Encyclopedia
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th
President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. He was the only American President to have resigned from office. His resignation came in the face of imminent
impeachment related to the
Watergate scandal, which encompassed numerous crimes and misconduct beginning with the
Watergate first break-in, the follow-up burglary, and the cover-up. He was also the 36th
Vice President , serving under
Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nixon is the only American to have been elected twice to the Vice Presidency and twice to the Presidency, and is given credit for redefining the office of Vice President, making it for the first time a highly visible platform and base for a presidential candidacy.
Nixon is noted for his diplomatic accomplishments in foreign policy, especially
détente with the
Soviet Union and
China, and ending American involvement in the
Vietnam War. He is also noted for his middle-of-the-road domestic policy that combined conservative rhetoric and, in many cases, liberal action, as in his civil rights, environmental and price control policies.
As President, Nixon imposed wage and price controls, indexed Social Security for inflation, and created Supplemental Security Income . The number of pages added to the
Federal Register each year doubled under Nixon. He eradicated the last remnants of the
gold standard. Nixon created the
Environmental Protection Agency and
Occupational Safety and Health Administration , implemented the Philadelphia Plan, the first significant federal affirmative action program, and dramatically improved salaries for U.S. federal employees worldwide. As a party leader, Nixon helped build the
Republican Party , but he ran his 1972 campaign separately from the party, which perhaps helped the GOP escape some of the damage from Watergate. The Nixon White House was the first to organize a daily press event and daily message for the media, a practice that all subsequent staffs have performed.
Early years
Richard Nixon was born in Yorba Linda,
California to Francis A. Nixon and Hannah Milhous Nixon. He was raised by his mother as an evangelical
Quaker. His upbringing is said to have been marked by conservative evangelical Quaker observances such as refraining from drinking, dancing and swearing. His father was a former member of the Methodist Protestant Church who had sincerely converted to Quakerism but never fully absorbed its spirit, retaining instead a volatile temper. Richard Nixon's great-grandfather George Nixon III had been killed at the
Battle of Gettysburg during the
American Civil War while serving in the 73rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry.
Nixon's parents had five children:
- Harold Samuel Nixon
- Richard Nixon
- Francis Donald Nixon
- Arthur Burdg Nixon
- Edward Calvert Nixon
Nixon attended Fullerton High School from 1926-1928 and Whittier High School from 1928-1930. He graduated first in his class; showing a penchant for
Shakespeare and
Latin. He declined a full-tuition scholarship to
Harvard and attended
Whittier College, a local Quaker school where he co-founded the Orthogonian Society, a fraternity. Nixon was a formidable debater and was elected student body president. A lifelong
American football fan, Nixon practiced with the team assiduously but spent most of his time on the bench. In 1934, he graduated second in his class from Whittier and went on to
Duke University School of Law, where he received a full scholarship and excelled academically.
In 1937, Nixon returned to California, was admitted to the bar, and began working in the law office of a family friend in a nearby small-town. The work was mostly routine, and Nixon generally found it to be dull. He later wrote that family law cases caused him particular discomfort, since his reticent Quaker upbringing was severely at odds with the idea of discussing intimate marital details with strangers.
He met
Thelma "Pat" Ryan, a high school teacher; they were married on June 21, 1940. They had two daughters,
Tricia and Julie.
During
World War II, Nixon served as a reserve officer in the
Navy. He received his training at Quonset Point, Rhode Island, and
Ottumwa, Iowa, before serving in the supply corps on Nissen Island in the South Pacific commanding cargo handling units in SCAT. There he was known as "Nick" and for his prowess in poker, banking a large sum that helped finance his first campaign for
Congress.
House and Senate: 1946-1952
Nixon was elected to the
United States House of Representatives in 1946, defeating Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis for
California's 12th congressional district. Nixon's campaign alleged that his opponent's CIO PAC support showed that Voorhis was collaborating with Communist-controlled labor unions.
