Chapter 21
Covering Up: Richard Nixon
IN THIS CHAPTER
Pursuing a career in politics
Contending for the presidency
Serving as president
Losing the presidency
This chapter deals with one of the most controversial presidents in U.S. history — Richard Milhous Nixon. Nixon had a distinguished career in Congress and was an active vice president under Dwight Eisenhower. He resolved many problems for Ike before ascending to the slot of chief executive.
As president, Nixon was a foreign policy genius. If rankings were based on foreign policy alone, he would be one of the top five presidents in the history of the United States. However, there was Watergate, the scandal that ruined Nixon’s presidency, smeared his reputation, and undermined public confidence in the presidency.
In retirement, Nixon became an elder statesman, advising presidents such as Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and even Democrat Bill Clinton. He managed to repair his tarnished reputation somewhat, but the Watergate controversy continues to linger. Richard Nixon may not have been one of America’s better presidents, but he doesn’t deserve to be listed among the worst.
Nixon’s Early Political Career
In 1946, when Nixon got back from serving in the South Pacific during World War II, the Californian Republican Party approached the returning war hero and asked him to run for the 12th district’s congressional seat, held by longtime Democratic Congressman Jerry Voorhis.
Nixon had no issues to attack Voorhis on, so he researched Voorhis’s past and found that he had been a socialist, believing in powerful unions and government-owned industries. Nixon accused Voorhis of still being a socialist and of being soft on communism. The Cold War — the period after the end of World War II when the relationship between the Unites States and the Soviet Union was characterized by suspicion and animosity — was just starting, and with Americans feeling scared and belligerent about communism, the accusation was enough to help Nixon win the seat.
Nixon learned a valuable lesson during that campaign race: Attacking an opponent for being soft on communism was a great strategy. Nixon went on to build a career on being a staunch anti-communist.
Pursuing communists in the House
As a member of the House of Representatives, Nixon accomplished much. He was a member of the Herter Committee, which studied and supported the Marshall Plan, and he served on the House Education and Labor Committee, where he helped draw up the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 (see Chapter 17 for more information on the Marshall Plan and the Taft-Hartley Act).
Nixon’s reputation as an anti-communist got him on the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was assigned to investigate and uncover communists and subversive organizations in the federal government and other areas of the United States, notably the film industry.
Nixon made a name for himself by doggedly pursuing the Alger Hiss case, when even President Truman was tired of pursuing the matter. A State Department official who was accused of treason, Hiss was ultimately convicted of perjury in 1950 due to Nixon’s pursuit, and Nixon became a hero to the conservative right.
Red-baiting his way to the Senate
In 1950, Nixon ran for the Senate. His opponent was longtime liberal Democratic senator Helen Gahagan Douglas. Nixon used the same tactics he’d used in his first House campaign, labeling Douglas as soft on communism. He called her “The Pink Lady,” despite having no basis for the accusation. The tactic worked, and Nixon won the election by almost 700,000 votes.
After he won the seat, Nixon didn’t spend a lot of time in the Senate. In 1951, he toured the United States, giving speeches to Republican organizations. He became a household name among Republicans across the country.
Delivering California and being chosen vice president
Nixon saved the day for Eisenhower at the Republican presidential convention in 1952, when he delivered all of California’s votes to Eisenhower, making the difference for the general. The grateful Eisenhower picked Nixon as his vice-presidential candidate.
After being selected as Eisenhower’s vice-presidential nominee, Nixon was accused of financial improprieties. The New York Post reported that Nixon had set up a fund to help out fellow Republicans and that many wealthy Californians had donated money to it. While this type of fundraising was perfectly legal, Eisenhower was running on a platform of political morality.
Many in the Republican Party called for Nixon’s resignation as the vice- presidential nominee. In September 1952, Nixon went live on national television and gave his famous Checkers Speech. He disclosed all of his financial assets and told the U.S. public that he was innocent of any wrongdoing. He further revealed that he had received a puppy, by the name of Checkers, as a gift. He told the public that his children loved the dog and that he would rather resign as Eisenhower’s vice-presidential nominee than return the little puppy and hurt his children. To quote Nixon: “The kids, like all kids, loved the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.”
