Nixon was also very vocal in supporting General Yahya Khan of Pakistan despite escalating violence in East Pakistan. Subsequently declassified documents reveal the extent of support offered by Nixon to the dictator notwithstanding the widespread human rights violations. [2] He was also vocal in abusing Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi as an "old witch" in private conversations with Henry Kissinger, who is also recorded as making derogatory comments against Indians.

Nixon supported the wave of military "golpes de Estado" in South America. Through Henry Kissinger, he gave at least an implicit help to Augusto Pinochet's coup, in 1973, and then helped set up operation Condor (as evidenced by CIA documents released in 2000, following Pinochet's arrest in 1998). A US-intelligence base in Panama Canal coordinated the acts of the various Latino secret services (DINA, DISIP, etc.)

He established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on December 2, 1970.

In 1972 Nixon was re-elected in one of the biggest landslide election victories in U.S. political history, defeating George McGovern and garnering over 60% of the popular vote. He carried 49 of the 50 states, losing only in Massachusetts.

On January 2, 1974, Nixon signed a bill that lowered the maximum U.S. speed limit to 55 MPH (90 km/h) in order to conserve gasoline during the 1973 energy crisis. This law remained in effect until 1995.

On April 3, 1974, Nixon announced he would pay $432,787.13 in back taxes plus interest after a Congressional committee reported that he had inadvertently underpaid his 1969 and 1972 taxes.

In light of the near certainty of both his impeachment (due to the Watergate scandal) by the House of Representatives and his conviction by the Senate, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974.

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Major Initiatives:

• Normalizing of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China and partially abandoning the Republic of China on Taiwan as part of Realpolitik, a foreign policy eschewing moral considerations. In the short term Nixon was successful in playing the "China card" against the Soviet Union and its client state North Vietnam.
  
• Détente, or the peaceful pause in the Cold War; détente ended in 1979, replaced by another phase of the Cold War.
  
• Establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency.
  
• Establishment of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
  
• Establishment of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
  
• Establishment of the Supplemental Security Income program.
  
• Establishment of the Office of Minority Business Enterprise
  
• Post Office Department abolished as a cabinet department and reorganized as a government owned corporation, the U.S Postal Service.
  
• SALT I, or Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, led to the signing of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
  
• "Vietnamization": the training and arming of South Vietnamese forces to allow the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam.
  
• Suspension of the convertibility of the US dollar into gold, a central point of the Bretton Woods system, allowing its value to float in world markets.
  
• Space Shuttle program started.
  
• Endorsed an enlightened self-determination policy for Native Americans that changed the direction of policy as continued from the New Deal through the Great Society.

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Administration and Cabinet


The Nixon Administration was comprised of an impressive array of talent both in the cabinet and in the White House staff. Among the many people who came to Washington to serve in the administration were one future president (George H. W. Bush); a vice-president (Dick Cheney); six secretaries of state (Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, George Shultz, James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger, and Colin Powell); five secretaries of defense (James Schlesinger, Donald Rumsfeld, Casper Weinberger, Frank Carlucci, and Cheney); a chairman of the joint chiefs of staff (Powell), two secretaries of the treasury (William Simon and Baker); a secretary of energy (Schlesinger); and three chiefs of staff (Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Baker). Indeed a member of the Nixon Administration has held a cabinet post or been a senior advisor within the subsequent six administrations. That so many key figures of the Ford, Reagan, Bush (41), and Bush (43) Administrations first entered government service in the Nixon White House is arguably the most profound and long-lasting legacy of Richard Nixon.

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Watergate:


In October 1972, The Washington Post reported the FBI had determined Nixon aides had spied on and sabotaged numerous Democratic presidential candidates as a part of the operations that led to the infamous Watergate scandal. During the campaign five burglars were arrested on June 17, 1972 in the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office complex. They were subsequently linked to the White House. This became one of a series of major scandals involving the Committee to Re-Elect the President (known as CRP but referred to by outsiders as CREEP), including the White House enemies list and assorted "dirty tricks." The ensuing Watergate scandal exposed the Nixon administration's rampant corruption, illegality, and deceit. Nixon himself downplayed the scandal as mere politics, but when his aides resigned in disgrace, Nixon's role in ordering an illegal cover-up came to light in the press, courts, and congressional investigations. Nixon evaded taxes, accepted illicit campaign contributions, ordered secret bombings, and harassed opponents with executive agencies, wiretaps, and break-ins. Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned in October 1973 for accepting bribes, but Nixon hung on to power, claiming, "I am not a crook." His secret recordings of White House conversations were subpoenaed, and revealed details of his complicity in the cover-up. Nixon was named by the grand jury investigating Watergate as "an unindicted co-conspirator" in the Watergate Scandal. He lost support from some in his own party as well as much popular support after what became known as the Saturday Night Massacre of October 20, 1973 in which he ordered Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor in the Watergate case, to be fired, as well as firing several of his own subordinates who objected to this move. The House Judiciary Committee opened formal and public impeachment hearings against Nixon on May 9, 1974. Despite his efforts, one of the secret recordings, known as the "smoking gun" tape, was released on August 5, 1974 and revealed that Nixon authorized hush money to Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt, and also revealed that Nixon arranged for the blackmailing of the CIA into telling the FBI to stop investigating certain topics because of "the Bay of Pigs thing". Several of the Watergate burglars were involved in the Bay of Pigs operation. Haldeman would later claim that when Nixon used the phrase "the Bay of Pigs thing," he was actually referring to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In light of his loss of political support and the near certainty of both his impeachment by the House of Representatives and his conviction by the Senate, he resigned on August 9, 1974, after addressing the nation on television the previous evening. He never admitted wrongdoing, though he later conceded errors of judgment.

