Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States from 1969 until 1974, when he resigned from office, the only U. S. president to do so. He had previously served as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, and prior to that as a U. S. Representative and also Senator from California.
Background
Richard Milhous Nixon was born on January 9, 1913 in Yorba Linda, California, in a house that was built by his father. Nixon's father ran a grocery store in Whittier. His mother's family were Quakers; his Methodist father adopted the Quaker religion after his marriage.
Nixon's upbringing was marked by evangelical Quaker observances of the time, such as refraining from alcohol, dancing, and swearing.
His early life was marked by hardship, and he later quoted a saying of Eisenhower to describe his boyhood: "We were poor, but the glory of it was we didn't know it".
Education
Firstly young Richard attended East Whittier Elementary School, where he was president of his eighth-grade class. But soon Richard's parens sent him to the larger Fullerton Union High School. He played junior varsity football, and seldom missed a practice, even though he was rarely used in games. He had greater success as a debater.
In 1928 his parents permitted Richard to transfer to Whittier High School for his junior year.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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 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.
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. While his defense saved his candidacy and made him even better known, this controversy also left a bitter residue.
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.
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.
In 1960 Nixon won the Republican presidential nomination and chose Henry Cabot Lodge, ambassador to the United Nations, as his running mate. 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."
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. Nixon took the oath of office on January 20, 1969.
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.
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.
Nixon became the first President to give Native Americans the right to tribal self-determination by ending the policy of forced assimilation and returning their sacred lands. The most significant achievement credited to him during the first term of presidency is a ceasefire with Vietnam and ending of the long time war between the two countries. Richard Nixon is the longest serving individual to have held the nation?s two highest executive posts of President and Vice- President in American history. He became the only president to ever resign from the office in 1974, when he left the position in the face of inevitable impeachment in the widely condemned Watergate scandal.
In 1995, film director Oliver Stone released the contorversial movie "Nixon," staring Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins in the title role.
Quaker is a surprising religion for Nixon. It teaches its followers to not drink or dance or swear, for one. But its quite liberal in a number of ways, such as allowing women to hold offices of influence in the church and, perhaps most famously, being radically pacifist.
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."
Politics
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.
Views
Quotations:
"Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain".
"A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits".
Personality
The Nixon personality has become the subject of extensive psychology inquiry. In Nixon vs. Nixon (1977), Dr. David Abrahamsen, a psychoanalyst, described him as a man torn by inner conflict, lonely, hypersensitive, narcissistic, suspicious, and secretive. In In Search of Nixon (1972), Bruce Mazlish, a historian trained in psychoanalysis, concluded that the predominant characteristic of the “real” Nixon behind the public figure was a fear of passivity, of appearing soft, of being dependent on others. In Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character (1981), historian Fawn Brodie painstakingly sought to demonstrate that he was a compulsive liar and concluded: “Nixon lied to gain love, to shore up his grandiose fantasies, to bolster his ever-wavering sense of identity. He lied in attack, hoping to win… And always he lied, and this most aggressively, to deny that he lied.”
Physical Characteristics:
Nixon was 5 feet 11.5 inches tall and weighed 175 pounds. He had brown wavy hair, brown eyes guarded closely by thick eyebrows, a prominent ski nose, sagging jowls, and a slightly protruding jaw. From childhood he suffered from motion sickness and hay fever. Near the end of his term as president, he developed phlebitis in the leg. Nixon dressed conservatively, typically in dark suits.
Quotes from others about the person
“He’s [Nixon] like a Spanish horse, who runs faster than anyone for the first nine lengths and then turns around and runs backwards. You’ll see; he’ll do something wrong in the end. He always does.”
― Lyndon B. Johnson
“Nixon is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood and then mount the stump to make a speech for conservation.”
― Adlai Ewing Stevenson
Interests
Nixon could play five musical instruments.
Nixon’s mother insisted he practice on the family’s upright piano every afternoon, and in the seventh grade he was sent 200 miles away to take lessons with his aunt, who had studied at the Indianapolis Conservatory of Music. Although he never learned to read music, Nixon could also play the saxophone, clarinet, accordion and violin. His musical talents turned ot to be political assets: Nixon’s 1963 appearance on “The Jack Paar Program, ” during which he played a tune he wrote, helped rehabilitate his image after losing the California gubernatorial election the prior year. As president, he occasionally tickled the ivories, playing “Happy Birthday” for Duke Ellington at the White House and “My Wild Irish Rose” in honor of his wife at the Grand Ole Opry.
One of Nixon’s favorite pastimes in the White House was bowling. He’d even bowl a few frames dressed in his suit. In addition to using the alley in the adjacent Old Executive Office Building, Nixon had another one-lane alley built in the basement beneath the North Portico entrance to the White House.
Sport & Clubs
Nixon was a huge football fan.
Nixon played on the Whittier College football team and, while president, struck up a friendship with George Allen, coach of the National Football League’s Washington Redskins. Allen invited the president to address the team in 1971, and legend has it that Allen used a play—a wide-receiver reverse—that Nixon had suggested for a playoff game that year. The play was a disaster, a 13-yard loss that stymied a critical scoring drive and contributed to Washington’s loss.
Connections
In January 1938, Nixon was cast in the Whittier Community Players production of The Dark Tower. There he played opposite a high school teacher named Thelma "Pat" Ryan. Nixon described it in his memoirs as "a case of love at first sight" —for Nixon only, as Pat Ryan turned down the young lawyer several times before agreeing to date him. Once they began their courtship, Ryan was reluctant to marry Nixon; they dated for two years before she assented to his proposal. They wed in a small ceremony on June 21, 1940. After a honeymoon in Mexico, the Nixons began their married life in Whittier. They had two daughters, Tricia (born 1946) and Julie (born 1948).
Father:
Francis Anthony Nixon
He was an American businessman.
Mother:
Hannah Milhous Nixon
Richard Nixon described his mother as "a Quaker saint."
Wife:
Thelma Catherine "Pat" Nixon
Nixon met his future wife while both were trying out for an amateur play, and the couple was married June 21, 1940.
Daughter:
Julie Nixon Eisenhower
Throughout the Nixon administration (1969 to 1974), Julie worked as Assistant Managing Editor of The Saturday Evening Post while holding the unofficial title of "First Daughter."
Daughter:
Tricia Nixon Cox
In her father's public career, Cox performed a ceremonial role, in contrast to her younger sister Julie Nixon Eisenhower’s more political involvement.
Brother:
Edward Nixon
He is an American entrepreneur and the youngest and last surviving brother of former United States President Richard Nixon.