When he left the studio, Nixon thought his career was over. But letters expressing support for Nixon poured in, and Nixon’s career was saved.
Serving as vice president
The Eisenhower-Nixon ticket easily won the presidential election of 1952. Richard Nixon became the youngest vice president in U.S. history — in 1953, he was only 40 years old. Unlike previous vice presidents, Nixon wasn’t a quiet bystander but an active participant in forming the administration’s policies. Eisenhower hated partisan politics, so he sent Nixon to defend his policies in front of Congress.
Nixon traveled the world for Eisenhower, visiting more than 50 countries and becoming the goodwill ambassador for the Eisenhower administration. In 1959, Nixon traveled to Moscow and appeared in a televised debate with Soviet Premier Khrushchev on the merits of democracy and communism. This kitchen debate was later broadcast in both countries. Nixon became the first U.S. politician to address the Soviet public on live television.
In 1960, Nixon was the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. He received the nomination on the first ballot and went into the 1960 election as the clear favorite.
Losing the Presidential Race in 1960
Before the 2000 election, the 1960 presidential election was the closest presidential election since the early days of the democracy. Nixon campaigned hard and would have won had it not been for four televised debates — the first-ever nationally televised presidential debates.
Nixon looked old and tired during the first debate. He had just come of out of the hospital after recovering from a life-threatening infection, and he looked ill. Despite his weary looks, he refused to wear makeup. Even his mother called him afterwards to ask if he was all right. John F. Kennedy, the Democratic nominee, looked young and energetic in comparison.
Kennedy went on to win the election by 112,803 votes out of almost 70 million cast. Despite charges of vote fraud in Illinois and Texas — states that Nixon lost by a few thousand votes — Nixon refused to go to court, saying, “to drag out the decision would do incalculable and lasting damage throughout the country.” Nixon congratulated Kennedy and returned to his law practice in California.
After losing the 1960 presidential election, Richard Nixon said the following: “A man is not finished when he is defeated; he’s finished when he quits.”
Contending from Coast to Coast
After returning to California, Nixon wrote his autobiography, entitled Six Crises, and was content to practice law. The California Republican Party approached him about running for governor in 1962. Only Nixon had a shot at winning against the popular Democratic incumbent Edmund G. Brown.
Nixon accepted the challenge and used his practiced tactic — he accused Brown of being soft on communism. But his strategy backfired this time, because the public wasn’t concerned with this issue in a state-level race.
When the votes were in, Nixon lost badly. Instead of giving a concession speech on election night, though, Nixon lashed out at the press, concluding with these famous words: “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” Boy, was he wrong!
After his defeat, Nixon moved to New York City to practice law. He campaigned for Republicans all over the country, including Barry Goldwater, the Republican presidential nominee, in 1964. His loyalty and effort paid off. By 1968, many in the Republican Party owed Nixon.
Nixon decided to give the presidency one more shot, announcing his candidacy in February 1968. He won the Republican nomination easily and launched his campaign on two issues: the unsuccessful war in Vietnam and the growing violent protest at home. He argued that only an experienced foreign policy leader could end the war and restore order on the home front.
Nixon faced Democratic vice president Hubert Humphrey and third-party candidate George Wallace, who ran on a platform supporting racial segregation. Wallace almost took the election away from Nixon by winning five southern states, but in the end, Nixon won with 43.4 percent of the popular vote to Humphrey’s 42.7 percent.
Nixon didn’t want to offend anyone, so he ran a very bland campaign in 1968. And, he refused to debate. He had learned the lesson of 1960 well.
President Richard Milhous Nixon (1969–1974)
As president, Nixon set out to make major changes in U.S. foreign policy. His priority was to end the war in Vietnam. In addition, Nixon believed that it was necessary to enter into arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union and achieve cordial relations with communist China.
In the domestic arena, Nixon attempted to control inflation and started some of the most important environmental legislation in U.S. history. Figure 21-1 depicts President Nixon.