On September 8, 1974, a blanket pardon from President Gerald R. Ford, who served as Nixon's second vice president, effectively ended any possibility of indictment. The pardon was highly controversial and Nixon's critics claimed that the blanket pardon was quid pro quo for his resignation. No evidence of this "corrupt bargain" has ever been proven, and many modern historians dismiss any claims of overt collusion between the two men concerning the pardon. The pardon hurt Ford politically, and it was one of the major reasons cited for Ford's defeat in the election of 1976.

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Later years and death


In his later years Nixon worked to rehabilitate his public image, and enjoyed considerably more success than could have been anticipated at the time of his resignation. He gained great respect as an elder statesman in the area of foreign affairs, being consulted by both Democratic and Republican successors to the Presidency.

Further tape releases, however, removed any doubt of Nixon's involvement both in the Watergate cover-up and also the illegal campaign finances and intrusive government surveillance that were at the heart of the scandal.

Nixon wrote many books after his departure from politics, including his memoirs.

On April 18, 1994, Nixon, 81, suffered a major stroke at his home in Park Ridge, New Jersey, and died four days later on April 22. He was buried beside his wife Pat Nixon (who had died ten months earlier, on June 22, 1993, of lung cancer) on the grounds of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California.

President Bill Clinton, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and California Republican Governor Pete Wilson spoke at the April 27 funeral, the first for an American president since that of Lyndon Johnson on January 25, 1973, a ceremony Nixon presided over when president; also in attendance were former presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and their respective first ladies. Nixon was survived by his two daughters, along with his four grandchildren.

The Nixon Library contains only Nixon's pre- and post-presidential papers, as his presidential papers have been retained as government evidence. Nixon's attempts to protect his papers and gain tax advantages from them had been one of the important themes of the Watergate affair. Due to disputes over the papers, the library is privately funded and does not, like the other presidential libraries, receive support from the National Archives.

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Nixon's image and media portrayals

Nixon's career was frequently dogged by Nixon's personality, and the public perception of it. Editorial cartoonists such as Herblock and comedians had fun exaggerating Nixon's appearance and mannerisms, to the point where the line between the human and the caricature version of him became increasingly blurred. He was often portrayed as a sullen loner, with unshaven jowls, slumped shoulders, and a furrowed, sweaty brow. He was also characterized as the very epitome of a "square" and the personification of unpleasant adult authority. Nixon tried to shed these perceptions by staging photo-ops with young people, and even cameo appearances on popular TV shows such as Laugh-In and Hee Haw (before he was president). He also frequently brandished the two-finger V sign (alternately viewed as the "Victory sign" or "peace sign") using both hands, an act which became one of his best-known trademarks. Once the transcripts of the White House tapes were released, people were shocked at the amount of swearing and vicious comments about opponents that Nixon issued. This did not help the public perception, and fed the comedians even more. Nixon's sense of being persecuted by his "enemies," his grandiose belief in his own moral and political excellence, and his commitment to utilize ruthless power at all costs led some experts to describe him as having a narcissistic and paranoid personality. During the Watergate Scandal, Nixon's approval rating had fallen to 25%.

• The book and movie All the President's Men tell Woodward and Bernstein's story of the Watergate affair.
  
• Best-selling historian-author Stephen Ambrose wrote a three-volume biography (Nixon: The Education of a Politician 1913-1962, Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery 1973-1990) considered the definitive work among many Nixon biographies. The detailed accounts were mostly favorably regarded by both liberal and conservative reviewers.
  
• Conservative author Victor Lasky published a book in 1977 called It Didn't Start With Watergate. The book points out that past presidents may have used wiretaps and engaged in other activities that Nixon was accused of, but were never pursued by the press or the subject of impeachment hearings.
  
• Chuck Colson gives an insider account of the Watergate affair in Born Again.
  
• H.R. Haldeman also provides an insider's perspective in the books The Ends of Power and The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House
  
• G. Gordon Liddy, gives his version of the Watergate Scandal in his autobiography Will.
  
• The movie Nixon directed by Oliver Stone.
  
• Nixon in China is an opera dealing with Nixon's visit there.
  
• The comedy Dick (film) tells the tale of the watergate scandal by saying that Deep Throat (Watergate) was two teenage girls. They choose the name because their older brother saw Deep Throat (film) at the theater. They get in the White House since they are presidential dogwalkers.
  
• From 1976 to 1979, Nixon was portrayed on NBC's Saturday Night Live by Dan Aykroyd.
  
• Richard Nixon was elected president of the world in Matt Groening's cartoon series Futurama, claiming that the Constitution stated that nobody may run more than twice, and he is now just a head in a jar. Many other people are heads in jars on Futurama, but Nixon's is the one with the biggest role. He also appears in The Simpsons in flashbacks or on television.