Quick Facts
- Name
- Richard Nixon
- Occupation
- U.S. President
- Birth Date
- January 9, 1913
- Death Date
- April 22, 1994
- Education
- Whittier College, Duke University School of Law
- Place of Birth
- Yorba Linda, California
- Place of Death
- New York, New York
- Full Name
- Richard Milhous Nixon
Richard
Nixon was the 37th U.S. president and the only commander-in-chief to
resign from his position, after the 1970s Watergate scandal.
Synopsis
Born
on January 9, 1913, in Yorba Linda, California, Richard Nixon was a
Republican congressman who served as vice president under Dwight D.
Eisenhower. Nixon ran for president in 1960 but lost to charismatic
Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy. Undeterred, Nixon return to the
race eight years later and won the White House by a solid margin. In
1974, he resigned rather than be impeached for covering up illegal
activities of party members in the Watergate affair. He died on April
22, 1994, at age 81, in New York City.
Early Life and Military Service
Born
on January 9, 1913, in Yorba Linda, California, Richard Milhous Nixon
was the second of five children born to Frank Nixon and Hannah Milhouse
Nixon. His father was a service station owner and grocer, who also owned
a small lemon farm in Yorba Linda. His mother was a Quaker who exerted a
strong influence on her son. Richard Nixon's early life was hard, as he
characterized by saying, "We were poor, but the glory of it was we
didn't know it." The family experienced tragedy twice early in Richard's
life: His younger brother died in 1925 after a short illness, and in
1933, his older brother, whom he greatly admired, died of tuberculosis.
Richard
Nixon attended Fullerton High School but later transferred to Whittier
High School, where he ran for student body president (but lost to a more
popular student). Nixon graduated high school second in his class and
was offered a scholarship to Harvard, but his family couldn't afford the
travel and living expenses. Instead of Harvard, Nixon attended local
Whittier College, a Quaker institution, where he earned a reputation as a
formidable debater, a standout in college drama productions and a
successful athlete. Upon graduation from Whittier in 1934, Nixon
received a full scholarship to Duke University Law School in Durham,
N.C. After graduation, Nixon returned to the town of Whittier to
practice law at Kroop & Bewley. He soon met Thelma Catherine ("Pat")
Ryan, a teacher and amateur actress, after the two were cast in the
same play at a local community theater. The couple married in 1940 and
went on to have two daughters, Tricia and Julie.
A career as a
small-town lawyer was not enough for a man with Nixon's ambition, so in
August 1942, he and Pat moved to Washington, D.C., where he took a job
in Franklin Roosevelt's Office of Price Administration. He soon became
disillusioned with the New Deal's big-government programs and
bureaucratic red tape, though, and left the public service realm for the
U.S. Navy (despite his an exemption from military service as a Quaker
and in his job with OPA). Serving as an aviation ground officer in the
Pacific, Nixon saw no combat, but he returned to the United States with
two service stars and several commendations. He eventually rose to the
rank of lieutenant commander before resigning his commission in January
1946.
U.S. Congress
Following his return to civilian
life, Nixon was approached by a group of Whittier Republicans who
encouraged him to run for Congress. Nixon would be up against five-term
liberal Democratic Jerry Voorhis, but he took on the challenge head-on.
Nixon's campaign exploited notions about Voorhis's alleged communist
sympathies, a tactic that would recur throughout his political life, and
it worked, helping Nixon win a seat in the U.S. House of
Representatives in November 1946. During his first term, Nixon was
assigned to the Select Committee on Foreign Aid and went to Europe to
report on the newly enacted Marshall Plan. There he quickly established a
reputation as an internationalist in foreign policy.
As a member
of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) from 1948 to 1950,
he took a leading role in the investigation of Alger Hiss, a former
State Department official with a previously stellar reputation. While
many believed Hiss, Nixon took the allegations that Hiss was spying for
the Soviet Union to heart. In dramatic testimony before the committee,
Hiss vehemently denied the charge and refuted claims made by his
accuser, Whittaker Chambers. Nixon brought Hiss to the witness stand,
and under stinging cross-examination, Hiss admitted that he had known
Chambers, but under a different name. This brought Hiss a perjury charge
and five years in prison, while Nixon's hostile questioning of Hiss
during the committee hearings went a long way toward cementing his
national reputation as a fervent anti-Communist.
