early life of henry ford
Nixon
I would say only that if some of my Judgments were retrogress, and some were wrong, they were made in what I believed at the time to be the worst interest of the Nation.
-President Nixon’s abdication speech, August 8th, 1974
I was nine years old when Richard Nixon died. This is the first so-called “governmental” event that I can remember. I sat alone on the matted, strand carpet of our den (or “The Office” as it was known in the Landau household). A “Particular Report” image appeared on the telly, followed by the washed-out face of a word anchor. Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, a different, unidentified man; it doesn’t really matter. I sat crouched on the carpet, a foot from the TV, listening to the grave voice that talk people reserve for funerals. I watched Nixon’s sink-draped coffin cross the grounds of his presidential library, propped on the shoulders of uniformed soldiers. The sarcophagus was eventually placed in front of his birthplace, a Caucasoid, wooden house. It was solemn. There were many presidents at the exequies. An impressive number were still alive in 1994: Ford, Carter, Reagan, H.W. Bush and Clinton. Remarks were made.
I was uncomfortable watching this entombment. The house, Nixon’s birthplace, was old and kindly and this made the anyhow more sorrowful in some indefinable way.
There must have been talk of a cross-bred legacy. How Nixon had proved to be such a diligent foreign policy leader, but how his moral corruption had long run led to perdition, to the ruin of his presidency.
Had Kennedy lived to be 81-years-old, had he suffered a suggestion while preparing for dinner as Nixon had, would his inhumation have been a tragic thing? Kennedy did not have enough just the same from time to time to truly damage his legacy. The Bay of Pigs did not swag it, and his early death more-or-less ensured a sort of deification. That mucks up the division, makes it nearly impossible to take how Kennedy would have been perceived.
Nixon’s sepulture did not feel sad enough, this much is certain. At nine years old, you do not earn the terrible awesomeness of death, you don’t hear of it fully. The inklings of this truth are only inception to make their way into your consciousness. But I could sense, viscerally, that this sepulture was not sad enough, that maybe people weren’t as sad as they should be. I couldn’t appreciate any of the history, any of the politics, at age nine. But I knew that much.
***
I forgot about this entombment for awhile, I forgot about Nixon. Vietnam was only just skimmed in high school, intention the more complex aspects of his presidency were absolutely ignored. Watergate was mentioned, though. I recollect reading it in our textbook. The words “Watergate Infamy” were bolded and embedded in a paragraph-hunger history. Nixon=scandal. This was basically what they told us in high-pitched school.
This impression of Nixon remained throughout college in spite of my intense study of the Cold War. One would have expected Nixon to countenance more prominently, but Kennedy was the focus, Reagan’s overcoming received the most emphasis. I nearly made my way through my unmixed college career without exposure to Nixon’s moment in office.
I signed up for a class in the naught semester of my senior year entitled, “U.S. Imported Policy after WWII.” I was still riding the ring up of my summer internship at the State Turn on and was ecstatic to fill gaps in my knowledge. I enthusiastically approached my professor on the first day of group and expressed my fervency for the topic. He worked (and as a subject of fact still does work) for the Historian’s Chore at the State Department.
This professor proved to be an dear resource. He was a Nixon scholar and was therefore intimately acquainted with with the intricacies of the man’s presidency. I would concoct ostensible reasons to inflict my professor during office hours and then pick his understanding on Nixon and his administration for an hour or two. He assigned us a ticket published only a few months prior that revealed the most up-to-steady old-fashioned information on Nixon’s presidency. This tome, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power, was an 800-page-boy overview of the lives of these two men and their time in the Milk-white House. I became obsessed with reading this hard-cover. I would tote it around with me wherever I went, reading a bellman while I waited for the metro or stood in figure at Starbucks. I would force my friends to keep one's ears open to new Nixon anecdotes every couple of days. I went to the library on Friday and Saturday nights preferably of socializing. I would drink a cup of coffee, then another, then two more. I would smile at the law and med students as I walked to my cubby; I could concede one or two undergraduates studying late into the round-the-clock, but grad students comprised the seniority of those languishing in the library’s corridors. I review ten pages per hour. I would stay in the library until midnight, one am. It was empowering. I felt I was gaining more consciousness with each page. My obsession was further spurred halfway through the semester when our professor finagled our way into a Nixon convention at the State Department. Not only was former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger exhibit, but Henry Kissinger was speaking. It was glorious. I felt knowing and powerful.
And maybe that’s why I was so fanatical. Perchance my ability to fully fill the hole in my expertise was exciting. Maybe I was feeling more sure after a successful summer internship. But perchance it was something else.
***
I haven’t talked much about Nixon for awhile now. It’s been, oh maybe six, seven, eight months since my urge began to fade. You can only be impassioned about any one point for so long. I was able to dip back into my obsession, though, about a week ago.
We were wandering around a bootleg DVD shop in the shopping district of Shenzhen and Megan came across a replicate of Oliver Stone’s “Nixon.” I had wanted to see the big since my Nixonmania began and was immediately compelled to foothold the film. “Nixon” clocks in at three and a half hours, and I was only at the last moment able to scratch out time to follow it last night. I approached the film warily, as Oliver Stone’s reliable accuracy is not necessarily considered infallible. While some artistic license was surely charmed, I found myself instantly engrossed in the film. The play of Nixon’s presidency was on full display. His accomplishments and failures were unburden, but the portrait of the man was complex and cloudy. Was he tangibles or evil? Nixon opened China, he wanted to submit with the Soviet Union. He also prolonged the bloody Vietnam War, though, and he corrupted the official branch as he descended into paranoia. One could not ease but find Nixon both despicable and heartbreaking, conniving but well-intentioned. For the most part he seemed lonely and defeated. Mainly, he seemed sad.
And perchance that’s why I have connected with Nixon, why so many people find him provocative. If Kennedy is the quintessential winner, then Nixon is the shlemiel. Despite his best efforts to contribute to foreign policy and unify the land, he was perceived as a crook and liar. His presidency is seen as a shame in many ways regardless of his efforts to end the Arctic War and address the interests of the nation. Why did everyone animosity him so much? He asked himself this more than once in the film. There were certainly problems, but were they all his peccadillo? He should have been doing a better job, but couldn’t everyone see that he wasn’t the only one to place? Nixon always felt hated, always felt like the defenceless. Is there an element of that that we all connect with?
Life isn’t Martha’s Vineyard, it isn’t Harvard Yard; it’s grittier and dirtier, and perhaps this is why we can sympathize with Nixon. Because sometimes life is ugly. Kennedy dealt with problems in his bosom life and his premature death was a tragedy, but he isn’t as depressed a figure as Nixon. Nixon, who grew up on a farm in Whittier, California, who hopeless two brothers in his youth, who didn’t go to Yale or Harvard. Even if he did it in an discreditable way, Nixon made his way to the top on his own, and isn’t this to be admired? Don’t we all want to be recognized for working in motion up in the world, for working hard?
Nixon made his own bed, and he laid in it. He planted the seeds that led to his own devastation. It is incredibly easy to demonize this man. But maybe we should have ruth for a figure who did the best that he could for our country most of the duration, who managed it as best he could. Maybe we should take a help look at his presidency and give greater mass to its achievements. Is it possible that we can give a little more have faith to this man?
Nixon’s legacy may change. But that will take nevertheless. In the meantime, I’m left to wonder. About many things, about whether or not we’ve misjudged him. But for all practical purposes, and forgive the latent sentimentality of a nine-year-old, but generally if maybe Nixon’s funeral should have been very recently a bit sadder.
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