Guess Who’s Back

I’m fixin’ to vote for Nixon/

Nobody else will do/

My personal pick is Tricky Dick/

Nixon in Ninety-two.

--Doodoo Wah, the band

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Before the last election, Ron DeLacy of Doodoo Wah, er, fame sent out his Nixon song to something like 400 of the nation’s radio stations. It’s a pretty funny piece, a favorite among fans of his Gold Country-based comedy folk band. In it DeLacy takes warbling potshots at the entire field of candidates--”instead of eatin’ artillery, he was cheatin’ on Hillary,” etc.--and concludes with a wistful endorsement of Nixon.

Alas, the nation was not yet ready for the political wit and wisdom of Doodoo Wah. “I got a royalty check for nine dollars and twenty-six cents,” Delacy reported the other day. Unbowed, he has cut an updated version--”Bob Dole works stellarly, but he’s kinda elderly. I’m not sure how old,” etc.--and is convinced “Nixon in 96” can make the world forget Garth Brooks, or at least Weird Al Yankovic.

And who knows?

Certainly the timing seems right. Against all odds--the man died in 1994--Nixon seems as much in demand now as ever. It goes beyond the Oliver Stone movie, beyond the books regularly churned out about him. Nixon was obsessed with making a mark, with shaping events and, as implausible as it may seem, he has emerged as one of the power players in the present presidential contest.

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It began with the primaries and a strange derby among Republican hopefuls for Nixon’s posthumous endorsement. Pete Wilson’s people, citing a comment Nixon had made in one of his last interviews, claimed the former president had given the nod to their man. Richard Lugar’s supporters pointed out that the former Indianapolis mayor had been “Nixon’s favorite mayor.” Pat Buchanan made references to his speech-writing days in the Nixon White House.

Bob Dole trumped the field. A Los Angeles Times report documented campaign advice Nixon had sent Dole’s way to the end. There were letters urging Dole to run and to smile more. In the primaries, Dole was to “run as far as you can to the right.” Once the nomination was secure, Nixon went on, “run as fast as you can back to the middle.” And that, it appears, is exactly what Dole has done.

President Clinton has paid tribute to Nixon by following the same pragmatic strategy: Forget ideology, and push hard for the political center, for “the silent majority.” More than anything, though, Clinton feels the touch of Nixon through Whitewater. Forget the specifics. Whitewater is about payback for Watergate, about evening the score. Listen from the grave to Nixon himself, as quoted in a current, and much discussed, New Yorker piece by Monica Crowley, an aide in Nixon’s final days:

“My critics used to say that Watergate was a gift to them; here we have a gift from the Clintons and no one is up to using it. The point has to be made that, unlike this situation, no one ever profited in Watergate. Here you have financial gain and abuse of power . . . and nothing is done. And here was Hillary, on the impeachment committee, screaming about the 18 1/2 minutes, and now she’s in Little Rock, shredding.”

One can almost hear cackling from the coffin.

*

The mystery is: Why Nixon? Why would Republicans work to follow his serpentine course to the center, as opposed to Reagan’s equally successful strategy of running right and then running right? Why doesn’t anybody ever seem to care what other past presidents have to say--about anything? “NIXON on CLINTON” trumpets the New Yorker’s dust jacket headline. It’s difficult to imagine such editorial excitement over, say, Carter on Clinton.

Well, for starters, people in politics--the handlers and the handled--always trust tactics over ideology. They like to imagine themselves as little von Clausewitzes. They see Nixon as a big von Clausewitz, the ultimate tactician whose every utterance on political strategy thus deserves their breathless attention.

On another plane, through all his dramatic swoons and comebacks, Nixon transcended politics and made himself into a cultural icon. To his detractors he became a symbol of political evil; to his supporters, a monument to perseverance. Either way, he seemed bigger than any of the models that followed. You won’t hear Doodoo Wah singing about Gerald Ford.

Most of all, though, Nixon holds the stage even in death because that’s what he so terribly wanted. As his biographies all make perfectly clear, he was consumed by a hunger to escape the sour soil of his daddy’s lemon groves, to make history and shape events, to be heard. Judging by the noise of the current campaign, the man got what he wanted and is getting it still.