History Will Be Nixon’s True Judge

My phone rang two days after Christmas, 1993. On came that unmistakable voice, “Ken, you were out last week, so now I’ll wish you a Happy New Year instead of Christmas.” Former President Richard Nixon, the man we knew as “RN” (or out of earshot, “the Old Man”), was making holiday calls to his friends and former staff members.

Every conversation with him was a fast-paced dialogue on multiple subjects. That day RN opened up with pleasantries on our families. Then it was down to business, beginning with an analysis of Russia’s leadership and American foreign policy. Switching to domestic politics, he predicted large Republican pickups in Congress.

Next came advice for Pete Wilson’s campaign along with shrewd profiles of Bill Clinton’s vulnerabilities and Bob Dole’s strengths. He signed off after a last few words on foreign affairs.

I never talked to him again. The man who defied political death was struck down by the mortality of humankind, and three years ago to this day, we laid him to rest next to Pat Nixon. Yorba Linda was once again home to Orange County’s most famous son.

When the Old Man resigned the presidency, a handful of us followed him to San Clemente--to the stillness and cloistered life of political wilderness. For a brief time, he was dispirited. His resignation, the indignity of a presidential pardon, and life on the raw edge of personal destitution were brutal blows.

But Richard Nixon refused to be beaten down. Whatever his personal demons in those months and years after resignation, he evidenced to us only the raw determination to remake his life--the most indomitable man I’ve ever known.

In those days, he would be in the office by 6 a.m., always in coat and tie. By midday when he wolfed down his “‘Hawaiian Hamburger” of pineapple and cottage cheese, he had already dictated dozens of pages for his memoirs, issued instructions for more research, and given us tutorials on politics and government.

Out-of-town guests at the former Western White House were treated by the master to mini-seminars while his Irish Setter, King Timahoe, sprawled on an adjacent couch. At Christmas time, Mrs. Nixon coaxed him to the piano at Casa Pacifica where he pounded out carols for a tiny cluster of staff and friends. Restless in his isolation, RN threw himself into his golf game.

And today, in death as in life, the Old Man continues to stir up his adversaries. New tapes, new documents and new controversies feed the greed of those sad and sour little people whose lives are diminished if they cannot plunge the dagger yet again into the lion’s mane.

Mr. Nixon knew what he had done. As he told interviewer David Frost, he had given his enemies a sword, and they stuck it in and twisted it. The compulsive haters received a godsend--tape recordings--permitting them to wallow in their hypocrisy by clinging desperately to the belief he had been the worst.

Truth be told, these folks hope fervently that the knavery of Bill Clinton will not fully surface. They yearn for Mr. Clinton to survive the investigations and the grand juries--that he not face impeachment. Why? So that they don’t lose the intoxication they savor of a demonized Nixon--forever their Beelzebub.

But when the last tape recording has titillated the last Nixonphobe, history will remain.

His presidency lit the fuse that brought down the Soviet empire. His Supreme Court reinstated rational constitutionalism. His administration launched the massive desegregation of southern schools. Vietnam would be free today had he not been hounded out of office. Mainland China is massively imperfect, but a far cry from the international outlaw of the ‘60s. In 1973, RN saved Israel, and freedom rings in more places on earth because of his genius for foreign policy.

For all of this, I’m convinced that he valued even more as legacy his grandsons and granddaughters. The big cheese never went soft except when it came to his family.

The Old Man was a saint to some and sinner to others. The debate goes on--except for this: Richard Nixon was an American original.