President Nixon’s Death

* How sad it is to lose a former President. Although I always backed President Richard Nixon’s opponents, America has lost a senior foreign-policy expert. Some of the public policy statements he made during the last decade sounded rather reasonable compared with the previous 12 years of conservative Reagan-Bush policies. Back in the early 1970s I was upset with him for not including me on his “enemies list.” But time heals old wounds.

DAVID HYMAN

Sepulveda

* A TV reporter said in reference to President Nixon: “We are all victims of our successes and our strengths are determined by our weaknesses.”

President Nixon has always been my hero since I was a Nixonette on the Berkeley campus in the ‘60s. Since that time, and to this moment, President Nixon has been my inspiration for overcoming life’s battles during periods of adversity and personal crisis.

SUSAN LESLIE SMITH

San Marino

* Richard Nixon’s keen mind was clearly demonstrated during a foreign-policy speech he delivered to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council in 1986. Just prior to being introduced to the approximately 1,000 people on hand, he asked that the podium be removed. His aide at the time, John Taylor, now executive director of the Nixon Library & Birthplace, had given me a copy of the text. I noted that it was 21 pages, double-spaced--a probing examination of America’s role in the post-nuclear age. The former President spoke extemporaneously, not using a single note.

Towards the end of the talk, Nixon ticked off 12 points outlining a new policy toward the then-Soviet Union. Looking at my text from my place at the end of the dais, I noted that he skipped point 10. Just prior to concluding, he paused and then deftly inserted the missing paragraph. He had included virtually every word in the text of that approximately 40-minute speech!

EDMONDE A. HADDAD

Playa del Rey

The writer is past president of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. * What has caused the media and President Clinton to half-staff the flag for Richard Nixon? Are we to mourn a fallen President, a statesman? True, he has died and we don’t say bad things about the dead. But should we distort history?

He was forced to resign the presidency or be impeached. He broke many laws. He betrayed the trust of the American people and the oath of office. He ruined the lives of thousands of citizens with his red-baiting and secret enemies list. He supported fascist dictatorships in Southern Europe and throughout the Third World. He was elected by promising to end the Vietnam War and instead escalated the killing.

Nixon, the law-and-order President, thought like a criminal, authorizing robberies, break-ins and phone taps.

Indeed, when a sacred trust to the American people is trampled by a President, when laws are broken which would have sent a poorer, less important person to jail, then history should record it that way.

HASKELL WEXLER

Santa Monica

* Shortly after Nixon resigned I was in London shopping at a discount store. The sales clerk volunteered the following succinct observation: “Nixon did good things. He had bad character.”

LEE WEINSTEIN

Inglewood

* Shortly before he was questioned about his choice in underwear last week, an MTV audience of twentysomethings asked President Clinton what was the most important thing his mother had taught him. He replied, “Never give up.”

Perhaps he could have learned that same lesson from Richard Nixon.

No matter what you thought of him or his politics, you could never call Nixon a quitter. Time after time, when pundits had written him off, Nixon was the proverbial phoenix that kept rising from the political ashes.

Who could have imagined that a Republican President, who was forced to resign from office nearly 20 years ago, would be briefing a Democratic President after returning from a recent trip to Russia where he met with top opposition leaders? In some countries, a Nixon figure would have been exiled or shoved off to permanent obscurity. Instead, Nixon fought back and began a long political comeback that would ultimately reward him with an elder-statesman mantle.

Nixon’s well-chronicled career had a long history of fighting back and turning insurmountable tides. After losing the 1960 presidential election and then the California gubernatorial election, Nixon weakened only once publicly by proclaiming, “You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” But even then, after a short stint in private life, he did the impossible--he came back to win the presidency just a few years later.

All of these thoughts occurred to me back in 1983 when Nixon came out of seclusion to begin his public rehabilitation with a speech on foreign policy at Chapman College in Orange. Even then, speaking without notes and a podium, he kept an audience spellbound with a thoughtful analysis of world affairs. He received a standing ovation.