Ending the war in Vietnam
Vietnam was Nixon’s first priority when he took office in 1969. He built on the policy changes that Johnson implemented shortly before he left office (see Chapter 20, especially the “Conflict in Vietnam” sidebar).
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
FIGURE 21-1: Richard Nixon, 37th president of the United States.
Nixon’s strategy was called Vietnamization. It called upon South Vietnam to do more of the fighting so that the United States could withdraw its troops. In addition, Nixon proclaimed what became known as the Nixon Doctrine, which stated that Asia could expect only military and economic aid in the fight against communism — the United States would not send more troops.
When Nixon entered the White House in January 1969, more than 500,000 U.S. soldiers were stationed in Vietnam. Nixon had pledged to reduce the number of U.S. soldiers fighting in Vietnam during his campaign, and this he did. By late 1969, Nixon had withdrawn 90,000 troops. When Nixon was up for reelection in 1972, only 30,000 soldiers remained in Vietnam.
When secret peace talks collapsed in 1972, Nixon decided to bomb North Vietnam and force them to the bargaining table. The increased air strikes proved to be the most severe in history to that point, but they worked. In January 1973, a cease-fire agreement was signed between the United States, South Vietnam, and North Vietnam, ending U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
The two Vietnams broke the agreement shortly thereafter, and the war dragged on for two more years. Without U.S. aid, the South Vietnamese army collapsed, and on April 30, 1975, the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to North Vietnamese forces. The war was over, and the country reunified under communist control. Vietnam and the United States finally started to reopen diplomatic relations during the Clinton administration.
Having more successes in foreign policy
President Nixon was very successful in the realm of foreign policy. Some of Nixon’s important foreign policy accomplishments include the following:
- He traveled to the Soviet Union to sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Treaty (SALT I) in 1972. The treaty was the first arms control treaty with the Soviet Union since World War II. It set a ceiling on how many ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) each country could have. It also limited antiballistic missile systems (designed to shoot down incoming missiles) to two per country.
- He became the first U.S. president to travel to communist China. Secret negotiations to reestablish ties between the U.S. and China started in 1969. Nixon’s visit in 1972 led to a reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China.
- He intervened in the 1973 war between Israel and Egypt and restored peace between the two countries. Egypt appealed to its ally, the Soviet Union, for help when things got tough. The Soviets didn’t want to see one of their allies destroyed, so they asked the United States to settle the conflict peacefully by forcing the Israelis to negotiate. When Nixon visited the Middle East in 1974, he received a hero’s welcome from both Israelis and Arabs.
Dealing with domestic issues
Nixon was also very successful in the area of domestic politics. From 1969 to 1973, he accomplished the following:
- Landed the first U.S. astronauts on the moon in 1969, bringing the efforts of three administrations to fruition.
- Established the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.
- Implemented the Water Pollution Act, which established funds for the creation of sewage treatment plants and prohibited dumping industrial waste into the nation’s waterways. The National Air Quality Standards Act of 1970 restricted auto emissions and established clean air standards.
- Passed the 26th Amendment to the Constitution, which gave 18- to 21-year-olds the right to vote.
- Froze prices and wages to reduce inflation.
- Curtailed government spending and raised interest rates to combat inflation.
- Ended the draft in the United States.
Serving Part of a Second Term
With the 1972 election approaching, Nixon was a shoo-in to win. He had great successes in foreign policy, brought inflation under control, and was about to end the war in Vietnam. His opponent, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, belonged to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and had no support in the South.
The 1972 election produced one of the greatest landslides in U.S. history, as Nixon won 49 of the 50 states. Nixon won the election by almost 20 million votes. He was ready to make history. This he did, but not in the way he imagined.
Falling prey to the Watergate scandal
In 1972, five men were caught breaking into the Democratic Party National Headquarters at the Watergate hotel in Washington, D.C. At first, nobody thought much of it. The situation didn’t become a campaign issue in 1972, and it didn’t gain very much attention until police discovered an address book listing names, phone numbers, and even checks tying the burglars to the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP) — the Nixon reelection committee.
