BOOK MARK : Why We Should Rue the Day Richard Nixon Resigned the Presidency
If no success was ever great enough for Richard M. Nixon, no defeat was final. “He is a cork,” former presidential counselor Bryce N. Harlow has observed. “Push him down and he pops right back up. . . . He verges on being indestructible.” If he ever had a heart attack, Harlow quips, he would breathe into his own mouth and resuscitate himself.
How did he keep coming back? First, Nixon was tough, the toughest man in American politics in his day. Second, he was so disciplined and worked so hard. Politics was more than his work, more than his avocation, more than his hobby--politics was his life. The line from Gerald R. Ford aide Bob Hartmann about no man living being able to outguess Nixon speaks to Nixon’s cunning, to the reach of his brain and the power of his memory, but also to his dedication to the job at hand, his habit of looking at a situation or a problem from every possible perspective and his practice of never stopping thinking.
Third, Nixon knew so much. This was a consequence of being constantly at work. When he wasn’t gathering information on his travels, or on the lecture or campaign trail, or on his telephone network, he was reading. He did not read for pleasure, but to learn. He was the last American President to do serious reading.
Fourth, he took risks. He was willing to subject himself to ridicule, rebuff, rejection, to gain power. It was struggle that gave life meaning--not victory, but struggle. Victory was sweet, surely, but it had a downside; victory gained meant struggle ended. Thus Nixon’s habitual reaction to victory was depression.
In an interview with David Frost, Nixon expanded on the theme. “To me,” he said, “the unhappiest people of the world are those in the watering places, the international watering places . . . drinking too much, talking too much, thinking too little. . . . They don’t know life. Because what makes life mean something is purpose. A goal. The battle. The struggle. Even if you don’t win it.”
Most losing candidates react to defeat by quitting public life. Nixon reacted to the humiliation of being forced to resign the presidency by thrusting himself back into the arena.
This analysis of his public stance presents Nixon in a near-noble cast. But there was more to the man than a politician who could rebound. There were, after all, reasons why he was defeated so often. Nixon often failed to see the limits. He did not understand that real power lies with the people and their perceptions. Power to Nixon was manipulation, inside information, polls, favors, trade-offs, bribes, public relations, smears and intimidation. Power was publicity rather than policy.
What was lost when Nixon resigned? No definitive answer is possible, as we can never know what he might have accomplished had he stayed in office free of his Watergate woes. We do know what he was proposing. His opponents dismissed those proposals as transparent attempts to wriggle out of Watergate, and perhaps his motives were base; nonetheless, he selected the policies he wanted to emphasize and encourage, they bore his personal stamp and they held great promise.
Because Nixon resigned, the full promise of detente with the Soviet Union has not been realized. The era of cooperation Nixon had sought to inaugurate was replaced by a decade and a half of confrontation. The superpowers spent those 15 years snarling at each other, spending stupendous sums on ever more destructive and less needed weapons, enormously increasing the costs and the risks of the Cold War. What began to happen in the late 1980s, as first Ronald Reagan and then George Bush embraced Mikhail S. Gorbachev, could have happened in the mid-1970s.
Because Nixon resigned, the Republican Party moved to the right, bringing a majority of the voters in the country along with it. Ford’s defeat by Jimmy Carter gave the conservatives unchallenged control of the Republican Party. This led to major changes in American politics, government, economic affairs, foreign policy and much more, after Reagan won the 1980 election.
Because Nixon resigned, his proposal not just to maintain but to expand the Basic Education Opportunity Act and the student loan program died. Who can count how many American youngsters were deprived of their chance at higher education as a result?
It was Nixon’s advocacy of such programs as student loans and grants and national health insurance for all that most infuriated conservatives. As did the liberals, the conservatives always assigned to Nixon the worst motive; in this case, the conservatives charged that Nixon was trying to pander to the liberals to save his own skin. That hardly seems fair. By the time he was pushing these proposals, in early 1974, Nixon knew that he had no liberal supporters left. He knew his fate rested with the conservatives in Congress. Nonetheless, he went ahead and made the proposals.
Because Nixon resigned, revenue sharing died. This came just at the time the cities were losing their factories and tax bases. The result was visible poverty in the cities, in the form of homeless men, women and children, such as had not been seen in America since the Depression.
Because Nixon resigned, his program for a broad and badly needed reorganizations of the federal government--his “New American Revolution”--died.
Because Nixon resigned, what the country got was not the Nixon Revolution but the Reagan Revolution. It got massive, unbelievable deficits. It got Iran-Contra. It got the savings-and-loan scandals. It got millions of homeless, and gross favoritism for the rich.
None of that was any part of the proposed Nixon Revolution. When Nixon resigned, we lost more than we gained.
BOOK REVIEW: “Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990,” by Stephen E. Ambrose, is reviewed on Page 4 of the Book Review section.
1991 by Stephen E. Ambrose. Reprinted with permission from Simon & Schuster.
