RICHARD NIXON: 1913-1994 : NATIONAL REACTION

DAVID HALBERSTAM, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has written extensively on the Nixon era

“What history will remember is that Nixon was the only President who could go to China without being redbaited by Richard Nixon . . . .

“People have been talking about how hard it was for him to govern when he was elected in 1968, because the country was so divided. But history will note it was divided largely because Nixon himself deliberately divided it.”

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GERALD R. FORD, 38th President of the United States

“The Watergate tragedy ought to be closed . . . and I hope it will be. It was one of the must unfortunate incidents in the history of the American political scene. The book’s closed. Let’s look forward to the future.”

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ROY JESSEE, a former infantryman selling T-shirts at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

“He just got caught. Watergate, Whitewater--what’s the difference? Nixon was just the scapegoat.”

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ROBERT H. MICHEL, House minority leader

“I knew I could always count on him for advice and counsel. He was truly one of the last of the giants of the generation who helped shape America’s--and the world’s--destiny after World War II.”

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RICHARD LAMM, former governor of Colorado and currently director of the Public Policy Institute at the University of Denver

“There are really two Richard Nixons. There is the paranoid politician, a man who picked at every sore he could find on the body politic, and there in the same body was this overarching geopolitical thinker. You’ve got to find a way to weigh them together.”