DETROIT – Back in 1983, I got an excited call from a secretary at the newspaper where I was working. Richard Nixon, she said, had sent me a package and a letter.
I wondered which of my crazy friends were behind this, and worried about what I might find inside. But it really was to me, from the first President in American history ever to resign.
Though it was typed, he had written out my name and signed it. “In view of the current national debate on foreign policy issues, I thought you might like to have a copy of the page proofs of a book on Soviet-American relations which I have just completed.”
He was sending this to “a selected number of government officials and opinion leaders in the United States who have expressed a serious interest in East-West issues.”
I was surprised by this; while I had written about arms control policy and covered international economic summits, I didn’t see myself as an “opinion leader.” But a year before, I had favorably reviewed a book Nixon had written called Leaders. It consisted of short sketches of some of the many statesmen he had known, from Nikita Khrushchev to Golda Meir, plus observations on leadership.
I thought it was well worth reading and said so. Alas, I didn’t think much of the new book, Real Peace, which I thought a standard hawkish Cold War rant, and so I fell off the opinion leader roster.
Years later, Nixon began having dinners for groups of reporters too young to have covered Watergate, and I asked that my name be put on the list. But he had a stroke and died in 1994 before my turn.
So I never met him, though I saw him in person several times, and intensely followed his complex career. In recent weeks, as the Trump administration imploded and there were calls to force him, too, to resign, there were inevitable comparisons.
Well, I know a lot about both men, but particularly the political career and presidency of Richard M. Nixon, and think it important to say this: Though both were deeply flawed, they were nothing alike.
Ask someone if they know the name of the President who started the Environmental Protection Agency; who signed into law the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, and who signed the most far-reaching arms control treaties with the Soviet Union.
Which President ended the military draft, pulled American combat troops out of Vietnam (even if far too late) and lowered tensions and began diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China? Which President strongly backed revenue sharing with local governments and pushed for more student loans?
Richard Nixon did all those things, and more — and nearly managed to get through a welfare reform package that would have provided a guaranteed annual income for every American.
Donald Trump was perhaps the most inept President in modern times at getting legislation approved. Nixon had success even though his Republicans never controlled either house of Congress.
In foreign policy, apart perhaps from supporting some successful moves by Israel, Trump was an unmitigated disaster. Nixon was seen as especially brilliant, especially at managing Russia and China. There was a dark side there too, of course.
Thousands of Americans and far more Vietnamese died needlessly before Nixon ended the Viet Nam War under terms he could have gotten long before.
Less than a year after he resigned, South Vietnam totally collapsed. For the first time in history, the United States had lost a war in which 58,000 Americans died and many more were physically and psychologically scarred for life, ultimately for nothing.
His administration helped overthrow a legally elected government in Chile, and did little to win over developing countries.
Ironically, though Nixon thought of himself as a whiz at foreign policy, it is his domestic accomplishments that look better today.
Richard Nixon and Donald Trump were vastly different personalities. Nixon was an introvert who read widely and who, unlike most politicians, really did not like people.
Both did have one thing in common – they destroyed themselves. Nixon’s crippling paranoia led him to distrust everyone, and he found it impossible to confide in anyone. Many people found the charges in Watergate impossible to believe because the very act made no sense. Why bug the Democratic National Headquarters?
Nixon was clearly headed for a solid reelection victory when that happened on June 17, 1972. Had they been successful, the Watergate phone taps would have revealed little more than Democrats begging donors for money they did not want to give.
There was another important difference, too. Richard Nixon never challenged the basic legitimacy of the system. The election he lost in 1960 was far closer than Donald Trump’s loss, and there was genuine evidence of fraud in two key states.
Nixon grumbled, but rejected calls to challenge the results, saying a disputed election would be bad for the nation.
Stephen Ambrose, the great American historian, began his career filled with contempt for Nixon. He actually quit a teaching job at Kansas State University to protest a visit by Nixon in 1970.
But he changed his mind. He later spent years writing a three-volume biography of Richard Nixon, and somewhat to his own surprise, concluded that while he was by no means a great leader, “when Nixon resigned, we lost more than we gained.”
Try to imagine a historian saying that about Donald Trump.
-30-