In 1950, Nixon
successfully ran for the United States Senate against Democrat Helen
Gahagan Douglas. She had been an outspoken opponent of the
anti-Communist scare and the actions of HUAC. Employing his previous
(successful) campaign tactics, Nixon's campaign staff distributed flyers
on pink paper unfairly distorting Douglas's voting record as left-wing.
For his efforts, The Independent Review, a small Southern
California newspaper, nicknamed Nixon "Tricky Dick," a derogatory
nickname that would remain with him for the rest of this life.
Vice Presidency
Richard
Nixon's fervent anti-Communist reputation earned him the notice of
Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Republican Party, who believed he could
draw valuable support in the West. And at the Republican convention in
1952, Nixon won the nomination as vice president. Two months before the
November election, the New York Post reported that Nixon had a
secret "slush fund" provided by campaign donors for his personal use,
and some within Eisenhower's campaign called for removing Nixon from the
ticket.
Realizing that he might not win without Nixon,
Eisenhower was willing to give Nixon a chance to clear himself. On
September 23, 1952, Nixon delivered a nationally televised address in
which he acknowledged the existence of the fund but denied that any of
it had been used improperly. He turned the speech back on his political
enemies, claiming that unlike the wives of so many Democratic
politicians, his wife, Pat, did not own a fur coat but only "a
respectable Republican cloth coat." The speech was perhaps best
remembered for its conclusion in which Nixon admitted accepting one
political gift: a cocker spaniel that his 6-year-old daughter, Tricia,
had named "Checkers." Although Nixon initially thought that the speech
had failed, the public responded to what became known as the "Checkers
Speech." Nonetheless, the experience embedded a deep distrust of
mainstream media in Nixon, who would one day be at the receiving end of
much worse from reporters. The Checkers Speech aside, the
Eisenhower-Nixon ticket defeated the Democratic candidates, Adlai E.
Stevenson and John Sparkman, and Richard Nixon avoided a full-on
political disaster.
Between 1955 and 1957, Eisenhower suffered a
series of illnesses, including a heart attack and a stroke. Although
Nixon held little formal power as vice president, perhaps out of
necessity, he expanded the office to an important and prominent post
during his two terms. As president of the Senate, he helped ensure the
passage of Eisenhower approved bills, such as the 1957 Civil Rights
Bill. And while the president was incapacitated, Nixon was called on to
chair several high-level meetings, though real power lay in a close
circle of Eisenhower advisers. The health scares prompted Eisenhower to
formalize an agreement with Nixon on the powers and responsibilities of
the vice president in the event of presidential disability; the
agreement was accepted by later administrations until the adoption of
the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1967.
Initially,
Nixon's efforts to promote American foreign policy met with mixed
results, as he undertook many high-profile foreign trips of goodwill to
garner support for American policies during the Cold War. On one such
trip go Caracas, Venezuela, Nixon's motorcade was attacked by
anti-American protesters, who pelted his limousine with rocks and
bottles. Nixon came out unscathed and remained calm and collected during
the incident. In July 1959, Nixon was sent by President Eisenhower to
Moscow for the opening of the American National Exhibition. On July 24,
while touring the exhibits with Soviet General Secretary Nikita
Khrushchev, Nixon stopped at a model of an American kitchen and engaged
Khrushchev in an impromptu debate. In a friendly yet determined way,
both men argued the merits of capitalism and communism, respectively, as
it affected the average American and Soviet housewife. While the
exchange (later dubbed the "Kitchen Debate") had little bearing on the
U.S./Soviet rivalry, Nixon gained popularity for standing up to the
"Soviet bully," as Khrushchev was sometimes characterized, and greatly
improved his chances for receiving the Republican presidential
nomination in 1960.
