Richard Nixon

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• Born: 9 January 1913
• Birthplace: Yorba Linda, California
• Died: 22 April 1994 (stroke)
• Best Known As: The U.S. president who resigned after the Watergate scandal

Richard Nixon resigned as United States president in 1974, becoming the first president ever to quit the office. Nixon was a lawyer and Republican politician who held the posts of U.S. representative (1947-51), senator (1951-53), vice president (1953-61), and finally president of the United States (1969-74). As a fiercely anti-communist senator from California, Nixon was pegged to be Dwight Eisenhower's running mate in 1952, despite Nixon's relative youth: he was 39 when nominated. Eisenhower beat the Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson in both 1952 and 1956 and Nixon served both terms as vice president. In 1960 Nixon was the Republican candidate against John F. Kennedy in what became one of the closest elections in U.S. history. Defeated by Kennedy, he returned to California and ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1962. (After the loss he made his famous bitter farewell to the press, saying "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore.") In a dramatic comeback, Nixon and his running mate, Maryland's Spiro Agnew, defeated Hubert H. Humphrey in the presidential elections of 1968, then easily won re-election against Democrat George McGovern in 1972. Although Nixon had an aggressive foreign policy that included successes with China, the Soviet Union and the Middle East, a weak national economy and domestic dissent over the Vietnam war plagued his administration. His personal style remains a point of public contention: Nixon was either a hard-driving genius or a dirty sneak, depending on the observer's point of view. After his 1972 re-election, Nixon's administration was consumed by the developing Watergate scandal, so named for the hotel and office complex where burglars hired by Nixon's re-election campaign were caught in a sloppy attempt to bug the offices of the Democratic National Committee. The White House attempt to cover up their connection led to a formal investigation that came to dominate the news throughout 1973 and 1974. Vice President Agnew had legal troubles of his own back in Maryland and resigned from office in October of 1973. After months of legal wrangling and political drama, Nixon resigned in shame on 9 August 1974, his involvement in the Watergate cover-up having been proven by recordings he himself had made in the White House. He was succeeded in office by Gerald Ford, the Michigan congressman who had replaced Agnew. Shortly after taking office, Ford granted Nixon a full pardon, freeing him of any potential criminal charges.

Nixon was America's 37th president... His books include Six Crises (1962) and the memoir In the Arena (1990)... Nixon married the former Patricia Ryan in 1940; she died in 1993 and is buried with her husband at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California... Nixon and his wife had two daughters, Tricia (b. 1946) and Julie (b. 1948). Julie married David Eisenhower, grandson of president Dwight Eisenhower, in 1968; Tricia married Edward Cox in the White House rose garden in 1971... Nixon had a famous Oval Office meeting with Elvis Presley in 1970; the photo of their handshake has become a pop culture icon... Nixon made his famous statement "I am not a crook" in a news conference in Orlando, Florida on 17 November 1973.

For more information on Richard Milhous Nixon, visit Britannica.com.

(b. Yorba Linda, California, 9 Jan. 1913; d. 22 Apr. 1994) US; US Senator 1951 – 2, Vice-President 1953 – 61, President 1969 – 74 Born to Quaker parents, Nixon was educated at Whittier High School and Whittier College, graduating in 1934. He then took a law degree at Duke University law school, where he was elected president of the student bar association, and was admitted to the California bar in 1937. He practised law in his home town of Whittier — he became a partner in a local law firm in 1939 — and in 1940 married Thelma Catherine (Pat) Ryan. In 1941 he became assistant city attorney. His legal career was interrupted by war service. He served briefly in the type-rationing section of the Office of Price Administration in Washington, DC, before enlisting in the navy. His four-year stint in the navy included a fourteenth-month tour of duty in the Pacific. By the time he was discharged in 1946 he had reached the rank of lieutenant-commander.

On his return home he was persuaded to run for Congress. He had registered as a Republican in 1938 and was approached by some local Republicans to challenge a wall-entrenched liberal Democrat, Jerry Voorhis. Nixon took up the challenge, campaigned vigorously — characterizing Voorhis as voting the "Moscow" line in Congress — and took on Voorhis in several debates. He won by more than 15,000 votes. Once in the House of Representatives, Nixon established a reputation as an aggressive conservative. Appointed to the Committee on Education and Labor, he helped draft the *Taft — Hartley Bill which outlawed the closed shop. As a member of the Committee on Un-American Activities, he achieved national fame for his questioning of witnesses, especially of a State Department official, Alger Hiss, who was later to be indicted and gaoled for perjury. Nixon's prominence gave him the basis for seeking election to the Senate and in 1950 he was elected as Senator for California. The contest had been hard fought — both candidates trading insults — but Nixon won by a wide margin, winning almost 60 per cent of the votes. The incumbent Senator resigned before the end of his term, allowing Nixon to gain seniority by taking his place a month ahead of other newcomers.

Nixon was touted as a possible vice-presidential candidate as soon as he was in the Senate. He had achieved national prominence, his election victory had been spectacular and he represented a new generation of Republicans. He was a forceful and energetic speech-giver. He supported Dwight Eisenhower for the presidential nomination in 1952 and Eisenhower, acting on advice from senior party figures, chose Nixon as his running mate. During the campaign, allegations that Nixon had a private campaign "slush fund" threatened his continued presence on the ticket. Nixon made an emotional speech on television — the "Checkers speech" — defending his actions and claiming that the only personal gift he had accepted was a cocker spaniel named Checkers for his children. It proved an effective performance. With Eisenhower sweeping to victory in November, Nixon became Vice-President. He was 40 years old.

During his tenure as Vice-President, Nixon took a particular interest in foreign affairs and Eisenhower asked him to undertake a total of ten foreign visits, covering fifty-eight countries. His life was endangered by a mob during a visit to Venezuela. He chaired meetings of the Cabinet and National Security Council during Eisenhower's illnesses. He also served as the partisan voice of the administration, allowing Eisenhower to appear above the political fray. He fought and won a battle to remain Eisenhower's running-mate in 1956. In 1960, after reaching agreement with his most likely challenger for the nomination, Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, he won the Republican nomination for President by 1,321 votes to 10. He pursued a gruelling campaign itinerary and took on his Democratic opponent, John Kennedy, in a televised debate. Most television viewers believed that the cool, attractive Kennedy had won the debate over the perspiring, shifty-looking Vice-President. Most radio listeners thought Nixon got the better of the exchange. In the election, Nixon was narrowly defeated, the gap between the two leading candidates being 0.2 per cent or just over 100,000 votes out of 68.8 million cast. Nixon returned to private life.

Two years after his unsuccessful bid for the presidency, Nixon re-entered the political fray and sought election as Governor of California. He lost, telling reporters that "You won't have Richard Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference." He practised law again, this time in New York, and his law practice — along with royalties from the sale of his book Six Crises (1961) — provided him with an income he had not enjoyed before. He undertook trips to the Middle East, South America, and Europe — in France he was entertained by President Charles de Gaulle — and began to plan a resumption of his political career. He campaigned for the Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964 and in 1968 he sought the Republican nomination for President. He edged out his opponents and won the nomination at the Republican convention in Miami. An early lead over his Democratic opponent. Hubert Humphrey, narrowed as the campaign progressed, but he emerged the victor, albeit by a narrow margin in the popular vote (43.4 per cent to 42.7 per cent). He was inaugurated as the 37th President on 20 January 1969.

Nixon's first term as President was to be dominated by foreign affairs. He achieved détente with both the Soviet Union and China, undertaking visits to both. His links with China pushed the Soviet Union into seeking a relationship. He signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), designed to deter the Soviet Union from launching a first strike, on his visit to Moscow. He re-established American influence in the Middle East. He sought to extricate the United States from Vietnam by placing greater emphasis on South Vietnamese forces. He also increased military attacks on North Vietnam — and authorized military incursions into Cambodia and Laos — in order to try to force North Vietnam to the negotiating table. The use of force attracted intense domestic opposition: four students were killed when members of the National Guard opened fire on demonstrating students at Kent State University. A peace agreement with North Vietnam, signed early in 1973, allowed the USA to extricate itself from Vietnam and for the President to claim "Peace with Honour", though the terms were little different from those that could have been achieved earlier.