Nixon's first major breakthrough came in his two terms in Congress, where his dogged investigation on the
House Un-American Activities Committee broke the impasse of the
Alger Hiss spy case in 1948. Nixon believed
Whittaker Chambers, who alleged that Hiss, a high State Department official, was a Soviet spy. Nixon discovered that Chambers had saved incriminating documents which were alleged both to be accessible only by Hiss, and to be typed on Hiss's personal typewriter. The discovery that Hiss, who had been an adviser to FDR, could have been a Soviet spy, thrust Nixon into the public eye and made him the hero to FDR's many enemies. In reality, his support for internationalism put him closer to the center of the Republican party, often closer to liberal Republicans than to conservatives.
In 1950, Nixon was elected to the
United States Senate over Congresswoman
Helen Gahagan Douglas. Accusing her of
Communist or fellow traveler sympathies, Nixon called her "the Pink Lady" and said she was "pink right down to her underwear." Gahagan, meanwhile, gave Nixon one of the most enduring nicknames in politics: "Tricky Dick."
Vice Presidency
In
1952, he was elected
Vice President on
Dwight D. Eisenhower's ticket. He was 39 years old.
In September 1952, during the campaign, The New York Post and other publications reported that Nixon had kept a business fund for personal use. Democrats and leading Republicans pressured Eisenhower to remove Nixon from the ticket. Nixon convinced Eisenhower to let him defend himself. Nixon went on TV on September 23 and defended himself in an emotional speech. He provided an independent third-party review of the fund's accounting along with a personal summary of his finances, which he cited as exonerating him from wrongdoing, and he charged that the Democratic Presidential candidate,
Adlai Stevenson, also had a slush fund. This speech would, however, become better known for its rhetoric, such as when he stated that his wife Pat did not wear mink, but rather "a respectable Republican cloth coat," and that although he had been given a
cocker spaniel named "Checkers" in addition to his other campaign contributions, he was not going to give it back because his daughters loved it. As a result, this speech became known as the "Checkers speech." At the end of the broadcast, Nixon intended to appeal to viewers to write to the Republican National Committee to voice their support or opposition. Although the broadcast was cut off before he could make this appeal, his speech resulted in a flood of support, prompting Eisenhower to keep Nixon on the ticket.
Nixon greatly expanded the office of Vice President. Although he had no formal power he had the attention of the media and the Republican party. He demonstrated that the office could be a springboard to the
White House as it had not been since the 19th century; most Vice Presidents since have followed his lead and sought the presidency. Nixon was the first Vice President to step in to temporarily run the government. He did so three times when Eisenhower was ill: on the occasions of Eisenhower's
heart attack on September 24 1955; his ileitis in June 1956; and his stroke on November 25 1957. Despite this, Nixon was forced to announce his own inclusion on the 1956 Eisenhower re-election campaign, which highlighted the lack of rapport he and Eisenhower shared. Nixon's quick thinking was on display on July 24 1959, at the opening of the American National Exhibition in
Moscow where he and
Soviet leader
Nikita Khrushchev had an impromptu "
kitchen debate" about the merits of
capitalism versus
communism.
1960 election and post-Vice Presidency
In
1960, he ran for President against
John F. Kennedy. The race was very close all year long. Nixon campaigned on his experience, but Kennedy said it was time for new blood and suggested the Eisenhower-Nixon administration had allowed the Soviet Union to make gains in the arms race. Kennedy also made much of the stagnant American economy of 1960, telling voters it was time to "get the country moving again." It also did not help that when Eisenhower was asked about major policy decisions that Nixon had helped make, the president responded: "Give me a week and I might think of one." In the first of four televised debates, Kennedy not only looked better physically, he also came off as polished, articulate, and mature. The performance dispelled many people's worries that the young senator was too inexperienced to be president. Nixon, for his part, was recovering from an illness and, with the stubble on his face visible, looked unimpressive. Nixon lost the 1960 election narrowly. There were charges of vote fraud in Texas and Illinois, and Nixon and the Republican National committee challenged the results in both states as well as nine others. All of these challenges failed. The Kennedy camp challenged Nixon's victory in Hawaii. That challenge succeeded, and after all the court battles and recounts were done, Kennedy had gained a greater number of electoral votes than he had held after Election Day.
