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Posted by on Aug 11, 2024 in Blog | 0 comments

The Day I Met Richard Nixon / Remembering His Resignation 50 Years Ago

 

 

THE DAY I MET RICHARD NIXON
REMEMBERING WATERGATE A HALF CENTURY AGO

President Richard Nixon resigned 50 years ago this week.

Looking back, I’m reminded that my lifelong political interests and passionate activism are rooted in following current events during the early 1970s, which were often headlined by the national scandal known as Watergate. Those exciting times made a deep impression on me, not necessarily on how to think about issues in a partisan way, but rather sparking what I’ll call a voyeuristic fascination with power and those who possess it.

It’s hard to comprehend this all today, especially given our immediate access to so much information from so many different perspectives mostly due to the internet and social media. Back then, all news coverage came from newspapers and television. In my school, black and white televisions were rolled into classrooms. The 6th grade school curriculum was temporarily suspended while we watched the Senate committee hearings and testimony on Watergate. Seriously, can you imagine — 12-year-olds riveted to Senate testimony? As I said, those were different times.

Watergate hearings were carried live on all three major networks (CBS, ABC, and NBC — FOX didn’t exist then), and long before cable television and CNN. This narrower prism of current events created a common perspective. Sure, American viewers disagreed on politics and policies. But we also agreed on a common set of facts. That’s missing today. It’s also hard to grasp now just what great grand theater Nixon’s downfall was — the nation’s first real reality show, with an astounding cast of colorful characters, entwined in the gravest of controversies.

Nixon was a despicable man in so many ways which have been clearly exposed, often shockingly self-revealed in his own words. He very likely committed the most treasonous criminal political act of the 20th Century, sabotaging then-President Lyndon B. Johnson’s fragile peace accords with the North Vietnamese in 1968, during an election year. LBJ was very close to a deal that would have ended American involvement in the war, and saved thousands of lives. Nixon, fearing an October peace signing would hurt his chances to win in November, secretly back-channeled the promise (lie) of a better deal if they waited until after the election. Instead, the war dragged on after Nixon’s inauguration, and over the next five long bloody years 24,000 more American soldiers died needlessly.

That said, I’ve always had a soft spot for Nixon in many ways. He was entirely a self-made man. His foreign policy accomplishments with China and the U.S.S.R. are a matter of record. He was also a bold progressive in many of his domestic policies, so much so that leftist lion Noam Chomsky once called Nixon “America’s last liberal president.” Nixon also did the right thing on August 9, 1974 when he resigned from office and departed office smoothly in a respectful transition of power. Nixon also had a commanding state of presence and even an odd sense of charm in person.

I met Nixon once. It was about 11 years after he resigned from the presidency. Nixon is often characterized by writers and historians as a cold and calculating man, even by those who were closest to him, which is certainly borne out by the considerable archival material now available on the Nixon Administration. No doubt, Nixon had a mean streak.

But on this day, I found Nixon to be beyond gracious. He was downright cordial. With me at the time, I had my own two copies of books Nixon had written – Six Crisis and RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon which he willingly autographed for me. When photos were taken following the social affair, he personally called me out from a group of people standing off to the side. As Nixon was posing with others, he asked, “Where’s the young man with my books?” Instantly, I darted out of the crowd and posed for the photo seen here, with Nixon’s arm around my right shoulder. Like two pals shooting the breeze.

We talked for maybe 90 seconds. But hey — how many people can say they had a conversation with THE Richard Nixon. He mentioned to me that he was impressed I had brought along his first book in particular, written back in 1962 – coincidentally, the year of my birth. No doubt, there aren’t many copies of Six Crisis around anymore, even less that are personally inscribed.

Looking back on everything now, his career, his presidency, and the all-too-brief encounter with the late president in a courtyard full of people, I presume that, despite being around people all his life, deep inside Nixon was a lonely man. I do not expect this view to garner sympathy from those who despised him. But he will always be a tragic figure in my mind. Yes, Nixon was very much a Shakespearean tragedy a modern Richard III — a political king plagued by inner demons and ultimately overcome by his own ambition and self-destructive tendencies.

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