Nixon revolutionized American foreign policy by seeking disengagement and by placing greater emphasis on allies being responsible for their own protection. He conveyed that he had a sure feel for foreign affairs and by the time of the 1972 presidential election had an impressive record on which to run. In domestic affairs, the record was less impressive. He pursued a policy of "New Federalism", manifested in the policy of revenue sharing, under which more federal funds than before were allocated to the states and municipalities. However, the main feature of his domestic politics was his clashes with a Democrat-controlled Congress. Nixon impounded funds voted by Congress. Congress twice rejected his nominee for a vacancy on the Supreme Court. President and Congress clashed over funding for the Vietnam War. The War Powers Act sought to limit the President's powers to commit troops abroad. Nixon adopted a stance of confrontation rather than conciliation. He created a Domestic Council, a form of super Cabinet. According to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., in The Imperial Presidency, Nixon sought to impose an imperial residency in the domestic as well as the foreign arena, creating a "revolutionary presidency". His ambitions were to be dashed by the Watergate affair. Nixon achieved an easy victory in the 1972 presidential election. His foreign policy had proved popular — the Nixon campaign ads on television constantly showed pictures of his trip to China — and the economy was in reasonable shape. His Democratic opponent, George McGovern, had a disastrous campaign. Nixon was re-elected by 47 million votes to 29 million. Within days of his second inauguration he was able to announce the peace agreement reached with North Vietnam. Thereafter it was all downhill.

During the summer of 1972, the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, DC, had been broken into. Though rumours of White House involvement circulated during the election campaign, they made little impact. However, early in 1973, the story began to achieve prominence. The men arrested for the break-in were convicted. In order to avoid a maximum sentence, one of them offered to break his silence. He claimed that certain White House officials had prior knowledge of the break-in. A Senate Committee, under Senator Sam Ervin, began taking evidence. White House Counsel John Dean, implicated in the allegations, started giving evidence to Senate investigators. As the story moved closer to the Oval Office, the President requested and accepted the resignations of his two closest aides, H. R. "Bob" Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, and dismissed Dean. In public testimony to the Senate Committee, Dean implicated the President in a cover-up. In July, a White House aide revealed that the President had a voice-activated recording system in the Oval Office. Various attempts were then made to subpoena the tapes of presidential conversations. Nixon initially resisted. In October, he fired the special prosecutor appointed by the Attorney-General as well as the Attorney-General and his deputy after they refused to fire him. Dubbed "The Saturday Night Massacre", the firings undermined Nixon's credibility. Early in 1974, the House Judiciary Committee began to consider articles of impeachment against the President. In April, Nixon released edited transcripts — 1,254 pages — of his conversations. On 24 July, the Supreme Court ruled that the President must hand over other tapes sought by the special prosecutor. Between 27 and 30 July, the House Judiciary Committee approved four articles of impeachment. On 5 August, the White House released transcripts sought by prosecutors, one of which — the "smoking gun" transcript — revealed that the President authorized a cover-up shortly after the break-in. Republican leaders in Congress told the President that he did not have enough votes to avoid impeachment. In a televised address on 8 August, Nixon announced his resignation and the following day, after a tearful farewell to staff at the White House, his resignation took effect at noon.

During 1973, Nixon's problems had been compounded by the resignation of the Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, after pleading "no contest" to tax evasion charges. In his place, Nixon nominated a Republican member of the House of Representatives, Gerald R. Ford. It was Ford who took the oath of office as Nixon's successor on 9 August. One of Ford's early acts in office was to pardon Nixon for any offence he may have committed.

Nixon retired to write his memoirs and rehabilitate his reputation. He wrote a number of books, including The Real War, and was variously consulted on a private basis by his successors. His standing as a "disgraced" President dogged him. In the 1982 Tribune and Murray polls, he was rated by historians as one of the worst Presidents. The Murray poll rated him 34th out of 36. By the time of his death in 1994 he had achieved at least a partial rehabilitation. In the 1995 Chicago Sun-Times poll of presidential scholars, he was ranked 19th out of 38.

Nixon was one of the most controversial presidents in the twentieth century and the only one in history to resign. He adopted an adversarial approach and attracted the enmity of a great many opponents. He was shy and insecure, affected by the death of two of his brothers while still young, and awkward in his dealings with others. He was keen to win and adopted tactics that facilitated his winning. Towards the end of his presidency, he adopted a siege mentality. He was a man driven from within. Life was seen in terms of a series of crises — hence the title of his book, Six Crises — and he had an inherent tendency to rigidify. Watergate was the occasion when he rigidified and consequently sacrificed the presidency.

Nixon was also an individual of contradictions. A man who took an abrasive and partisan stance, he could be personally considerate and helpful. He adopted a friendly stance toward John Kennedy, a stance that was not reciprocated. Though waging war, he remained influenced by his Quaker beliefs. Though portrayed as a conservative Republican, he had a long-standing and consistent commitment to civil rights. Though declaring he was "not a quitter", he quit. In international affairs, he was an internationalist and adopted far-sighted policies. Despite achieving much at an early age, his political life was a series of struggles. His perception of life as a series of crises had the air of a self-fulfilling prophecy. With the passage of years, a number of revisionist historians, including British MP Jonathan Aitken, have taken up his cause. His last struggle, to rehabilitate his name, is still being fought.

Richard Nixon became president in January 1969, when the era of American strategic superiority was waning and rising domestic discontent with the pace of reform and the U.S. involvement in Vietnam was fueling a political backlash. Nixon, working closely with his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, appreciated that the United States did not have unlimited resources or unlimited interests, and sought to redefine America's role in the world through a retrenchment of its global commitments. Nixon's accomplishments and reputation as a strategist are overshadowed by his resignation in 1974 over the Watergate scandal.

The centerpiece of Nixon's international strategy was to manage the Soviet threat by inducing Moscow to moderate its behavior in the world arena. To achieve this, he endeavored to engage the Soviet Union in a web of relations that would furnish Moscow with incentives to seek accommodation with the United States. Vital to this were the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), which in 1972 resulted in an agreement to limit the deployment of strategic offensive missiles and antiballistic missile systems. Although the interim agreement on ballistic missiles arguably was flawed, the SALT Treaties paved the way for subsequent superpower nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements.

Another cornerstone of Nixon's policy was his historic opening to Communist China. Nixon correctly perceived, where others did not, that for strategic reasons China would welcome an approach from the United States, and Nixon, the staunch anti‐Communist, was comparatively invulnerable to partisan attacks of being “soft on communism.” The president recognized that a rapprochement with the People's Republic of China would help to isolate North Vietnam—which the United States was attempting to force into a settlement of the Vietnam War—and would confront the Soviet Union with the prospect of cooperation between its two greatest enemies, the United States and China.

Nixon's triumphant summit meeting in Beijing in 1972 and his visit to Moscow to sign the SALT Treaties a few weeks later marked the beginning of a period of detente (“easing of tensions”), in which Washington and Moscow sought to achieve accommodation and reduce the danger of nuclear war. Detente did not last, in part, critics have argued, because Nixon's policy lacked forceful disincentives to discipline Soviet misbehavior.

Nixon's principal electoral mandate was to end the war in Vietnam. He authorized the gradual withdrawal of the 500,000 American troops from South Vietnam and sought to negotiate a settlement that would not harm U.S. interests or credibility. U.S. draft calls and casualties declined, but the war continued. To increase U.S. leverage, Nixon ordered the incursion into Cambodia in 1970, the massive bombing of Hanoi, and the mining of Haiphong Harbor to cut off Soviet aid. These actions were domestically unpopular and are extremely contentious, even though Nixon claimed that they were instrumental to reaching the settlement by which all American combat forces were withdrawn and all known prisoners of war freed by March 1973. Fulfilling a campaign promise, Nixon ended conscription in 1973, transforming the U.S. military into an All‐Volunteer Force.

Nixon's Vietnam policy was and remains controversial. Some assert that he sold out the South Vietnamese government. Others argue that his attempt to negotiate conditions advantageous to U.S. objectives needlessly prolonged the war, for these were never attained, and the settlement eventually negotiated had been obtainable much earlier.

[See also Cold War: External Course; Cold War: Domestic Course; Nixon Doctrine.]

Bibliography

• Stephen E. Ambrose, Nixon, 3 vols., 1987–91.
• Herbert S. Parmet, Richard Nixon and His America, 1996

(b. 9 Jan. 1913, Yorba Linda, Calif.; d. 22 Apr. 1994, New York, N.Y.), lawyer, statesman, and president of the United States, 1969–1974. President Nixon resigned in 1974 after five years in office because of his role in the Watergate scandal, the first chief executive in history to do so. The Supreme Court prominently figured in bringing about the resignation; it also loomed large throughout Nixon's presidency.

In the 1968 campaign, Nixon assailed the Warren Court's decisions, and he emphasized the need for new justices who favored the “peace forces” rather than criminals. Nixon ignored the social and economic bases for the increased crime and violence in the nation, but he undoubtedly appealed to a large bloc of voters who believed that the Supreme Court had fostered contempt for the law.

