Majority Condemn Clinton in Another House--Nixon’s

On a day when the skies in Orange County were as gloomy as the mood in Washington, visitors to the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace were smiling. The news from the nation’s capital was boosting the legacy of the man previously known as the most disgraced president of the 20th century.

“Everybody just downed Nixon, really got down on him,” said Phyllis Gore, a 49-year-old Republican from Bluffton, Ind., who was touring the presidential library in Yorba Linda for the first time.

“Yeah, he was a snake, I remember his lies,” Gore said of Nixon. “But he had the decency to step down, and not take the country through this mess.”

As the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach William Jefferson Clinton, library browsers--whether they were seeking Christmas presents at the gift shop or walking through the special exhibit about, ironically, White House marriages--had some advice for the embattled leader: Resign.

Put an end to the national scandal. Do it for the good of the country.

After all, they said, that’s what Nixon did.

“It makes him seem a little better because he had the good sense to resign,” said visitor Mary Ann Duke, 61, of Escondido. If Clinton was a Republican, leaders of his party would persuade him to step down, as they did to Nixon in 1974, she said.

“They’d never stand for this,” Duke said. “It’s embarrassing. We’ve always been such a strong country. Everyone’s always looked up to us. Now I think we’re laughed at.”

Among the highly partisan audience, Clinton received few kind words.

“I just wish it never happened,” said Bob Knight, 74, of Placentia. “I wish that Clinton had behaved himself.”

Nixon resigned after revelations that he was personally involved in a cover-up of the Watergate burglary. He holds the unenviable distinction of being the only president forced to leave office. Resignation prevented the next step, impeachment by the House. But now that it has happened to Clinton, Nixon backers say the former president may be remembered for more than simply the Watergate scandal.

“History will show what he’s done, the good he’s done in foreign policy and other areas,” Ruth Knight, 74, said as she was browsing in the gift shop.

Clinton supporters said his attempts to conceal his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky aren’t grounds for impeachment; they blame the Republican majority in Congress for the “political witch hunt” against the president. But some people interviewed Saturday said the Democratic president’s troubles are no different than circumstances a quarter-century ago, when Nixon, a Republican, was investigated by the Democratic-controlled Congress.

“What goes around comes around,” said Fern Hutchinson, an 85-year-old resident of Hawaii looking at some gardening books on sale outside the gift shop. “Of course, I’m an avid Republican, so maybe I’m a little biased.”

Not everyone visiting the library is convinced that current events will elevate Nixon’s reputation or destroy the current president’s.

“The Republicans made too much of this,” said Fullerton resident Miguel Tamayo, 65. “It didn’t affect national security or the nation. What man isn’t going to do what he did?”

Some visitors to the library may have spotted Hillary Rodham Clinton’s wedding dress, which she donated to the current library exhibit, “ ‘My Dearest Partner’: Husbands and Wives in the White House.” There are also three photographs of the Clintons on their wedding day. A 1992 print shows the first lady leaning in to kiss her husband, who is lying on a hammock.

And, according to the exhibit, which began last May, the Clintons plan to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary in the White House on Oct. 11, 2000.