The Savvy and Follies of a Man of Paradoxes

The only time I interviewed Richard Nixon, one-on-one, press secretary Ron Ziegler pointed to my tape recorder as we approached the Oval Office and warned, “He’ll go right up the wall if he sees that.”

Being young and not willing to risk a scene with the leader of the free world, I quickly stashed the recorder in Ziegler’s office. A few years later, of course, I and everybody else learned that Nixon himself secretly had been recording all his conversations in the Oval Office.

I’d witnessed an example of what former Nixon aide John D. Ehrlichman has called the “strange collection of paradoxes” of this complex man, a native Californian who walked on the beach in wingtip shoes.

Nixon would go to the beach at San Clemente for a vacation and spend several hours each day working. As a grunt reporter assisting UPI’s two White House correspondents, I found the President’s daily drill both admirable and annoying. It was annoying because the seemingly endless meetings with Cabinet secretaries, the photo-ops and his penchant for mingling with local citizens cut into a reporter’s beach time.

The contrast could not have been greater covering Ronald Reagan many years later in Santa Barbara. Reagan wanted little to do with his staff and absolutely no contact with reporters, except for the annual summer party at a neutral site. Work merely interfered with this President’s main agenda, which was to ride horses, chop wood and, perhaps, toss snakes from his ranch pond.

Unlike Nixon, Reagan knew how to relax and appreciated its value.

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Nervous Nixon saw enemies everywhere. And initially in his presidency, he perceived one to be Gov. Reagan, who had fought him for the Republican nomination in 1968.

A year later, I casually mentioned Reagan’s name to Nixon as he walked me to the door after my interview. The President froze, as if he were a cat suddenly sensing an intruder. His ears were alert for information, but he scarcely spoke.

“He was scared to death Reagan would run in ‘72,” recalls Ken Khachigian, a Nixon speech writer. Reagan did not, of course, and the two became good political friends.

In 1980, after Reagan had won the nomination, Nixon occasionally slipped him advice. But Nixon realized that public knowledge of these efforts only would hurt Reagan. So he devised a clandestine delivery system. His aide would pass an envelope to Khachigian in a bar and Khachigian would transfer it to Reagan confidant Mike Deaver.

“The old man would give him big picture advice, like ‘Here’s what should come out of the debate,’ ” says Khachigian, who also became a Reagan speech writer.

Nixon always had respected Reagan’s political talents, but as Watergate erupted he also came to admire his fidelity. “Reagan never turned his back on him, which was a loyalty Nixon appreciated,” says former Rep. Patrick J. Hillings, who succeeded Nixon in the House and was a close friend.

This appreciation of loyalty brings us back to paradox. No men were more loyal or closer to Nixon over the years than two fellow Californians: Robert H. Finch, his HEW secretary, and Herbert G. Klein, the White House communications director. Yet, after finally winning the presidency, the “new Nixon” diminished their influence and allowed relative newcomers H. R. Haldeman and Ehrlichman--among others--to push them around.

And, as we know, the results were disastrous for Nixon.

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Nixon had a big impact on California politics simply by launching so many careers: Finch, elected lieutenant governor; former Reps. Hillings, John H. Rousselot, Bob Wilson; political consultants Khachigian, Stu Spencer . . . and Gov. Pete Wilson.

Nixon gave Wilson his first political job--as an advance man in his failed 1962 gubernatorial campaign. In fact, Wilson was out in the car waiting to drive the defeated candidate home as Nixon bitterly was holding his infamous “last press conference.”

Three years later, Nixon offered Wilson a much bigger job--then talked him out of taking it.

Nixon confided that he was planning to run for President in 1968 and asked Wilson to join him in New York as a top political aide, organizing his schedule. Wilson mentioned he’d also been thinking about running for something, the state Assembly.

“He looked me right in the eye,” Wilson recalls. “ ‘What kind of a district? What’s the registration? Can you win it?’ ‘I think I can.’ He smiled and said, ‘You want to do this don’t you?’ ‘I think so.’ ‘Then you’d better. Otherwise, you’ll spend the rest of your life kicking yourself.’ ”

Wilson took Nixon’s advice. This was fortunate for the future governor. But it was unfortunate for the next President. Nixon could have used more common sense advice in the Oval Office--advice such as “junk that recording machine.”