After Lyndon Johnson withdrew Abe Fortas's nomination to succeed Earl Warren as chief justice, Warren's resignation seemed in doubt. But Nixon promptly secured Warren's agreement to leave in June 1969. Nixon considered promoting Justice Potter Stewart, but the president recognized the symbolic effect the appointment would have. (See Chief Justice, Office of the.) Warren Earl Burger of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals proved exactly that, for he consistently had been a lone dissenter on what was arguably the most liberal court in the nation. Burger regularly had criticized his colleagues, both on and off the bench, for their activism and excessive concern for the rights of the criminally accused. (See Judicial Activism.)

After selecting Burger, Nixon promised more justices with “unquestioned integrity” and said he would have an “arm's length” relationship with Burger—both points clearly directed at Fortas, whose ethics had seen questioned and who regularly consulted with Johnson on policy matters. Nixon emphasized that he would appoint federal judges who shared his philosophy of “strict construction,” a designated code for opposition to the Warren Court's rulings in areas of social policy. At one point, Nixon praised Chief Justice John Marshall as a “strict constructionist”; at another time, he denounced the Court's prayer ruling in 1962, because it “followed [the] usual pattern of interpreting the constitution rigidly.”

When Fortas resigned in May 1969 because of new revelations questioning his ethical behavior, Nixon quickly decided to fulfill campaign obligations to his Southern supporters. In August, he nominated Fourth Circuit Judge Clement F. Haynsworth, from South Carolina, a choice that provoked intense opposition from labor and civil rights groups. Haynsworth's record also raised ethical issues, enough perhaps to justify opposition from liberals still resentful over the treatment of Fortas. Seventeen Republican senators joined northern Democrats in November 1969 to defeat Haynsworth's nomination, 55 to 45—the first time since 1930 that the Senate rejected a Supreme Court nomination. Haynsworth was victimized by political forces anxious to retaliate against Nixon, rather than by his own record. Nixon promptly nominated another Southern conservative, Fifth Circuit Court Judge G. Harrold Carswell, of Florida. Carswell's overtly racist record, and his mediocre legal and judicial record, struck many as a studied insult to the Court's standing as an institution. Again, Republicans broke ranks, and in April 1970, the Senate defeated the nomination, 51 to 45.

Furious, Nixon insisted that his choices had been turned down because they were “southern strict constructionists.” The Senate, he charged, had denied him “the same right of choice” that had been “freely accorded” to others, a contention clearly at odds with the historical record. Nixon, however, understood his limitations, and he subsequently nominated Eighth Circuit Court Judge Harry Blackmun, from Minnesota. Nixon peevishly let it be known that Blackmun was to the right of the candidates on law and order and only slightly to their left in civil rights. Ironically, Blackmun wrote the Court's pro‐abortion ruling in 1973, easily the Burger‐Nixon Court's most liberal opinion. (See Abortion.)

In September 1971, Justices Hugo L. Black and John M. Harlan resigned because of ill health. Some presidential advisers wanted another confrontation with the Senate on civil rights; others cynically proposed nominating a Southern Democratic senator who had a dubious record in the area. At one point, Attorney General John Mitchell asked the American Bar Association (ABA) to approve California local judge Mildred Lillie, who would have been the first woman, and Herschel Friday, an Arkansas bond lawyer. (See American Bar Association Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary.) The ABA committee balked, but before its opposition became publicly known, the president nominated Virginian Lewis Powell, a former ABA president, and Assistant Attorney General William Rehnquist.

Powell's widely acclaimed selection proved untrue Nixon's charge that the Senate would not accept a Southerner. Rehnquist, a man Nixon once called a “clown,” however, proved troublesome. An outspoken conservative, Rehnquist had antagonized congressmen because of his support for luxuriant claims for executive privilege, but most of all because as Justice Robert H. Jackson's clerk in 1953, he apparently had opposed reversing Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Rehnquist effectively defended himself and eventually was confirmed.

Powell and Rehnquist were Nixon's last appointments. But Nixon yearned for more opportunities to shape the Court in his own image. He asked Burger at one time to “nudge” Justices William O. Douglas and Thurgood Marshall to resign. With his knowledge, the Justice Department provided materials to Congressman Gerald Ford to assist him in the abortive effort to impeach Douglas. (See Impeachment.) Nixon considered asking Burger to step aside for a younger man. Nothing came of either idea.

Nixon's relationship with the Supreme Court also was distinguished by the policy and personal defeats he suffered at the hands of the Justices. In *United States v. United States District Court (1972), the Court unanimously rejected the administration's claim that it could order electronic surveillance without prior judicial approval. Most significant, of course, in United States v. *Nixon (1974), the Court, again in an 8‐to‐0 vote, ruled that notwithstanding Nixon's assertion of executive privilege, he must surrender certain tape recordings to the Watergate special prosecutor because of their links to criminal allegations. Those tapes clearly implicated the president in an obstruction of justice and led to congressional demands for Nixon's resignation.

The Court's role in resolving the tapes controversy was applauded throughout the nation. Ironically, the institution that Nixon had rather contemptuously regarded, but yet which he had significantly reshaped, unanimously contributed to his downfall.

— Stanley I. Kutler

Nixon, Richard Milhous (1913-94)37th president of the United States (1969-74), born in Yorba Linda, California. After serving in the navy in the South Pacific (1942-46), Nixon began his political career in the U.S. House of Representatives (1947-51), where he gained prominence as a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the investigation of Alger Hiss. He was elected to the Senate in 1950, but in 1952 he was tapped to be Dwight D. Eisenhower's running mate on the Republican ticket. Nixon performed effectively during periods of Eisenhower's extended illnesses. Nominated to be his party's standard bearer in 1960, he lost an extremely close election to John F. Kennedy, after which he briefly retired to private life. In 1962 he ran unsuccessfully for governor of California. After this defeat he moved to New York where he practiced law, all the while working to shore up his reputation as a party healer and foreign policy specialist. Again nominated for president in 1968, he won in another close contest. As president, Nixon worked toward a policy of détente with the Soviet Union. He initiated arms control talks (1969), which led to the signing of SALT I (1972). He also made a historic visit to the People's Republic of China (1972), opening relations with that communist power. Many consider these his greatest achievements. He was less successful with concluding the Vietnam War, as he had pledged to do during his campaign. He did authorize withdrawal of troops and undertake settlement negotiations that eventually led to a cease-fire, but only after he had ordered the bombing of Cambodia (1970) and Laos (1971), fueling the already enflamed passions of the ever-increasing antiwar population. Before the Watergate scandal, Nixon's second administration was marked by worsening relations with the Arab states, leading to an oil embargo that adversely affected the American public. He did, however, end conscription in 1973, making the U.S. military an All-Volunteer Force. Most of the focus of his truncated second term was on Watergate. After prolonged hearings, the House Judiciary Committee recommended impeachment (July 1974) on the grounds of obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and failure to comply with Congressional subpoenas. Faced with the certainty that the House would impeach, in August Nixon resigned, the first president to do so. He was granted an unconditional pardon by his successor Gerald R. Ford, who had been named vice president when Nixon's running mate Spiro T. Agnew had been forced to resign (1973) because of earlier scandals in his home state. After leaving the presidency Nixon slowly undertook his rehabilitation. He wrote several books and traveled extensively. At his death he was eulogized as an elder statesman esteemed for his expertise in foreign affairs, but in the public mind his stature remained sullied by the stigma of Watergate.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Although Richard Milhous Nixon (1913-1994) successfully served as a member of the House of Representatives and of the Senate and was vice president under Dwight Eisenhower, the thirty-seventh president of the United States will probably best be remembered as being the first president who resigned from office.

Richard Nixon was born on his father's lemon farm in Yorba Linda, California, on January 9, 1913. Of the four other sons in the family, two died in childhood. Nixon's ancestors had emigrated from Ireland in the 18th century and settled principally in Pennsylvania and Indiana. His mother's family were Quakers; his Methodist father adopted the Quaker religion after his marriage. As a youth, Nixon regularly attended Quaker services in Whittier, California, where the family moved in 1922 after the farm failed. Nixon's father ran a grocery store in Whittier. Some biographers have noted that Nixon's father was known to kick his sons and that his mother was manipulative. Nixon had a troubled childhood and adopted elements of both his parents' personalities. Some historians have believed that as a result of his childhood, Nixon had a drive to succeed and felt he had to pretend to be "good" while using any tactics necessary to acheive his goals.

At Whittier College, a Quaker institution, Nixon excelled as a student and debater. He was president of his freshman class and, as a senior, president of the student body. Less successful on the football team, he persevered and played doggedly in occasional games. Graduating second in his class in 1934, he won a scholarship to Duke University Law School on the recommendation of Whittier's president, who wrote, "I believe Nixon will become one of America's important, if not great leaders." Nixon maintained his scholarship throughout law school. Though he was a member of the national scholastic law fraternity, he failed to land a job in one of the big New York law firms. This failure, along with the views of his father, left him with a stong dislike of the "eastern establishment."

