Bush Hails Nixon as ‘Architect of Peace’ Who Altered World

President Bush, whose career in politics has been intertwined with that of Richard M. Nixon for a generation, lauded the former President on Thursday as a “true architect of peace” and a man who “helped change the course, not only of America, but of the entire world.”

Speaking at the dedication of Nixon’s museum and library, Bush said visitors to the library who wish to understand the man should look first at his family, then at his “intellectual’s complexity” and finally should consider Nixon as “the quintessence of Middle America.”

While Bush’s speech was heavy with praise for the former President and his wife, Pat, he was also the only speaker at the morning’s events who uttered the “W”word--Watergate--describing it as the “seventh crisis” in Nixon’s life, a reference to Nixon’s early autobiography, “Six Crises.”

The fact that he mentioned the chapter of Nixon’s life that the former President’s other guests tried hard to avoid reflected the complex nature of the relationship between America’s 41st President and the 37th.

Nixon played a key role in Bush’s political career, one matched only by Ronald Reagan, who propelled Bush into the White House by making him vice president. And Bush repaid Nixon with loyal service, particularly as Republican National Chairman during the last year of the Watergate scandal.

Nixon first campaigned for Bush when the young Texas oilman ran successfully for Congress in the mid-1960s. In 1968, Nixon considered Bush as a possible running mate, but passed him up for Spiro T. Agnew. Two years later, as Nixon sought to capture control of the Senate for the Republican party, he hand-picked Bush to be the party’s Senate candidate in Texas. Bush lost, but Nixon rewarded him by making him ambassador to the United Nations.

At the same time, Bush was never one of Nixon’s “bitter-end” defenders. In a television interview only a few months before the end of the Nixon presidency, for example, Bush rejected the idea that Nixon’s problems were part of a “vendetta” being waged by Nixon enemies.

“Absolutely not,” Bush had said when asked about the theory, one widely believed by Nixon aides and, according to many reports, by the former President himself.

And in the last days of Nixon’s tenure, after the revelation of the final “smoking gun” tape showing that Nixon had tried to use the CIA to block the FBI’s investigation of Watergate, Bush finally broke with the President’s defenders. He hand-delivered a letter to the White House saying: “I would now ill-serve a President, whose massive accomplishments I will always respect, and whose family I love, if I did not give you my judgment . . . (that) resignation is best for this country, best for this President.”

Nixon resigned two days later.

Thursday, however, Bush limited his reference to Watergate to only one brief mention, concentrating, instead, on the area in which he, like Nixon, has chosen to concentrate his attention--foreign policy. Nixon’s foreign affairs triumphs formed the center of Bush’s speech, much as they have been at the center of Nixon’s efforts to rehabilitate his reputation.

Nixon, he said, “endured much in his quest for peace with honor in Vietnam.” Later, Bush said, Nixon “revolutionized the world” by opening relations between the United States and China’s communist government and later traveling to China. Bush, who later served as U.S. envoy to China, has sought Nixon’s advice in dealing with that country, aides say. Nixon, in turn, has defended Bush’s policies, which critics say are too forgiving of China’s human rights abuses.

Citing Nixon’s attempts to reach peace agreements in the Middle East and strategic arms agreements with the Soviet Union, Bush said the former President had “worked with every fiber of (his) being to help achieve a generation of peace.”

Before the library ceremony, Bush spoke at a closed-door fund-raiser expected to raise $300,000 for the California Republican Party.

Later in the day, after lunch with the three former Presidents at the library, Bush began a short campaign trip for GOP Senate candidates in Idaho and Montana. He is also planning to go fishing in Wyoming this afternoon before returning to Washington tonight.