Running for the Presidency
Richard
Nixon launched his bid for the presidency in early 1960, facing little
opposition in the Republican primaries. His democratic opponent was
Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy. Nixon campaigned on his
experience, but Kennedy brought a new vitality to the election and
called for a new generation of leadership, criticizing the Eisenhower
administration for endangering U.S. national security. Besides defending
the administration during the campaign, Nixon advocated for a series of
selective tax cuts that would become a core doctrine of Republican
economic policy going forward.
The 1960 presidential campaign
proved to be historic in the use of television for advertisements, news
interviews and policy debates, something that would play right into
Kennedy's youthful hands. Four debates were scheduled between Nixon and
Kennedy, and Nixon had his work cut out for himself from the beginning.
During the process, he was recovering from the flu and appeared tired,
and then when he arrived at the TV studio, Nixon chose to wear little TV
makeup, fearing the press would accuse him of trying to upstage
Kennedy's tan, crisp look. Though he had shaved, Nixon's "five o'clock
shadow" appeared through the cameras, and his gray suit blended in to
the studio's gray background in contrast to Kennedy's tailored dark
suit. Also, Nixon was still sweating out his illness, and his
perspiration under the hot studio lights was picked up by the cameras in
close-ups as he responded to questions. In short, he never looked half
as healthy, young or vibrant as Kennedy. In to show the power of the new
visual medium, post-debate polls indicated that while many TV viewers
believed Kennedy had won the debates, radio listeners indicated that
they thought Nixon had won.
In November 1960, Richard Nixon
narrowly lost the presidential election, by only 120,000 votes. The
Electoral College showed a wider victory for Kennedy, who received 303
votes to Nixon's 219.
Though there were some charges of voter fraud in
Texas and Illinois and legal papers were filed, subsequent court rulings
showed that Kennedy had a greater number of electoral votes even after
recounts. Not wanting to cause a Constitutional crisis, Nixon halted
further investigations, later receiving praise for his dignity and
professionalism in the face of defeat and suspicion that possible voter
fraud had cost him the presidency.
Following the election, Nixon returned with his family to California, where he practiced law and wrote a book, Six Crises,
which documented his political life as a congressman, senator and vice
president. In 1962, various Republican leaders encouraged Nixon to run
against incumbent Democratic Governor Pat Brown. Nixon was at first
reluctant to get into another political battle so soon after his
disappointing defeat to Kennedy, but eventually he decided to run. The
campaign did not go well for Nixon, with some observers questioning his
sincerity to be governor of California and accusing him of making the
election a stepping stone back into national politics. Others felt he
just wasn't enthusiastic enough. He lost to Brown by a substantial
margin, and many political experts characterized the defeat as the end
of Richard Nixon's political career. He himself said as much, blaming
the media for his defeat and lamenting, "You won't have Nixon to kick
around anymore..."
After the California election, Nixon moved his
family to New York City, where he continued to practice law and quietly
but effectively remade himself as America's "senior statesman." With
his calm, conservative voice, Nixon presented a sharp contrast to the
escalating war in Vietnam and the growing antiwar protests. He
cultivated support from the Republican base, which respected his
knowledge of politics and international affairs. He also wrote a
farsighted article for Foreign Affairs magazine entitled "Asia After Vietnam," which enhanced his reputation.
U.S. President
Yet,
Nixon agonized over whether to reenter politics and go for another run
at the presidency. He consulted friends and respected leaders such as
the Reverend Billy Graham for advice. Finally, he formally announced his
candidacy for president of the United States on February 1, 1968.
Nixon's campaign received an unexpected boost when on March 31,
incumbent President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek another
term.
By 1968, the nation was openly struggling over the war in
Vietnam, not only on college campuses but in mainstream media. In
February, newscaster Walter Cronkite took an almost unprecedented (for
him) position, offering commentary on his recent trip to Vietnam,
stating that he felt victory was not possible and that the war would
end in a stalemate. President Lyndon Johnson lamented, "If I've lost
Cronkite, I've lost the nation." As the antiwar protest continued,
Nixon's campaign stayed above the fray, portraying him as a figure of
stability and appealing to what he referred to as the "silent majority"
of social conservatives who were the steady foundation of the American
public.