In Whittier, Nixon joined the law firm of Kroop and Bewley, which within a year became Kroop, Bewley, and Nixon. Active in a variety of business and civic ventures, at the age of 26 he was elected a member of the Whittier College Board of Trustees. Soon after returning to Whittier, Nixon met Thelma Catherine Patricia (Pat) Ryan, a high school teacher. The two were married in 1940; they had two daughters, Patricia and Julie.

Early Public Service

Shortly before the United States entered World War II, Nixon began working for the Federal government in the Office of Emergency Management, the forerunner of the Office of Price Administration (OPA). His legal work there as a price regulator strongly influenced his political philosophy. "I came out of college more liberal than I am today, more liberal in the sense that I thought it was possible for government to do more than I later found it was practical to do," Nixon later told Earl Mazo, his biographer. "I also saw the mediocrity of so many civil servants. And for the first time when I was in OPA I also saw that there were people in government who were not satisfied merely with interpreting regulations, enforcing the law that Congress passed, but who actually had a passion to get business and used their government jobs to that end. These were of course some of the remnants of the old, violent New Deal crowd. They set me to thinking a lot at that point."

Nixon entered the Navy as a lieutenant junior-grade in August 1942. He was sent to a naval air base in Iowa. After 6 months there (which he valued because it helped him know the Midwest, the base of his later political support), he was sent to the Pacific as an operations officer with the South Pacific Combat Air Transport Command. Fourteen months later he returned to the United States to work as a lawyer in uniform. He was a lieutenant commander in Baltimore when, in September 1945, a group of Whittier Republicans asked him to run for Congress. He jumped at the opportunity, was mustered out of the Navy in January 1946, and began his victorious campaign.

Nixon's friends described him as a mild and tolerant human being, basically shy and much influenced by his Quaker upbringing. Yet in all his early campaigns he conducted what he himself has described as "a fighting, rocking, socking campaign." He early infuriated the opposition. Though he called himself a liberal Republican and a progressive Republican, he had strong right-wing support. In his congressional campaign he had attacked his liberal New Deal Democrat and onetime Socialist opponent as a tool of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and an enemy of free enterprise.

Congressional Activities and National Fame

As congressman, Nixon was assigned to the House Labor Committee and to the Select Committee on Foreign Aid. In 1947 he and other committee members toured Europe. "We cannot afford to follow a policy of isolation and let the people of Europe down at this point, and therefore allow Russia full sway in Europe," he said shortly after his return. "The sure way to war is for the United States to turn isolationist." Supporting the Marshall Plan, Nixon established himself as an internationalist in foreign policy.

As a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Nixon became a leading anti-Communist crusader. He collaborated on the bill requiring Communist-front organizations to register with the attorney general. It was on HUAC that he first attracted national attention when he led the suit that resulted in the conviction of Alger Hiss, a former State Department official charged with Communist connections; Hiss was finally convicted for perjury. As Nixon wrote in Six Crises (1962), "The Hiss case brought me national fame. But it also left a residue of hatred and hostility toward me - not only among Communists but also among substantial segments of the press and the intellectual community - a hostility which remains even today, ten years after Hiss's conviction was upheld by the United States Supreme Court." Nixon said he also incurred opposition from many apostles of anticommunism because "I would not go along with their extremes." These anti-Communists assailed him for supporting international programs like foreign aid, reciprocal trade, and collective security pacts.

Nixon again aroused the enmity of liberals and intellectuals in his 1950 victorious senatorial campaign. He charged his Democratic opponent with displaying a "soft attitude toward communism" and said that she was part of a small clique that voted "time after time against measures that are for the security of this country."

It was thus as a fiery crusader against communism and a staunch Republican partisan that Nixon was known to the country when Gen. Dwight Eisenhower chose him as his running mate in the presidential election of 1952. Nixon's personality and character became permanent issues in all his political campaigns. He seemed to overuse political hyperbole and oversimplify complex issues. Some critics believed his fascination with political techniques showed lack of principle regarding substantive issues.

Nixon said that he was guided by his Quaker heritage: "The three passions of Quakers are peace, civil rights, and tolerance. That's why, as a Quaker, I can't be an extremist, a racist, or an uncompromising hawk. While all this may seem to be the opposite of what I've stood for, I'm actually consistent." An objective observer who got to know the private Nixon said that he had an able if not overly subtle mind. He listened well, asked probing questions, and nearly always impressed persons with whom he spoke privately.

Two months after becoming Republican vice-presidential candidate, Nixon was charged with being the beneficiary of a fund, totaling $18,235, collected from private citizens. Nixon said the sensational controversy resulted in "the most scarring personal crisis of my life." Nixon fought back. In a television speech that accounted for the money, he convinced his foes that he was artful and tricky, but he rallied Republicans to his banner. While his defense saved his candidacy and made him even better known, this controversy also left a bitter residue.

The Vice Presidency

As vice president, Nixon continued to please his supporters and anger his critics. He was the chief political spokesman in Eisenhower's administration, traveled widely in support of Republican candidates, and was influential in the workings of the administration.

Eisenhower believed that a vice president should have an active role and should be fully informed about all foreign and domestic policies. Chief among Nixon's assignments was foreign travel. In office less than a year, Nixon made an extended trip through Asia, visiting, among other places, Hanoi, North Vietnam, then under French control. He made many useful friends on these trips and impressed critics at home with his seriousness of purpose and knowledge of foreign affairs. On a trip to Latin America in 1958, he was assailed by mobs but handled himself coolly. In 1959 he visited the Soviet Union and Poland. While in Moscow, his meeting with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev prepared the way for Khrushchev's later visit to the United States to confer with Eisenhower.

Running for President

In 1960 Nixon won the Republican presidential nomination and chose Henry Cabot Lodge, ambassador to the United Nations, as his running mate. The campaign against the Democratic team of senators John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson was close from the beginning, although Nixon initially ran ahead in the polls. In the first of four televised debates with Kennedy, Nixon, concerned with projecting an image of reasonableness and nonpartisanship, did not sharply challenge his opponent. He also looked pale and unwell, possibly because of poor lighting. He lost the election by some 100,000 votes out of the 68 million cast.

Nixon returned to Los Angeles to practice law and to write Six Crises. In 1962, losing the race for governor of California, he blamed his defeat on the press. "You won't have Nixon to kick around any more," he told newsmen, "because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference."

A few months later, Nixon joined the New York law firm of Mudge, Stern, Baldwin & Todd, which later became Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, Alexander & Mitchell. However, in 1964, after the Republican defeat by President Lyndon Johnson, it became clear that Nixon again considered himself a serious presidential contender. In 1968, winning his party's presidential nomination, he picked Governor Spiro T. Agnew of Maryland as his running mate.

Nixon and Agnew ran against the Democratic team of Hubert Humphrey and Edmund Muskie. Third party candidate George Wallace of Alabama, a threat to both tickets, hurt Humphrey more. In the end, though the Republicans had the presidential victory, the Democrats retained control of Congress.

The Presidency

Nixon took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 1969. In his inaugural address he appealed for reconciliation among the elements of American society divided over the issues of the Vietnam War and domestic racial discord. He promised to bring the nation together again.

Nixon's first foreign objective - to negotiate an end of the Vietnam War - was unsuccessful. Despite repeated attempts, negotiations with North Vietnam at the Paris peace talks were unproductive. Meanwhile, in June he began replacing American troops by South Vietnamese troops. After a conference with South Vietnam's president Nguyen Van Thieu, Nixon ordered 25,000 American combat troops brought home. By the end of 1969, having ordered 110,000 troops home, he expressed hope, not realized, that all American combat troops would be out of Vietnam by the end of 1970. Not until the end of 1972, when most American ground troops had been withdrawn from Vietnam, did negotiations suggest that peace might be at hand.

In his second month in office, the President embarked on a tour of Western Europe. In the summer he visited Asia, including a stop in Saigon. His official visit to Romania made him the first American president to visit a Communist country. While on the Asian tour, the President enunciated what became known as the "Nixon Doctrine." The United States will honor its treaty commitments, he said, but it will not bear the brunt of the fighting in another country. He called for cooperative endeavors and promised American material aid but said that Asian countries must defend their freedoms with their own troops. In his first year the President signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, negotiated during the previous administration. In addition, negotiations were begun with the Soviet Union toward placing limits on the production of nuclear armaments.