After being so publicly disgraced, Nixon could have hid and collected his presidential pension. But he seemingly had a genetic mandate to keep firing back and he did, by writing books, giving speeches and playing adviser to world leaders. He never gave up. Maybe that could be one of Richard Nixon’s greatest legacies.

GARY C. SHERWIN

Huntington Harbour

* Sure, Watergate was a mistake, but getting us out of Vietnam was more than politically correct. Thank you, President Nixon!

CAREY LIVINGSTON

Yucaipa

* If Watergate began the period of national skepticism, the glowing reminiscences about Richard Nixon by some who knew him do nothing to change that Zeitgeist .

The truth is that Nixon broke the law not only by obstructing justice in the Watergate investigation. His apologists seem to forget the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. They’ve apparently forgotten the enemies list and the wiretapping. Those are violations of the Fourth Amendment. Perhaps they’ve forgotten, too, his abuse of power by illegal use of the IRS to harass his enemies.

Conducting foreign policy is one thing: You make your own rules. Domestic governance has quite different, more difficult ramifications.

Now we shall have the spectacle of all of those past presidents and the present one eulogizing Nixon. Either they are world-class hypocrites or they have forgotten that if this is not a nation of laws, not men, then it is not worth living here.

MARY LOU WHITMORE

Brentwood

* Most of us agreed that President Nixon was an extraordinary man in foreign affairs. What about domestic affairs?

As a black female who has worked extensively in the federal environs of equal-employment opportunity, beginning with the program’s inception in 1969, I feel that it is time to give credit where credit is due.

Nixon was the first President to put teeth in equal opportunity in employment in the federal government through his Executive Order 11478 (Aug. 8, 1969).

But he didn’t stop there! More important, he was the President who signed into law the amendment (PL 92-261, March 24, 1972) to the 1964 Civil Rights Law, which directed equal opportunity in employment for not only federal employees but for state and local government employees, too.

These programs will forge an acquired skill forever in the manner that our government treats its citizens in equality of opportunity. I salute you, Mr. President, and thank you!

SALENA GREGORY

San Bernardino

* I really don’t understand the lionization of Nixon. Has everyone forgotten how much they hated him when he was President? Has everyone forgotten about the countless deaths he caused in Southeast Asia, or the fact that he resigned in disgrace after the Watergate fiasco?

A national day of mourning for Nixon? You’ve got be kidding me!

KENNY GOLDBERG

Pasadena

* When Hitler began conquering Europe, no one in the media accused any opponent of those events of “anti-Nazi hysteria.” Yet in 1946, when Stalin gobbled up East Europe and Richard Nixon ran for Congress opposing this, he was accused of “anti-communist hysteria.” Communism lasted much longer than Nazism and has been responsible for far more butchery and suffering in many more countries. To this day, the media repeat the cliche of “anti-communist hysteria,” as though anyone who is against communism is some kind of a dangerous radical.

The fall of world communism, I should think, would have validated those who were always against it rather than those who appeased it. It took TV about 40 years before it would show footage of Stalin’s troops invading East Poland in 1939, instead of just Hitler invading from the other side. I proudly join in honoring Nixon for his “anti-communist hysteria.” We “hysterics” were right.

GEORGE DuBOIS

Laguna Niguel

Pasadena

* Conrad comes not to bury Nixon but to belie him (“Here lies Richard M. Nixon,” April 25).

RALPH HEAD

Santa Barbara

* Once again Conrad tops the nation with the most distasteful political cartoon of the day. The sadder thing is that you published it. Shame on you.

ROBERT H. BOURGUET

Cypress

* Historians and media pundits will argue the pros and cons of Nixon’s actions as President for years hence. No one, however, will dare question the down-to-earth brilliance of his forethought to draw up a “living will.” He spared us the media sensationalization of the medical heroics to save a half-paralyzed, unable-to-speak human. I hope many people will consider the same legal course to preserve their dignity, as did he.

JAMES A. GOETHEL MD

Glendale