The End of a Presidency
Fifty years ago this summer an administration came crashing down.
The Old Man couldn’t step down. Wouldn’t.
He would fight. He had always fought. It was more than instinct—it’s who he was. He had always been underestimated, misunderstood. They—the media, the members of his own party, the people with the Ivy League degrees that he was always reminded he didn’t have—they didn’t understand. He needed to show his family, show his doubters, show the American people. The Old Man would fight—the Old Man had always fought.
Throughout his life, Richard Milhous Nixon had been knocked down only to get up again. When admitted to Harvard, he could not attend because he didn’t have the means to go, so he went to Whittier College in California, just down the road from his childhood home. Nixon’s younger brother died at seven when Richard was 15; his older brother Harold had a terrible case of tuberculosis and died in 1933 when Richard was 19. It was up to Richard to help his mother, Hannah, and his father, Frank, work the family grocery store—to do “the work of three sons” as his mother would later say. At a young age he decided that to reveal his emotions was to show weakness—he convinced himself that this is what the world demanded.
Upon returning from WWII, Nixon was elected to the House in 1946—entering the same freshman class as John F. Kennedy, who was four years younger. Kennedy had gotten the breaks in life that Nixon hadn’t: his father had been one of the richest men in America, he went to Harvard, his military service record had been valorized. But Nixon was a fighter, and despite his lack of advantages, he was elected to the Senate in 1950. By 1952, a Republican star had been born: he was chosen to be General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s running mate. He was 39 years old.
During the 1952 campaign, when it was revealed that as a Senator, Nixon had been accepting gifts from donors, Eisenhower didn’t defend him. Instead, he let him go on television and fend for himself in a 30-minute address watched by an astonishing 60 million people. Nixon barely addressed the $18,000 slush fund at hand. Instead, he explained that his life hadn’t been glamorous. He had worked in the family grocery store, worked his way through college, served his country in the South Pacific—and “in 1940, probably the best thing that ever happened to me happened. I married Pat, who’s sitting over here.” In the crescendo, Nixon acknowledged he had accepted a political gift, just one. “You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate…sent all the way from Texas, black and white, spotted. And our little girl Tricia, the six-year-old, named it ‘Checkers.’ And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we’re gonna keep it.” People forgot about the slush fund. Eisenhower stuck with Nixon, and the two of them sailed to two consecutive terms in office.
When it came his time to run for president in 1960, he lost. He had suspicions—well founded suspicions—that Democrats had tampered with voting results in Illinois and Texas, vaulting Jack Kennedy to the presidency. Two years later, in 1962, he ran for Governor of California—he lost that too. Nixon told the press gathered inside the Beverly Hilton Hotel that night that they “don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore” because he was retiring from politics.
But, still he would fight—he had always fought.
From the ashes of America—a nation rocked by urban unrest and a deeply unpopular war in Vietnam—Nixon would rise again, becoming the nation’s 37th President after defeating Hubert Humphrey and third-party candidate, Alabama Governor George Wallace.
By 1972, Nixon seemed prime to cruise to reelection. Still, he wanted to be sure going in. He wanted to fight. The year prior, in 1971, the Pentagon Papers had been released by Daniel Ellsberg, detailing the level of lying and coverup by successive administrations regarding the Vietnam War. Nixon and his men dedicated a team to investigate the leaks. And who investigates leaks? Plumbers. On May 28, 1972, the Plumbers had made it all the way to the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C., inside the Watergate Hotel.
Eventually it was revealed that the Committee to Re-Elect the President—CREEP—had made cash payments to the burglars. The heat was on. Arrests were made. The Senate took up an investigation. The taping system was revealed. Aides resigned. Nixon fired the special prosecutor investigating Watergate. By November 1973, Nixon was telling American people, “I’m not a crook.” He would fight—he had always fought.