On the domestic front, Nixon waged a major battle against inflation. With Congress pressing for more government spending, the administration fought to curb expenditures and balance the budget. The economy continued to decline while the administration waged its battle against inflation. Finally, to reverse a dangerous trend, the President, in August 1971, completely reversed himself, instituted wage and price controls, imposed a tax on imports, and asked for tax cuts. Early in 1972, after he agreed to devaluation of the dollar, the economy began to improve.

In 1971 Nixon made the dramatic announcements that he would visit Peking and Moscow in the first half of 1972. He also announced progress in the negotiations with the Soviet Union on an arms limitation treaty. The visit to Peking took place in February and he was invited to meet Chairman Mao Zedong, a mark of high respect. In May, he visited Moscow and signed the agreement limiting the nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union.

In the presidential election of 1972 Nixon and Agnew ran against Democrats George McGovern and Sargent Shriver. The election was a landslide for Nixon, as the polls had predicted it would be: he won 61 percent of the popular vote and received 521 electoral votes, losing only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. However, as in the election of 1968, the Democrats retained control of Congress.

The Fall from Grace

During his last election campaign, what first appeared as a minor burglary was to become the beginning of the end of Nixon's political career. A break-in at Democratic national headquarters in Washington, D.C.'s Watergate apartment complex was linked to Republicans.

During the trial of six men charged in the crime, the existence of the cover-up began to emerge, taking government officials down like dominos in its path. Nixon elicited the resignation of two top aides in April, 1973 in an effort to stem the tide. But in October, as the Watergate investigation continued, he lost his vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, who resigned before pleading "nolo contendere" (no contest) in federal charges of income tax evasion related to accusations of accepting bribes.

Nixon's efforts to avoid the taint of those scandals were fruitless when subpoenaed tapes he was ordered to give up by the U.S. Supreme Court showed he obstructed justice in stopping an FBI probe of the Watergate burglary. On August 9, 1974, in national disgrace, he became the first President of the United States to resign. He boarded a plane with his wife and returned to his his California home, ending his public career. A month later, in a controversial move, President Gerald Ford issued an unconditional pardon for any offenses Nixon might have committed while president.

Private Citizen

After a period of relative anonymity and when some criticism had softened, Nixon emerged in a role of elder statesman, visiting countries in Asia, as well as returning to the Soviet Union and China. He also consulted with the Bush and Clinton Administrations, and wrote his memoirs and other books on international affairs and politics.

The Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace opened in the early 1990s in Yorba Linda, California. On January 20, 1994, in what would be his last public appearance, cermonies honoring him on the 25th anniversary of his first inauguration, were held. He also announced the creation of The Center for Peace and Freedom, a policy center at the Richard M. Nixon Library & Birthplace.

He died of a stroke on April 22, 1994. A State funeral was held five days later in Yorba Linda, California. In 1995, film director Oliver Stone released the contorversial movie "Nixon," staring Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins in the title role.

Further Reading

The Challenges We Face (1960) is a collection of Nixon's speeches. The most important work is Nixon's Six Crises (1962), which records the major events of his life to the early 1960s. The most factually complete biography is Earl Mazo and Stephen Hess, Nixon: A Political Portrait (1968). James Keogh, This Is Nixon (1956), written as a campaign biography, contains valuable quotations from Nixon's speeches. A perceptive analysis of Nixon's character and politics is Gary Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-made Man (1970). A good sketch of Nixon's personality is in Stephen Hess and David S. Broder, The Republican Establishment (1968). An excellent portrait is in Stewart Alsop, Nixon and Rockefeller (1960). Information on the The Richard M. Nixon Library & Birthplace and a biography of the former President can be accessed on the internet at http://www.chapman.edu/nixon/library/overview.html (August 5, 1997). A brief biography can be also accessed on the internet at the A & E Biography website at http://www.biography.com (August 5, 1997).

Other books deal with aspects of Nixon's career. Mark Harris, Mark the Glove Boy: Or the Last Days of Richard Nixon (1964), deals with the gubernatorial race between Pat Brown and Nixon. Nixon figures prominently in works dealing with presidential campaigns: Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1960 (1961) and The Making of the President, 1968 (1969), and Joe McGinnes, The Selling of the President, 1968 (1969). Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., History of American Presidential Elections (4 vols., 1971), covers the 1968 election, won by Nixon. Also useful are Ralph De Toledano, Man Alone: Richard Nixon (1969), and John Osborne, The Nixon Watch (1970).

37th President

• Born: Jan. 9, 1913, Yorba Linda, Calif.
• Political party: Republican
• Education: Whittier College, B.A., 1934; Duke University Law School, LL.B., 1937
• Military service: U.S. Navy, 1942–46
• Previous government service: U.S. House of Representatives, 1947–51; U.S. Senate, 1951–53; Vice President, 1953–61
• Elected President, 1968; served, 1969–74; resigned, 1974
• Died: Apr. 22, 1994, New York, N.Y.

Richard Nixon was the only President ever to resign his office and the second (after Andrew Johnson) to be involved in impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives. Some historians called him an “imperial” President because he relied excessively on Presidential powers and failed to collaborate with Congress. Although he ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and won diplomatic agreements with the Soviet Union and China, his misuses of power destroyed his Presidency.

Nixon's parents ran a lemon grove and a grocery store, and Richard worked for them before and after school. He graduated second in his class from Whittier College and third in his class from Duke University Law School, then practiced law in Whittier. He met Thelma (“Pat”) Ryan at a dramatic society and married her in 1940. At the start of World War II Nixon worked for the Office of Price Administration, implementing rationing of automobile tires. He joined the navy and served as an operations officer for an air transport squadron flying in the South Pacific, then as a lawyer negotiating contracts, until his discharge in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant commander.

Just as Nixon was leaving the navy, a group of prominent Republicans in Whittier began looking for a prospective candidate, preferably a young veteran, to run for Congress against the liberal Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis, Nixon was offered the nomination, and he defeated Voorhis in a series of debates, charging his opponent with accepting the support of pro-communist labor unions. While in Congress, Nixon served on the House Un-American Activities Committee and was instrumental in the investigation of State Department official Alger Hiss, who had been charged by Whittaker Chambers, a senior editor of Time magazine, with being a member of a communist spy ring during World War II. Hiss vigorously denied the charges and many high-ranking officials who had worked with him doubted these charges, but Nixon's support of Chambers was considered vindicated when a jury found Hiss guilty of perjury (lying under oath). He was sentenced to five years in prison for denying to the committee that he had ever met Chambers.

Nixon's work on the committee gained him a national reputation as a hard-line anticommunist. He also served on the House Committee on Education and Labor, which wrote the pro-business Taft-Hartley Act. He strongly supported Harry Truman's proposal for the Marshall Plan for European reconstruction after World War II. Nixon ran for the Senate in 1950, defeating liberal Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas by insinuating that her voting record was “pink” (pro-communist) and referring to her as the “pink lady.” He became the youngest Republican in the U.S. Senate.

In 1952 Nixon convinced members of the California delegation to the Republican convention to support Dwight Eisen-hower's candidacy rather than Robert Taft or favorite son Earl Warren. Eisenhower then chose Nixon to run with him. Newspapers charged that while Nixon was a senator, he had accepted $18,000 from supporters to defray his personal expenses. Eisenhower insisted that Nixon make a full and public explanation. Nixon made a nationwide television broadcast on September 23, 1952, in which he defended his actions and won over the public when he insisted that whatever else might happen, he would never return one gift—a dog that his children had named Checkers. The overwhelmingly positive response to his “Checkers speech” convinced Eisenhower to keep Nixon on the ticket, and they were elected by a large margin. Nixon was the youngest person ever to be elected Vice President.

Nixon worked tirelessly to elect Republican candidates to Congress and state offices. When Eisenhower was ill, he presided with great discretion over 19 meetings of the cabinet and 26 meetings of the National Security Council. He made numerous trips abroad and was the target of violent anti-U.S. demonstrations in several Latin American nations in 1958. He debated Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev at the American National Exposition in Moscow in 1959, reinforcing his anticommunist image with the American television audience.

Nixon was the odds-on favorite to win the Republican Presidential nomination in 1960. He won the primaries without opposition but then faced a last-minute bid by New York governor Nelson Rockefeller. With Eisenhower's endorsement, Nixon fended off Rockefeller, then compromised with him on a Republican party platform that implicitly criticized the performance of the Eisenhower administration. This agreement alienated Eisenhower, who did little campaigning for the ticket.

Nixon engaged in four Presidential debates with Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy, and a majority of television viewers thought that he lost the first one badly. With the economy in a recession, Nixon lost several key states, and vote fraud may have played a part in his losses in Illinois and Texas. Nixon lost the election but refused to contest the results.