Nixon wrote
Six Crises , a book dealing with his political involvement as a congressman, senator and as Vice-President. The book used six different crises Nixon had experienced throughout his political career to illustrate his political memoirs. The book was not supposed to be an academic work on the subject of crises, rather a method of depicting his political biography in a personal manner. The book won praise from many policy experts and critics.
In 1962, Nixon suffered another defeat, this time in a race for
Governor of California. Years of campaigning and losing had worn Nixon down. In his concession speech, Nixon blamed the media for favoring his opponent
Pat Brown and stated that it was his "last press conference" and that "you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore." In just another 12 months though, John Kennedy would be assassinated in Dallas, Texas. The events that define the tumultuous 1960s were beginning, and before the decade closed a "New Nixon," one who was "tanned, rested, and ready," would win the Presidency in another close election.
1968 election
Nixon moved to
New York City where he became a senior partner in the leading law firm, Nixon Mudge Rose Guthrie & Alexander. During the
1966 Congressional elections, he stumped the country in support of Republican candidates, rebuilding his base in the party. In the
election of 1968, he completed a remarkable political comeback by taking the nomination. Nixon appealed to what he called the "silent majority" of socially conservative Americans who disliked the
hippie counterculture and
anti-war demonstrators. Nixon promised peace with honor, and, though never claiming to be able to win the war, Nixon did say that "new leadership will end the war and win the peace in the
Pacific". He did not explain in detail his plans to end the
war in Vietnam, causing Democratic nominee
Hubert H. Humphrey to allege that he must have had some "secret plan." Nixon didn't invent the phrase, but because he did not disavow the term, it soon became part of the campaign. In his memoirs, Nixon wrote that he actually had no such plan. He eventually defeated Humphrey and independent candidate
George Wallace to become the 37th President of the United States.
The Nixon Presidency
Foreign policies
Vietnam War
Once in office, he proposed the Nixon Doctrine to establish a strategy of turning over the fighting of the war to the Vietnamese. In July 1969, he visited
South Vietnam, and met with President
Nguyen Van Thieu and with U.S. military commanders. American involvement in the war declined steadily until all American troops were gone in 1973. After the withdrawal of U.S. troops, fighting was left to the South Vietnamese army. Although well supplied with modern arms, inadequate funding, low morale, and corruption called their fighting capability into question. The lack of funding was primarily because of large funding cutbacks by the
U.S. Congress. Nixon was widely praised in the United States for having delivered 'peace with honor', and ended American involvement in the war in Vietnam. However a part of his strategy was the resumption of the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam should the DRV violate the Peace agreement, which he was confident they would.
Watergate, however, made it impossible to carry this out. Nixon, along with his National Security Advisor
Henry Kissinger also sought a 'decent interval' solution to the problem of
South Vietnam, so that that country would survive for long enough for him not to be personally blamed for its ultimate collapse.
Nixon ordered secret bombing campaigns in
Cambodia in March 1969 to destroy what was believed to be the headquarters of the
National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam, and later escalated the conflict with secretly bombing Laos before Congress cut the funding for the conflict in Vietnam.
In ordering the bombings, Nixon realized he would be extending an unpopular war as well as breaching Cambodia's stated neutrality. During deliberations over Nixon's
impeachment, his unorthodox use of executive powers in ordering the bombings was considered as an article of impeachment, but the charge was dropped as not a violation of Constitutional powers.
