FOR hundreds of thousands of disenchanted and indignant American voters, 8 August 1974 proved a momentous day. After months of intensive investigations by The Washington Post, and a newly established legal Office of Special Prosecutor, President Richard Nixon announced his resignation. The scandal of the Watergate affair, involving burglary of the offices of his political opponents and the next “dirty tricks” and lies involved within the cover-up that led back to the White House, revealed that the thirty seventh President of the United States was unworthy of its highest office and guilty of significant crimes.
Such accusations had been familiar long before Nixon’s decision to resign as President. From the age of 33, fighting dirty had formed a part of his controversial ascent to power. He rarely seemed relaxed with others or himself; power-brokers and socialites mocked his upbringing and lack of charm. John F. Kennedy summed him up in two words: “No class.”
BORN in 1913, Nixon grew up in Los Angeles County. The son of a grocer, he rose each day at 4.30 a.m. to take vegetables to market before catching the college bus at 8.30 a.m. Consistently top of his class, he was disliked by fellow pupils who found him prickly and aggressive. At university, he appeared distant and socially awkward: a bookworm, who gulped down his meals within the refectory in order that he could get back to the library to proceed writing or reading.
As his early profession in law gave technique to political ambitions, he did what was mandatory to thwart or vanquish opponents in his path, in some cases making false accusations with the flimsiest of evidence. Later, he became a notable foe of Communism, joining forces with the demagogue Joseph McCarthy in his campaign against a “creeping Communism” inside the US government.
After failed bids for the presidency in 1960, after which for the governorship of California in 1962, Nixon worked assiduously to revive his profession, calling on “the nice Silent Majority” to withstand the violence and excesses of the Nineteen Sixties — the burning cities, the sexual revolution, the demands for rights for Blacks and girls — and promising to withdraw the American military from Vietnam. The strategy worked, and, in 1968, he was elected to the presidency.
Vietnam soon became a yoke around his neck: an unwinnable conflict that led to further escalation and illegal bombings. His forced resignation in 1974 ended a profession that had been dogged by infamy and dodgy dealings, seemingly leaving little by the use of a worthwhile or lasting legacy.
AFTER a required statement of public contrition on Nixon’s part, and within the face of political opinion fiercely against any formal act of forgiveness for his crimes, the incoming President, Gerald Ford, issued “a full, free, and absolute pardon” to Nixon, who shortly afterwards almost died after surgery for a blood clot.
After convalescence and a period of sustained reflection on his past, he sought to redeem his fame, an undertaking still in progress on the time of his death, 20 years later. At his funeral service, 50,000 people filed past his coffin. In the presence of 5 former US Presidents, the evangelist Billy Graham praised Nixon as “one of the crucial misunderstood men, and, I believe, one in all the best men of the century”.
The passage of time had tempered among the animosity and disdain of the previous years. Many old enemies now conceded his gifts as an elder statesman, a supremely well-informed commentator on domestic and foreign affairs, and an adviser to other world leaders. A reappraisal of Nixon’s time within the White House also seemed just. This, in any case, was the President who had opened up China to the Western world, established the Environmental Protection Agency, and, in 1970, signed the Clean Air Act.
He had also championed what became the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, and increased federal funding for the racial integration of public schools. Those with long memories recalled the dignity and unselfishness that he had displayed in not contesting the outcomes of the 1960 presidential election, when many observers questioned whether President Kennedy had legally won the states of Illinois and Texas.
TO THE end of his life, Nixon retained a world vision of a greater and more peaceful world. To this endeavour he brought an unlimited and serious intellect nurtured by his passion for philosophy, biography, and history, and a resilience that overcame many personal and political obstacles. Flying back to California after his resignation, he reflected on the old Scots ballad that had seen him through griefs and dangers: “I’m hurt, but I’m not slain. I’ll rest and bleed awhile after which will fight again.”
The clues to explaining Nixon’s startling contradictions — the visionary and yet vengeful leader who sought to beat his faults, whilst he embraced the darker side of his nature — lie in his adolescence. Of crucial importance was the Quaker influence of his family, especially his mother, Hannah, regarded by her neighbours as a quiet saint. Without ostentation or force, she introduced him to the moral precepts of the New Testament, the practice of a silent grace before meals and Bible readings afterwards, regular church attendance on Sundays, and the striving for “peace on the centre “ — the capability to retain an inner calm in the attention of the storm.
EVEN when Nixon didn’t emulate her goodness and spirituality, Hannah remained the North Star of his morality and the animating spirit behind his ideals. Never removed from his mind, nonetheless, were two tragedies that had a profound impact on his character: the death of two brothers, one on the age of seven, from encephalitis, and the opposite at 23, of tuberculosis.
In addition to his enduring grief, Nixon remained prey to deep-seated insecurities triggered by the grinding poverty of his childhood — he would at all times be “Dick from the unsuitable side of town” — and the lifetime of social snubs and slights that exacerbated his resentments towards his critics, particularly the media and the liberal elites.
Nixon oscillated between daring and worthy initiatives that were shaped by religious convictions, and the illegal manoeuvres that led to his downfall and the odium and shame that followed. On the fiftieth anniversary of his resignation as President of the United States, it seems increasingly likely that history is already affording him the popularity and forgiveness that he desired, and, in some measure, deserves.
Canon Rod Garner is an Anglican priest, author, and theologian.