Nixon was able to construct a coalition of Southern and
Western conservatives during the campaign. In exchange for their
support, he promised to appoint "strict constructionists" to the federal
judiciary and selected a running mate acceptable to the South,
Maryland governor Spiro Agnew. The two waged an immensely effective
media campaign with well-orchestrated commercials and public
appearances. They attacked Democrats for the nation's high crime rate
and a perceived surrender of nuclear superiority to the Soviets. For a
time, the Democrats still held the high ground in the polls, but the
assassination of presidential contender Robert Kennedy and a
self-destructive nominating convention in Chicago, where Vice President
Hubert Humphrey was nominated, weakened their chances. During the
entire election campaign, Nixon portrayed a "calm amidst the storm"
persona, promising a "peace with honor" conclusion to the war in
Vietnam, a restoration of America's preeminence over the Soviets and a
return to conservative values.
In a three-way race between
Nixon, Hubert Humphrey and independent candidate George Wallace, Nixon
won the election by nearly 500,000 votes. He was sworn in as the 37th
president of the United States on January 20, 1969.
Domestic Policies
Prussian
statesman Otto von Bismarck once called politics "the art of the
possible." But a more pragmatic description was offered by U.S.
economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who said politics "consists of
choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable." Nixon became
well-versed in walking a narrow line, as, in one particular issue, he
needed to appease the Southern partners in his election coalition and
address Court-ordered busing to reduce segregation. He offered a
practical solution he called "New Federalism": locally controlled
desegregation. Across the South, the Nixon administration established
biracial committees to plan and implement school desegregation. The
program was well accepted by the states, and by the end of 1970 only
about 18 percent of black children in the South were attending all-black
schools, down from 70 percent in 1968.
As president, Nixon also
increased the number of female appointments in his administration,
despite opposition from many in his administration. He created a
Presidential Task Force on Women's Rights, requested that the Department
of Justice bring sex-discrimination suits against blatant violators and
ordered the Department of Labor to add sex discrimination guidelines to
all federal contracts.
Some of President Nixon's
well-intentioned domestic policies under New Federalism clashed with the
Democrat-controlled Congress and were fraught with unintended
consequences. A case in point was the Family Assistance Plan. The
program called for replacing bureaucratically administered programs such
as Aid to Families With Dependent Children, Food Stamps and Medicaid
with direct cash payments to those in need, including single-parent
families and the working poor. Conservatives disliked the plan for
guaranteeing an annual income to people who didn't work; the labor
movement saw it as a threat to the minimum wage; and federal caseworkers
saw the program as a threat to their jobs. Many Americans complained
that adding the working poor to Welfare would expand the program rather
than reduce it.
Though initially not showing much interest in
environmental concerns, after the 1970 Earth Day, with millions of
demonstrations across the country, President Nixon sensed a political
opportunity and a need. He pushed for the Clean Air Act of 1970 and
established two new agencies, the Department of Natural Resources and
the Environmental Protection Agency. Keeping true to his New Federalism
principles of less government and fiscal responsibility, Nixon insisted
that all environmental proposals meet the cost-benefit standards of the
Office of Management and Budget. In 1972, he vetoed the Clean Water Act
(which he generally supported) because Congress had boosted its cost to
$18 billion. Congress overrode his veto, and in retaliation, Nixon used
his presidential powers to impound half the money.
Richard Nixon
often adopted a stance of confrontation rather than of conciliation and
compromise. In his ambition to push through his agenda, he sought to
consolidate power within the presidency and took the attitude that the
executive branch was exempt from many of the checks and balances imposed
by the Constitution. This attitude would later turn on him during the
Watergate scandal.