In 1962 Nixon ran for governor of California but was defeated by incumbent governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. He held a press conference after the election in which he attacked the media for bias and insisted, “You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore.” He moved to New York City and practiced law with the newly renamed firm of Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, Alexander and Mitchell. But Nixon had not retired from politics: he campaigned effectively for Republican congressional candidates in the 1966 midterm elections.

In 1968 Nixon again won the Republican nomination, defeating George Rom-ney, Nelson Rockefeller, and Ronald Reagan. With the Democratic party split between hawks who supported Hubert Humphrey and antiwar activists who favored Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy (assassinated in June after winning the California primary), Nixon entered the general election well ahead of Humphrey. But the race tightened up after his opponent endorsed a halt to the bombing of Vietnam. In a three-person race (the other candidate was Southerner George Wallace, running on a segregationist platform of the American Independent party), Nixon won only 43.4 percent of the popular vote, defeating Humphrey by less than 1 percent.

Nixon was only the fifth Presidential candidate to win the office after a prior defeat (the others were Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, and Grover Cleveland), and the only one to win against a new opponent rather than against the candidate who had previously defeated him. He was also the first former Vice President since Martin Van Buren in 1836 to be elected to the Presidency without first having succeeded to the position after the death of a President.

“I shall consecrate my office,” Nixon pledged in his inaugural address, “to the cause of peace among nations.” He announced a policy to “Vietnamize” the war in Vietnam and remove most of the 500,000 U.S. ground combat forces. Soon U.S. combat casualties were sharply reduced. In 1970 he invaded neighboring Cambodia in pursuit of Vietnamese communist forces, an action that led to widespread protests and demonstrations in the United States. By 1972 almost all U.S. forces had been removed from South Vietnam, and on January 27, 1973, after a Christmas bombing campaign against North Vietnam, the United States came to an agreement with the North Vietnamese: a cease-fire was proclaimed, U.S. prisoners of war were returned, and U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War ended. Air force bombing continued against the communists in Cambodia, however, until Congress overrode a Nixon veto and ordered a halt to the bombing by August 15, 1973. Then Congress passed the War Powers Resolution of 1973, also over Nixon's veto, which provided that Congress must approve of any military action by a President within 60 days or the forces must be withdrawn.

Although Nixon had made his career as a staunch anticommunist, in 1971 he reversed his long-standing opposition to seating communist China in the United Nations. Then, in February 1972, he became the first President to visit the People's Republic of China. He established low-level diplomatic relations with that nation, naming George Bush to head a “mission” to Beijing, though without formal recognition of its government. In May 1972 Nixon made a trip to the Soviet Union and completed a significant arms control agreement involving limitations on intercontinental ballistic missiles. On May 28 he made a televised speech to the people of the Soviet Union, reassuring them that the United States did not have aggressive intentions against them. This summit conference ushered in a period of detente, or relaxation of tensions, between the two superpowers. Numerous other agreements in science, space, technology, and trade were also signed over the next two years.

In domestic affairs Nixon was checked by Congress and the courts. He opposed busing to overcome racial imbalance in public schools. Instead, he proposed $2 billion in funding to bring inner-city schools up to par with those in more affluent communities, but Congress refused to consider his proposal. He nominated two conservative Southerners to the Supreme Court, Clement Haynesworth and G. Har-rold Carswell, neither of whom was accepted by the Democrat-dominated Senate. He tried to eliminate many of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs, including the Office of Economic Opportunity, which ran the War on Poverty, and he impounded funds for many programs. But he was blocked from implementing his plans by the Democratic Congress and federal court orders requiring him to spend impounded funds.

Although Nixon positioned himself as a conservative, spending for many social welfare programs, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, increased greatly during his tenure. A national system of food stamps costing billions of dollars was developed as part of the welfare system. Nixon proposed, and Congress accepted, a reallocation of government funds to state and local governments. This plan replaced many grants for specific programs with broader “bloc” grants, giving states more flexibility. He also won passage of a revenue-sharing measure that provided $5 billion annually from the national Treasury to state and local governments. However, Congress refused to pass his program for “family allowances” to replace welfare, an idea that would have significantly increased social welfare spending.

Although Nixon was a free-market Republican, opposed to much government regulation of the economy, for the first time in U.S. history he presided over the use of wage and price controls in peacetime (from 1971 to 1973) in order to check inflation. He also proposed large increases in spending for the environment and created the Council on Environmental Quality. An Arab oil embargo against the United States, imposed during the Yom Kippur War involving Israel and Syria and Egypt in 1973, led Nixon to impose new regulations on energy producers and users. Nixon proposed Project Independence, a plan to make the United States economy energy-independent of Arab oil producers within a decade. Nixon vetoed a Democratic bill that would have regulated energy prices, preferring to rely in part on higher oil prices as an incentive for U.S. oil producers to increase domestic production.

Nixon won a landslide reelection victory in 1972 over his Democratic opponent, Senator George McGovern of South Dakota. This election set the pattern for the next two decades in all elections except 1976: liberal Democrats were trounced by conservative Republicans who won Southern states on the basis of “backlash” politics. But Republicans continued to be a minority in both Congress and in state governments—part of the pattern of “split government.”

Early in Nixon's second term, it was revealed that operatives working for the Committee to Re-Elect the President had burglarized the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex in 1972. The scandal gradually enveloped many senior White House aides and three cabinet secretaries, and as it came closer to the President his popularity dropped.

On October 10, 1973, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew resigned as part of a plea bargain in a court case involving bribes paid to him by Maryland construction contractors before and during his tenure as Vice President. Congress approved Nixon's nomination of House minority leader Gerald Ford to fill the vacancy.

In 1974 the House Judiciary Committee began an inquiry into the Watergate scandal to determine if Nixon should be impeached. Late in July the Supreme Court issued a ruling requiring Nixon to turn over evidence in criminal trials of his aides, in spite of his claim that it was his executive privilege to keep information about Presidential decisions from the courts. The tape recordings Nixon made of conversations in the Oval Office indicated that he had participated in a cover-up of the Watergate burglary.

Nixon resigned his office on August 9, 1974, shortly after the House committee voted to recommend three articles of impeachment to the full House. He was succeeded by Vice President Gerald Ford, who on September 8, 1974, issued Nixon a “full, free and absolute pardon” for all crimes committed during his Presidency. Nixon accepted the pardon, admitting “mistakes” in the way he had handled Watergate, but made no admission that he was guilty of any crimes.

In retirement Nixon moved to an affluent community in New Jersey, completed his memoirs, RN, and wrote many books on foreign policy. He gradually assumed a role as a senior foreign policy adviser to Republican Presidents.

Richard Nixon died of a stroke at the age of 81. (1973); Watergate investigation (1973–74)

See also Agnew, Spiro T.; Amnesty, Presidential; Debates, Presidential; Eisenhower, Dwight David; Executive privilege; Ex-Presidency; Ford, Gerald R.; Humphrey, Hubert H.; Impeachment; Imperial Presidency; Kennedy, John F.; Pardon power; Succession to the Presidency; United States v. Nixon; War powers; War Powers Resolution

Sources

• Stephen Ambrose, Nixon, 2 vols. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987).
• Roger Morris, Richard Milhous Nixon (New York: Henry Holt, 1990).
• Richard Nixon, “RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon” (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978).
• Herbert Parmet, Richard Nixon and His America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990).
• Richard M. Pious, “Richard Nixon: A Political Life” (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Silver Burdett, 1992)

(1913-1994), thirty-seventh president of the United States. Nixon's youth was marked by hard work in a family store and the death of two brothers as well as by academic success. Except for Herbert Hoover, no president elected in this century grew up in more difficult circumstances. Following graduation from Whittier College (1934) and Duke University Law School (1937), he practiced law in California and married Thelma (Pat) Ryan. He served as a navy supply officer during World War II and was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946.

An ambitious, intelligent, disciplined loner, Nixon cultivated no hobbies and had few close friends. His political shrewdness was often undermined by his vindictiveness and capacity for self-deception. His rise was largely the product of the post-World War II red scare. He convinced the House that Alger Hiss, a second-level New Dealer, had been a Soviet spy and, in 1950, persuaded California voters to send him to the Senate to battle against subversives and "pink" Democrats. Elected vice president in 1952, he served President Dwight D. Eisenhower dutifully for eight years, despite occasional humiliations. He tried to present himself as a statesmanlike "new Nixon," but, partly because memories of the old Nixon lingered, he lost races for president in 1960 and governor of California in 1962.