The following spring, the House began debating impeachment. On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court ruled that Nixon must surrender all unreleased tapes to investigators. Three days later the House approved the Articles of Impeachment, in preparation for a full vote. On August 5th, the “smoking gun” tape was revealed: a June 23, 1972 conversation in the Oval Office between Nixon and then-Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman, openly discussing how to interfere with the FBI’s Watergate investigation.
By then, it was clear the House would vote to impeach and that the Senate would vote to convict. Nixon’s men, who called him the Old Man—speechwriter Pat Buchanan, Chief of Staff Alexander Haig, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, even his own sons in law—turned to resignation rather than a Senate trial as the remedy to save face. All of them, especially Haig, were concerned about the worst scenario of all: that the President might kill himself.
He was drinking heavily, barely eating, barely sleeping, wandering the halls late at night and talking to the portraits of former presidents. But none of them could tell him to his face that it was over. No one could tell the man that had fought for his entire life, fought only to be humiliated and counted out, only to come back again, that the fight was over.
The next morning, on August 6th, he was set to meet the Cabinet at 10AM. But 10AM came and the President was not awake—he had been up past 4AM. Finally, he arrived, declaring, “I would like to discuss the important issue confronting this nation and confronting us internationally, too—inflation.” Until the middle of that day he didn’t seem to grasp the reality that the smoking gun tape presented. He said he was considering resigning but only considering it. This was Richard Nixon. He would fight. He had always fought.
Still, someone had to get through to him. Someone had to tell him it was over. But he was as despondent as he was cantankerous, telling Haig, the former Army General on August 7th, “you fellows in your business, you have a way of handling problems like this. Someone leaves a pistol in the drawer,” taking a long pause as Haig waited. “I don’t have a pistol.”
Finally, the moment came later that day at 5PM—Haig had arranged it—an Oval Office meeting with the leaders of his own party: Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, House Minority Leader John Jacob Rhodes, and Senator Barry Goldwater, who as the GOP’s presidential nominee in 1964 had declared, “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Goldwater, who never liked Nixon, told him straight. He simply didn’t have the votes: he would be convicted in the Senate and removed from office. Suddenly, as he said this, he felt tears in his eyes and saw the others did too. Nixon shot out, “there’ll be no tears. I haven’t cried since Eisenhower died.” The meeting was over.
At 8PM, he retired to the Lincoln Sitting Room. He was drinking and listening to music when he summoned Henry Kissinger. The President told him he was resigning—then asking, can a president even resign? Kissinger said he could. He asked, “Will history treat me more kindly than my contemporaries?” Tears began to streak down his face. He then got on his knees to pray—Kissinger did too. The streaked tears became sobs. Nixon cried, “What have I done? What has happened?” He got up and poured himself another drink.
Finally calm, he asked again, “Will history treat me more kindly than my contemporaries?” The conversation went its natural course. After leaving, Kissinger received a call minutes later. It was the President. He was slurring now. He thanked him and asked one last request: “Henry, please don’t ever tell anyone that I cried and that I was not strong.” He continued to make calls until 5:14AM in the morning.
The next night just before 9PM, Richard Nixon entered the Oval Office to address the nation and declare his intention to resign effective noon the next day. He could barely contain himself. The makeup artists had to start and start again as tears flowed down his cheeks. Aides worried he might weep on live television. As he sat at the desk in front of the news crew, he broke the silence. “Blondes, they say, photograph better than brunettes.” No one responded.
On August 9th, before departing the White House for the final time, the place he had fought for 22 years to get to before finally reaching it, President Nixon addressed his staff—and the American public—one last time. He entered the room to an ovation that lasted nearly three minutes. His eyes welled and his nose ran. He rambled about the bar exam, the death of Theodore Roosevelt’s first wife, his father’s lemon ranch, about how “nobody will probably ever write a book about my mother but,” as his voice finally broke and tears ran, “my mother was a saint.” His staff sat immobile. Finally, he gave them a departing word of wisdom: “Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty; always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.”
The Old Man had always fought. But now the fight was over.
…
Sources:
Rick Perlstein, Nixonland. 2008.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days. 1976.