Foreign Affairs
Though
achieving some success in domestic politics, most of President Nixon's
first term was dominated by foreign affairs and, most notably, the
Vietnam War. His administration successfully negotiated the Strategic
Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), designed to deter the Soviet Union from
launching a first strike. Nixon also reestablished American influence in
the Middle East and pressured allies to take more responsibility for
their own defense.
With the assistance of his brilliant but
taciturn national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, Nixon was able to
achieve détente with China and the Soviet Union, playing one off against
the other. Since the mid-1960s, tensions between China and its main
ally, the USSR, had increased, causing a breach in their relationship by
1969. Nixon sensed an opportunity to shift the Cold War balance of
power toward the West, and he sent secret messages to Chinese officials
to open a dialogue.
In December 1970, Nixon reduced trade
restrictions against China, and in 1971, Chinese officials invited the
American table tennis team to China for a demonstration/competition,
later dubbed "ping-pong diplomacy." Then, in February 1972, President
Nixon and his wife, Pat, traveled to China, where he engaged in direct
talks with Mao Zedong, the Chinese leader. The visit ushered in a new
era of Chinese-American relations and pressured the Soviet Union to
agree to better relations with the United States.
In Latin
America, the Nixon administration continued the long-standing policy of
supporting autocratic dictatorships in lieu of socialist democracies.
Most notably, he authorized clandestine operations to undermine the
coalition government of Chile's Marxist president, Salvador Allende,
after he nationalized American-owned mining companies. Nixon restricted
Chile's access to international economic assistance, discouraged private
investment, increased aid to the Chilean military and funneled covert
payments to Allende opposition groups. In September 1973, Allende was
overthrown in a military coup, establishing Chilean army general Augusto
Pinochet as dictator.
But the foremost issue on Nixon's plate
was Vietnam. When he took office, 300 American soldiers were dying per
week in Vietnam. The Johnson administration had escalated the war to
involve over 500,000 American troops and expanded operations from the
defense of South Vietnam to bombing attacks in North Vietnam. By 1969,
when Nixon assumed the presidency, the United States was spending
between $60 and $80 million per day on the war. Nixon faced the decision
of either escalating the war further to secure South Vietnam from
communism or withdrawing forces to end involvement in an increasingly
unpopular war.
Nixon proposed a controversial strategy of
withdrawing American troops from South Vietnam while carrying out Air
Force bombings and army special-ops operations against enemy positions
in Laos and Cambodia, both of which were officially neutral at the time.
He established what became known as the Nixon Doctrine (also called
"Vietnamization"), replacing American troops with Vietnamese soldiers.
From 1969 to 1972, troop withdrawals were estimated to be 405,000
soldiers. While Nixon's campaign promise in 1968 was to draw down the
size of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the bombings of North Vietnam
and incursions into Laos and Cambodia created a political firestorm.
When Nixon made a televised speech announcing the movement of U.S.
troops into Cambodia to disrupt so-called North Vietnamese sanctuaries,
young people across the country erupted in protest, and student strikes
temporarily closed more than 500 universities, colleges and high
schools.
Beyond all the strife, the war in Vietnam had caused
domestic inflation to grow to nearly 6 percent by 1970. To address the
problem, Nixon initially tried to restrict federal spending, but
beginning in 1971, his budget proposals contained deficits of several
billion dollars, the largest in American history up to that time. Though
defense spending was cut almost in half, government spending on
benefits to American citizens rose from a little over 6 percent to
nearly 9 percent. Food aid and public assistance escalated from $6.6
billion to $9.1 billion. To control increasing inflation and
unemployment, Nixon imposed temporary wage and price controls, which
achieved marginal success, but by the end of 1972, inflation returned
with a vengeance, reaching 8.8 percent in 1973 and 12.2 percent in 1974.
