Colman: NIXON’S THE ONE

In 1960 I walked precincts for Nixon for President.  In 1962 I was on the Nixon for Governors Speakers Bureau.  Then in 1968, right after Labor Day, I became California Youth Chair for Nixon.  In 1970 President Nixon appointed me to the White House conference on Youth.  Then a year later Governor Reagan and President Nixon appointed me to the Youth Advisory Commission on Selective Service.  I have a long history of being a Nixon supporter/

That does not mean I always agreed with him.  His implementing price controls gave us, a few years later a Recession and inflation.  His trip to China normalized our relation with that totalitarian nation.  Congressman John Schmitz had the most interesting quote on this:  “I have no problem with him going to China, just a problem with him coming back”.  Schmitz ran against Nixon for President in 1972.

He was a complex man—and his campaigns for Congress, Senate and President created a lot of what we call modern day campaigning and strategies.  Well worth studying.

NIXON’S THE ONE

By Richard Colman, Exclusive to the California Political News and Views,  8/9/24

www.capoliticalnewsandviews.com

In a remarkable and unprecedented speech, Richard Nixon resigned his presidency, effective August 9, 1974.

Nixon was the first and only president in American history to resign.  He was a Republican.

Now, 50 years later, what can we say about Nixon?

Nixon was an intelligent man.  He was a brilliant student in high school, college, and law school.  He also had a dark side.  He was a scoundrel and a crook.  He was a Republican senator from California in the 1950’s.

Nixon, who lived from 1913 to 1994, came from a low-income family in Southern California.  In 1952 and 1956, he was elected vice president on both of Dwight Eisenhower’s presidential tickets.

In 1960, Nixon lost the presidency narrowly to Senator John Kennedy (D-Massachusetts).

In an astonishing comeback, Nixon was elected president, again narrowly, in 1968.  His opponents in 1968 were Vice President Hubert Humphrey (D-Minnesota) and George Wallace, the segregationist politician from Alabama.  Wallace was a Democratic governor of Alabama in the 1960’s and beyond.

In his Republican presidential acceptance speech in Miami in August 1968, Nixon gave a memorable address.  At the time, America had been at war in Vietnam.  By 1968, over 500,000 American troops were stationed in Vietnam.

In his acceptance speech, Nixon said:  “When the strongest nation in the world can be tied up for four years in a war in Vietnam with no end in sight, when the richest nation in the world can’t manage its own economy, when the nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is plagued by unprecedented lawlessness, when a nation that has been known for a century for equality of opportunity is torn by unprecedented racial violence, and when the President of the United States cannot travel abroad or to any major city at home without fear of a hostile demonstration — then it’s time for new leadership for the United States of America.”

During his first term as president, Nixon increased the bombing of North Vietnam and began to withdraw America troops from Vietnam.

In October 1972, just before Nixon’s bid for a second term as president, Nixon’s national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, announced, “ . . . peace is at hand” in Vietnam.  Kissinger had been negotiating with America’s Vietnam adversaries.

Actually, the war in Vietnam resumed after Kissinger’s October 1972 statement, but in January 1973 the war did end.  In the ensuing months, American prisoners of war who were held in North Vietnam began to come home.

In the 1972 election, Nixon won 49 states, losing only Massachusetts to South Dakota Senator George McGovern, a Democrat.

But there was more to 1972.  On June 17, 1972, burglars were arrested in Washington, D.C.’s Watergate complex, where the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had its headquarters.  The burglars had connections to White House operatives.  Before being caught, the burglars had entered the DNC’s offices.

Nixon denied any connections to Watergate.  But reporting by the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein revealed that there was a connection between the Watergate break-in and the White House.  Woodward and Bernstein disclosed their reporting in a book, “All the President’s Men.”  Later, the book was made into a movie with the same title.  Playing  Woodward was Robert Redford, and playing Bernstein was Dustin Hoffman.

In 1973, the U.S. Senate held hearings on the Watergate affair.  At the hearings, a Nixon aide disclosed that Nixon had installed a secret audio-taping system and recorded White House conversations, including telephone conversations.

But there was more to 1972 than Watergate.  In February 1972, Nixon made a trip to China, the first official China-America connection since the Chinese Communist Party took over the Chinese mainland in October 1949.  Nixon’s China visit was an astounding turn-around for Nixon, who had been, while a California senator in the 1950’s, a staunch anti-communist.

While in China, the Chinese government along with Nixon and Kissinger, signed the Shanghai Communique.  According to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, the communique, “ . . . included “ . . . wishes of a peaceful coexistence and to expand the economic and cultural contacts through bilateral trade. . .”  

It is worth noting that, in 1969, there were armed border clashes between China and the Soviet Union.

But Nixon was not done with his foreign-policy activities.  In May 1972, Nixon became the first American president to visit the Kremlin in Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union.

While in Moscow, Nixon and Kissinger met with Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.  The Moscow meeting, according to Wikipedia, “ . . . featured the signing of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (Salt I), and the U.D.-Soviet Incidents at Sea agreement.”

According to Wikipedia, the Moscow summit is “ . . . considered one of the hallmarks of the détente [a relaxation of tensions] at the time between the Cold War antagonists.”

By visiting both China and the Soviet Union, Nixon could claim that he had established a new world order.  Some people hailed Nixon as a great peace-maker.

By 1973-74, Nixon’s political strength in America was unraveling.  The White House tapes made clear that Nixon was involved in the cover-up of the Watergate matter.

Sensing impeachment and conviction by Congress, Nixon, in an August 8, 1974, speech announced his resignation as president.  The resignation took effect at noon on the following day.

Nixon’s demise ended one of the most memorable, historic, and tragic chapters in American history.  Now, 50 years later, Nixon still fascinates Americans (and others) about a man who achieved enormous accomplishments in world history and whose political career ended in disgrace.