During the next four years, while prospering as a corporate lawyer, he rebuilt his political base. His successful campaign for president in 1968 raised a central question: would he govern as a responsible conservative, in the fashion of his mentor Eisenhower, or as an irresponsible demagogue, in the mold of the old Nixon? He proved to be both. In domestic affairs, his record included, on the one hand, creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, expansion of the Social Security system, and advocacy of a Family Assistance Plan that guaranteed an annual income to the working poor, and, on the other hand, a weak civil rights record, sabotage of his political opposition, and emotional appeals to a "silent majority" who shared his resentment of the cosmopolitan elite. His foreign policy record was similarly mixed. Nixon accepted modest curbs on the nuclear arms race, pursued détente with the Soviet Union, and opened relations with the People's Republic of China. He also undermined the Marxist Chilean government and widened the Vietnam War by invading Cambodia before accepting truce terms in 1973 that he could have had in 1969.

The Watergate scandal was part of a broad campaign to sabotage political opposition. Although Nixon apparently had no advance knowledge of a break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in 1972, he subsequently obstructed an investigation of the crime. After fighting a two-year holding action, he faced impeachment by the House of Representatives and resigned on August 9, 1974. He accepted a pardon from President Gerald Ford and sank briefly into depression.

Then, characteristically, he began to rebuild his reputation, primarily through books combining memoirs and foreign policy advice. As memories of Watergate faded, some commentators emphasized Nixon's intelligence, domestic reforms, and foreign policy successes. Never very penitent about Watergate, he grew persistently less so and in 1990 described the scandal as "one part wrongdoing, one part blundering, and one part political vendetta" by his foes. Even in semiretirement Nixon remained the most fascinating American politician of his time.

Bibliography:

Stephen E. Ambrose, Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962 (1987) and Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972 (1989); Stanley L. Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (1990).

Author:

Leo P. Ribuffo

See also Alger Hiss Case; Anticommunism; Elections: 1952 , 1956 , 1960 , 1968 , 1972. For events during Nixon's administration, see Asia-U.S. Relations; Détente; Kent State Incident; Middle East-U.S. Relations; opec Oil Crisis; Roe v. Wade ; Space Program; Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; Vietnam War; Watergate Scandal.

1913 - 1994

U.S. president, 1969 - 1974.

Born in Yorba Linda, California, Richard Milhous Nixon attended Whittier College and Duke University Law School. After serving in World War II, he was elected to Congress (1946 - 1950), where he was a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy era of anti-Communism, then to the U.S. Senate (1950 - 1952), where he continued his strongly anti-Communist stance. He was selected to run as vice president on the Republican ticket with Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and again in 1956. During the Eisenhower administration, Nixon was given substantive foreign policy missions to fifty-six countries, including the USSR. In 1960, he ran for president but lost to John F. Kennedy. Nixon won the presidency in the 1968 election.

Nixon's Middle East policy was marked by crisis abroad and conflict at home. Abroad, the War of Attrition and the Arab-Israel War of 1973 demanded the full attention of the State Department while the U.S. government was still trying to repel the Communists in Vietnam. Nixon's secretary of state, William Rogers, and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, pursued separate and often contradictory Middle East policies. With the collapse of the Rogers Plan for Arab-Israeli peace, Kissinger emerged as the dominant adviser, and this was consolidated when he was made secretary of state in 1973.

Under Nixon, the United States sold both Israel and Iran large amounts of miliary equipment, including Phantom jets to Israel. In May 1972, during a visit to Iran, Nixon promised that the United States would sell them an unlimited supply of non-nuclear weapons, and by the end of the Nixon administration, Israel and Iran emerged as the "two pillars" of U.S. policy in the Middle East.

The major crisis of Nixon's administration began with the 1973 Arab-Israel War and the resulting Arab oil embargo by OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries). This began an escalating spiral of price gouging and inflation that continued into the 1980s in the United States. Nixon attempted to placate the Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia. Until August 1974 - when Nixon resigned the presidency - he and Kissinger had to negotiate numerous cease-fires and armistice lines between Israel, Egypt, and Syria. They also visited both Communist China and the USSR, improving relations with both.

In his desire for another term in office, Nixon and his White House staff became involved in a cover-up of their actions involving a break-in at Democratic national headquarters at the Watergate complex. The escalating investigation over this impeachable set of offenses resulted in Nixon's resignation.

Bibliography

Ambrose, Stephen. Nixon, Vol. 1: The Education of a Politician,1913 - 1962. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.

Ambrose, Stephen. Nixon, Vol. 2: The Triumph of a Politician,1962 - 1972. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990.

Spiegel, Steven. The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict: Making America'sMiddle East Policy, from Truman to Reagan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

— ZACHARY KARABELL

A political leader of the twentieth century. A member of Congress in the late 1940s, Nixon came to national attention through his strong support for the investigation of the alleged communist Alger Hiss. He was elected vice president twice under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, but narrowly lost the presidential election of 1960 to John F. Kennedy. He ran for governor of California two years later, was defeated again, and left politics for several years to practice law in New York City. Nixon reemerged as the Republican presidential candidate in 1968 and defeated Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace in the election. The best-remembered events of his presidency were his visits to the People's Republic of China and to the Soviet Union; a cease-fire in Vietnam and withdrawal of United States forces from that country; and the Watergate scandal, which led to his downfall. In 1974, under immediate threat of impeachment, he became the first president to resign from office.

Richard Milhous Nixon was the thirty-seventh president of the United States. Though he made several major breakthroughs in his presidency, his involvement with the Watergate affair proved his undoing. In 1974 he became the only president ever to resign from office. Late in life Nixon's advice as a political analyst and foreign affairs expert was sought by both parties.

Nixon was born January 9, 1913, in Yorba Linda, California, the second of five sons of Francis A. Nixon and Hannah Milhous Nixon. His father had grown up on a farm in Ohio and arrived in California in 1907. He worked as a trolley car motorman in Whittier, where he met Hannah Milhous. They were married in 1908. In 1922 they bought the grocery store and gas station where Nixon grew up. Nixon was a disciplined student who worked hard and received superior grades. He enjoyed playing football and participating in music, acting, and debating. A devout Quaker during his youth, he attended church four times a week.

When Nixon was twelve, his younger brother Arthur died of tubercular encephalitis. His older brother, Harold, died when Nixon was twenty, after a ten-year battle with tuberculosis. Harold's death was particularly traumatic for the family, as it had poured much of its limited resources into his treatment.

After graduating from high school, Nixon wanted to attend an Ivy League college but instead entered Whittier College, a small Quaker school close to home and within his family's financial means. He graduated second in his class and won a scholarship to Duke University Law School. At Duke, he was elected president of the Duke Bar Association and graduated third in his class.

In 1937, Nixon was admitted to the California bar and joined the firm of Wingert and Bewley in Whittier. He participated in civic groups; taught Sunday school; and acted in a community theater troupe, where he met Thelma Catherine Ryan, who was known as Patricia or Pat. They were married June 21, 1940, and had two children, Patricia ("Tricia") Nixon Cox and Julie Nixon Eisenhower. The Nixons would celebrate fifty-three years of marriage before Pat's death in 1993.

In 1941, Nixon took a job as an attorney with the Office of Price Administration in Washington, D.C. Seven months later, he applied for and received a Navy commission. He served as an operations officer with the South Pacific Combat Air Transport Command during World War II.

Shortly after his return from the service, Nixon ran for Congress against incumbent California Democratic representative Jerry Voorhis. Nixon's campaign literature portrayed him as a returning veteran who had defended his country in the mud and jungles of the Solomon Islands while his opponent never left Washington, D.C. It also implied that Voorhis was endorsed by a Communist-supported political action committee. At a time when fear of Communist subversion was widespread, Nixon's strategy worked. He came from behind in a race no one expected him to win to defeat Voorhis with 57 percent of the votes.

Nixon quickly made his mark in Washington, D.C. He became a vocal member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which investigated U.S. citizens suspected of having ties with or sympathies for the Communist party. One such case brought Nixon into the national spotlight. In 1948, Alger Hiss, a former State Department official, was investigated for allegedly passing secret information to the Communist government in the former Soviet Union. Nixon's determined pursuit of the case led to Hiss's indictment and eventual conviction for perjury.

In 1950 Nixon ran for the U.S. Senate against Democratic Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas. In an effort to discredit Douglas, he circulated a campaign flyer indicating that she had voted 354 times with Representative Vito Marcantonio of New York, a member of the Communist Workers party. The flyer, printed on pink paper, was known as the pink sheet, and Nixon often referred to Douglas as the pink lady, a link to the color red associated with Communism. Nixon defeated Douglas by a secure margin of 680,000 votes, raising speculation that his strident campaign may have been unnecessary.