Watergate and Other Scandals
With
the war in Vietnam winding down, Nixon defeated his Democratic
challenger, liberal senator George McGovern, in a landslide victory,
receiving almost 20 million more popular votes and winning the Electoral
College vote 520 to 17. Nixon looked invincible in his victory. It
seems odd, in retrospect, that his re-election campaign, the Committee
to Re-Elect the President (also known as CREEP) was so concerned about
Democrats opposition that it reverted to political sabotage and covert
espionage. Public opinion polls during the campaign indicated President
Nixon had an overwhelming lead. The entry of independent candidate
George Wallace ensured some Democratic support would be taken from
McGovern in the South, and for most of the American public, Senator
McGovern's policies were just too extreme.
During the campaign in
June 1972, rumors began to circulate about White House involvement in a
seemingly isolated burglary of the Democratic National Election
Headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. Initially,
Nixon downplayed the coverage of the scandal as politics as usual, but
by 1973, the investigation (initiated by two cub-reporters for the Washington Post,
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein) had mushroomed into a full-scale
inquest. White House officials denied the press's reporting as biased
and misleading, but the FBI eventually confirmed that Nixon aids had
attempted to sabotage the Democrats during the election, and many
resigned in the face of criminal prosecution.
A Senate committee
under Senator Sam Ervin soon began to hold hearings. Eventually, White
House counsel John Dean gave evidence that the scandal went all the way
to the White House, including a Nixon order to cover up of the scandal.
Nixon continued to declare his innocence, though, repeatedly denying
previous knowledge about the campaign sabotage and claiming to have
learned about the cover-up in early 1973.
Nixon responded
directly to the nation by staging an emotional televised press
conference in November 1973, during which he famously declared, "I'm not
a crook." Claiming executive privilege, Nixon nevertheless refused to
release potentially damning material, including White House tape
recordings that allegedly revealed details of CREEP's plans to sabotage
political opponents and disrupt the FBI's investigation. Facing
increased political pressure, Nixon released 1,200 pages of transcripts
of conversations between him and White House aides but still refused to
release all of the recordings.
The House Judiciary Committee,
controlled by Democrats, opened impeachment hearings against the
president in May 1974. In July, the Supreme Court denied Nixon's claim
of executive privilege and ruled that all tape recordings must be
released to the special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski. Once the recordings
were released, it didn't take long for Nixon's house of cards to teeter:
One of the secret recordings confirmed the allegations of the cover-up,
indicating that Nixon was looped in from the beginning.
In late
July 1974 the House Judiciary Committee passed the first of three
articles of impeachment against Nixon, charging obstruction of
justice. Upon the threat of a likely post-impeachment conviction,
Richard Nixon resigned from the office of the presidency on August 9,
1974. He was succeeded by Gerald Ford, whom Nixon had appointed vice
president in 1973 after Spiro Agnew resigned his office amid charges of
bribery, extortion and tax evasion during his tenure as governor of
Maryland. Nixon was pardoned by President Ford on September 8, 1974.
Retirement and Death
After
his resignation, Richard Nixon retired with his wife to the seclusion
of his estate in San Clemente, California, where he spent several months
distraught and disoriented. Gradually he regrouped, and by 1977 he
began forming a public-relations comeback. In August, Nixon met with
British commentator David Frost for a series of interviews during which
Nixon sent mixed messages of contrition and pride, while never admitting
any wrong-doing. While the interviews were met with mixed reviews, they
were watched by many and positively contributed to Nixon's public
image.
In 1978, Nixon published RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon,
an intensely personal examination of his life, public career and White
House years; the book became a best-seller. He also authored several
books on international affairs and American foreign policy, modestly
rehabilitating his public reputation and earning him a role as an elder
foreign-policy expert.
On June 22, 1993, Pat Nixon died of lung
cancer. Nixon took the loss hard, and on April 22, 1994, just 10 months
after his wife's death, Richard Nixon died of a massive stroke in New
York City. President Bill Clinton was joined by four former presidents
to pay homage to the 37th president. His body lay in repose in the Nixon
Library lobby, and an estimated 50,000 people waited in a heavy rain
for up to 18 hours to file past the casket and pay their last respects.
He was buried beside his wife at his birthplace, in Yorba Linda,
California.