Congress began investigating the issue in February 1973 and found that hush money from the Nixon campaign had been deposited in one of the burglar’s bank accounts. In addition, the burglars were tied to some of Nixon’s closest aides. Mass resignations of most of Nixon’s aides followed.
Then came the big question: What did the President know, and when did he know it? The Senate named a special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, in the spring of 1973 to investigate the ties between the burglars and the administration.
In July, one of Nixon’s aides revealed the existence of a secret taping system in the White House. Nixon used the taping device to record conversations for use when he wrote his memoirs. The special prosecutor wanted the tapes, but Nixon refused, citing executive privilege. Nixon became involved in a bitter court battle over the secret tapes. For the first time, members of Congress were demanding Nixon’s resignation.
Initiating the Saturday Night Massacre
When the special prosecutor of the investigation, Archibald Cox, continued to subpoena the tapes, Nixon told Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox on Saturday, October 20, 1973. Richardson refused and resigned instead. Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus also resigned rather than fire Cox, and it was left to Robert Bork, Nixon’s solicitor general, to actually accomplish the deed. This series of resignations and firings became known as the Saturday Night Massacre.
The House Judiciary Committee instituted impeachment procedures against Nixon. In response, Nixon handed over some of the tapes to Congress on October 23, 1973. When Congress discovered that the tapes had been edited, they were forced to appoint a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski.
As if Nixon didn’t have enough trouble in the early 1970s, his vice president, Spiro Agnew, was involved in his own scandal, which had nothing to do with Watergate. Agnew took bribes while serving as governor of Maryland and continued to do so after he became vice president in 1969. Federal prosecutors brought charges against Agnew in 1973. Instead of going to court, he plea-bargained, paid a $10,000 fine, and resigned as vice president. Nixon promptly replaced him with the Republican leader in the House, Gerald R. Ford of Michigan.
Returning to the tapes
In March 1974, Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski asked for more of Nixon’s tapes. Nixon refused to hand them over. This time the case went before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled on July 24, 1974, that Nixon had to hand the tapes over to Jaworski. That same day, the Judiciary Committee in the House of Representatives started impeachment procedures against Nixon. Nixon was charged with three articles of impeachment (see the “How to get impeached” sidebar in Chapter 11 for the basics on impeachment):
- Article One included obstructing justice, making false or misleading statements, withholding evidence, counseling perjury, misusing the CIA, and misusing FBI information.
- Article Two included abuse of power; misusing the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI, and the Secret Service; interfering with the Watergate investigation, and other crimes.
- Article Three included failure to comply with Congressional subpoenas.
The House Judiciary Committee voted overwhelmingly to recommend that Nixon be impeached on all counts by the full House.
Resigning the presidency
The House and the Senate never got the chance to impeach Nixon. On August 5, 1974, the White House released tapes containing evidence that Nixon had instructed the CIA to stop the FBI investigation of the Watergate break-in. Even Nixon’s staunchest supporters turned away from him at this revelation.
Nixon addressed the nation on August 8, 1974, to announce his resignation. In his speech, he told the country that he no longer had the support he needed to continue the fight. He never admitted any guilt or error in the Watergate affair, and he continued to claim that he was innocent.
Nixon left office on August 9, 1974, and flew to California. The new president, Gerald Ford, gave Nixon an unconditional pardon on September 8, 1974, making Nixon safe from any prosecution.
Richard Nixon is the only president in U.S. history to resign from office.
Retiring and rehabilitating
As soon as Nixon left office, he set out to restore his reputation. Over the next 20 years, he wrote seven books, including his memoirs. He became a trusted foreign policy advisor to Presidents Reagan, George H. Bush, and Clinton.
Many considered Nixon one of the best foreign policy experts in the country. His visits to China and Russia became international events. He often received a hero’s welcome during his visits, especially in the Republic of China.
Nixon died suddenly of a stroke in 1994 and received a national burial. His funeral was attended not only by five U.S. presidents but by every major foreign leader in the world. Nixon rehabilitated himself to some extent, but he will always be associated with the Watergate scandal.