In 1952 Republicans chose World War II hero General Dwight D. Eisenhower as their nominee for president. Eisenhower chose Nixon as his running mate. The campaign encountered a crisis almost immediately. In September 1952, several newspapers disclosed that Nixon had received financial support from a secret fund raised by wealthy California business owners. This offense was viewed as shocking, and many people called for Nixon to withdraw from the ticket. Instead, he took the offensive and pleaded his case on national television, delivering what came to be known as the "Checkers Speech." Nixon maintained his innocence, disclosed his financial situation to show he was in debt, and pointed out that his wife did not have a mink coat but rather wore "a respectable Republican cloth coat." He went on to say that a supporter in Texas had given the family a gift, a dog named Checkers, and that "the kids love the dog, and … we're going to keep it." The public's response was overwhelmingly positive and Nixon remained on the Republican ticket. Nixon had discovered the enormous power of television and had utilized it to his advantage, reaching a large audience without the need to endure press scrutiny.

Eisenhower and Nixon received 55.1 percent of the popular vote in the 1952 election. Nixon served two terms as an unusually active vice president, honing his foreign policy skills during trips to fifty-six countries. Among the most famous of these journeys was a 1959 visit to Moscow, where he engaged in the celebrated Kitchen Debate with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. The two men informally debated the merits of capitalism versus Communism while they toured the kitchen of a model home at a U.S. fair. Nixon's willingness to confront critics and his ability to turn adversity to his advantage earned him praise and acclaim.

In 1960 delegates at the Republican convention in Chicago nominated Nixon for president on the first ballot. He faced another young, energetic, popular contender, Democratic senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. In the first of four televised debates with Kennedy, Nixon, who had been ill and was exhausted from campaigning, appeared haggard, strained, and tense. His appearance cost him many votes even though he had a keen command of the facts and debated well—indeed, those who listened to the debates on radio rather than watching them on television felt that Nixon had outdone Kennedy. Nixon lost the election, suffering his first political defeat, by a mere 119,000 votes, the slimmest margin in modern history. In spite of allegations of voting irregularities, particularly in Chicago, Nixon decided not to demand a recount and instead gracefully conceded to Kennedy.

After losing the 1960 election, Nixon ran for governor of California against Edmund "Pat" Brown in 1962 but was unable to unseat the incumbent. He moved to New York to practice law and almost immediately began preparing his comeback. In January 1968, he announced his candidacy for the presidency and was nominated on the Republicans' first ballot, defeating Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York, and Governor Ronald Reagan of California.

The Democratic party was in a shambles in 1968. President Lyndon B. Johnson withdrew as a candidate because of growing domestic unrest and opposition to the Vietnam War. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968 while campaigning for the Democratic nomination. The Democrats nominated Hubert H. Humphrey, Johnson's vice president. Nixon defeated Humphrey by a narrow margin. During his first term, Nixon appointed a broad-based cabinet that included both conservatives and liberals. In his inaugural speech, he said that he hoped to "bridge the generation gap" and bring the country back together after years of unrest over Vietnam and racial discrimination. While he continued to pursue foreign policy goals, he also achieved much on the domestic front. He responded to strong public demand for expanded government services, and proposed a family assistance program that, had it not been voted down by Congress, would have been the most far-reaching welfare reform in modern history. He supported health and safety protection on the job and housing allowances for disadvantaged people. Nixon's administration built more subsidized housing units than any administration before or since. He expanded the Food Stamp Program and began the federal revenue-sharing program for local governments. Another lasting legacy was the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Nixon also reshaped the Supreme Court. Under Chief Justice Earl Warren, who had been appointed by President Eisenhower, the Court had taken what many felt was an ideologically liberal turn. During his presidency, Nixon appointed four members to the court: Warren E. Burger, as chief justice; and Harry A. Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., and William H. Rehnquist, as associate justices. The Burger Court began a retreat from liberalism and judicial activism that continued through the 1980s and 1990s.

Perhaps Nixon's most noteworthy triumphs were in foreign policy. In 1972 Nixon and his chief foreign affairs adviser, Henry Kissinger, traveled to Communist China to begin the process of reestablishing diplomatic relations with the Beijing government. The visit marked a major shift in U.S. policy toward China. The two governments shared a history of animosity, and the United States had long recognized the Nationalist Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek, based on the island of Taiwan, as the official government of China. After Nixon's visit, the door was opened to diplomatic and trade dealings. Formal diplomatic relations with Communist China were established in 1978.

Nixon also opened negotiations with the Communist government in the former Soviet Union. He initiated the process known as détente by holding three summit meetings with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. His efforts culminated in a breakthrough agreement in 1972 limiting the use of antiballistic missiles.

One major goal that eluded Nixon in foreign policy was a quick end to the Vietnam War. After promising "peace with honor" during his campaign in 1968, he saw the war continue through his first term.

Though the war would end in January 1973, an event in June of 1972 marked the beginning of Nixon's downfall. At that time, during Nixon's campaign for reelection, a group of men working for the Committee to Reelect the President broke into the Democratic party headquarters in the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. It was a crime that would be traced back to the president.

In November, Nixon won a sweeping victory over his Democratic challenger, Senator George S. McGovern, of South Dakota, receiving 60.7 percent of the vote and carrying every state except Massachusetts. The following March, testimony before the Senate select committee investigating the incident implicated the White House. In televised hearings John W. Dean III, Nixon's White House counsel, told the Senate committee that Nixon had been involved from the start.

Further testimony revealed that Nixon had secretly recorded all conversations that took place in the Oval Office of the White House. Congress and prosecutors began efforts to obtain the tapes. In October 1973, his reputation in jeopardy, Nixon carried out what came to be called the Saturday Night Massacre. Angered by Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson to dismiss Cox. Richardson refused and resigned. Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus also refused to carry out the task and was dismissed. Finally, Solicitor General Robert H. Bork, appointed acting attorney general, dismissed Cox.

Calls for Nixon's resignation mounted, and impeachment resolutions were referred to the House Judiciary Committee. On March 1, 1974, a federal grand jury indicted seven former Nixon aides in the continuing cover-up of Watergate. Nixon was named as an unindicted coconspirator.

Nixon responded to pressure from both those who wanted him to prove himself innocent and those who believed him guilty, by announcing in April 1974 that he would release to the House Judiciary Committee edited transcripts of conversations regarding Watergate culled from his library of tape recordings. Though the committee responded that it would need the tapes themselves, Nixon refused to supply them. The edited transcripts alone were tremendously damaging. The transcripts implicated the Nixon White House not only in burglaries and cover-ups, but also illegal wiretaps, corruption of government agencies, domestic espionage, unfair campaign tactics, and abuse of campaign funds. Eventually, nineteen Nixon aides and associates served prison terms for their roles in these illegal activities.

By late July 1974, the House Judiciary Committee, in televised hearings, was deliberating articles of impeachment against Nixon. The articles charged him with obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and defiance of congressional subpoenas. It became clear that the full House would impeach him, and he would probably face conviction by the Senate. In early August, in response to a Supreme Court ruling (United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 94 S. Ct. 3090, 41 L. Ed. 2d 1039 [1974]), Nixon released the contested tape recordings that showed conclusively that he had been involved in the effort to halt the Federal Bureau of Investigation's probe of Watergate.

On August 7, 1974, facing certain impeachment, Nixon met with his family and aides and informed Secretary of State Kissinger of his decision to resign. He made this announcement to the nation in a television broadcast the evening of August 8. The following day, with his family around him, he bade an emotional farewell to his staff, boarded Air Force One with his wife, and flew home to San Clemente, California. Vice President Gerald R. Ford was sworn in to serve the remainder of Nixon's term. On September 8, President Ford granted Nixon an unconditional pardon for all federal crimes he "committed or may have committed or taken part in" while in office, thus ending the crisis that had gripped the nation for more than two years.

After his resignation Nixon published eight books and numerous newspaper and magazine articles. He traveled again to China, where he was warmly received, and in 1994, shortly before his death, he returned to Russia. Nixon came to be considered an elder statesman and political analyst. As an expert in foreign policy his advice and counsel were sought by Senator and presidential candidate Bob Dole and President Bill Clinton.

Nixon died April 22, 1994. All five living presidents—Clinton, George Bush, Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and Ford—and their wives attended Nixon's funeral. Clinton delivered a eulogy in which he said:

He suffered defeats that would have ended most political careers, yet he won stunning victories that many of the world's most popular leaders have failed to attain.

CROSS-REFERENCES: Jaworski, Leon; Mitchell, John Newton.

Quotes:

"The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire."

"Defeat doesn't finish a man -- quit does. A man is not finished when he's defeated. He's finished when he quits."

"Life isn't meant to be easy. It's hard to take being on the top -- or on the bottom. I guess I'm something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things. Life is one crisis after another."

"Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion."

"Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain."

"People react to fear, not love --they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true."

See more famous quotes by Richard M. Nixon