China and Soviet Union
Relations between the Western and Eastern power blocs changed dramatically in the early 1970s. In 1960, the
People's Republic of China ended the alliance with its biggest ally, the
Soviet Union, in the
Sino-Soviet Split. As tension between the two communist nations reached its peak in 1969 and 1970, Nixon, with significant, strategic aid from
Henry Kissinger, decided to use their conflict to shift the balance of power towards the West in the Cold War. In what later would be known as the "China Card", the Nixon administration deliberately improved relations with China in order to gain a strategic advantage over the Soviet Union, but also gave Moscow a chance to improve relations so as not to be squeezed by a US-China détente. In 1971, a move was made to improve relations when China invited an American table tennis team to China; hence the term "
Ping Pong Diplomacy". In October 1971,
The People's Republic of China entered the
United Nations. Nixon sent
Henry Kissinger on a secret mission to China in July 1971, and in 1972 Nixon stunned the world by himself going
to China to negotiate directly with Mao. Fearing the possibility of a Sino-American alliance, the Soviet Union yielded to American pressure for
détente.
Nixon then turned to the topic of nuclear peace. The first
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks were finally concluded the same year with the
SALT I treaty. To win American friendship both China and the Soviet Union cut back on their diplomatic support for North Vietnam and advised Hanoi to come to terms. They did not, however, cut back their military aid to North Vietnam - in fact Chinese military aid to North Vietnam increased during this period. Nixon later explained his strategy:
- I had long believed that an indispensable element of any successful peace initiative in Vietnam was to enlist, if possible, the help of the Soviets and the Chinese. Though rapprochement with China and détente with the Soviet Union were ends in themselves, I also considered them possible means to hasten the end of the war. At worst, Hanoi was bound to feel less confident if Washington was dealing with Moscow and Beijing. At best, if the two major Communist powers decided that they had bigger fish to fry, Hanoi would be pressured into negotiating a settlement we could accept.
Other wars and threats
Nixon strongly supported General
Yahya Khan of
Pakistan during the
Indo-Pakistan War of 1971 despite widespread human rights violations against the
Bengalis by the
Pakistan Army. Though Nixon claimed that his objective was to prevent a war, safeguard Pakistan's interests including the issue of refugees, all the while trying to maintain the channel of diplomacy with China via its ally Pakistan, in practice it turned out the other way. President Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger downplayed reports of Pakistani genocide in East Pakistan and risked a confrontation with Moscow to look tough. Many, including Kissinger, have mentioned that the foreign policy "tilt" towards Pakistan had more to do with Nixon's personal like for the dictator and the support to Pakistan was influenced by sentimental considerations and a long standing anti-Indian bias. Meanwhile, India's signing of a mutual security treaty with the Soviet Union in the middle of the crisis heightened tensions in Washington. The Nixon administration was also responsible for illegally providing military supplies to
Pakistani Military despite Congress' objections to the same, and against American public opinion which was concerned with the atrocities against East Pakistanis. His decision to help West Pakistan in a war at any cost prompted him to send the nuclear weapons equipped USS Enterprise to the
Indian Ocean to try to threaten the
Indian Military. Though it did little to turn the tide of war, it has been viewed as the trigger for India's subsequent
nuclear program. He was also vocal in abusing the Prime Minister of India
Indira Gandhi as an "old
witch" in private conversations with Henry Kissinger, who is also recorded as making derogatory comments against Indians. Ultimately Nixon's foreign policy initiatives in this matter largely failed as his attempts to maintain an unbroken China connection was at the cost of dismembering its own ally, Pakistan, which felt that once again United States had fallen short as an ally. The Nixon administration was also unable to prevent the war as
Bangladesh became independent the same year.
Nixon supported Augusto Pinochet's overthrow of the
socialist government of Chile in 1973, but did not instigate the coup. A U.S. intelligence base in
Panama Canal coordinated the acts of the various Latin American secret services, such as
DINA and Dirección de los Servicios de Inteligencia y Prevención.
Israel, a powerful but unofficial American ally in the
Middle East was supported by the Nixon administration during the
Yom Kippur War. When an Arab coalition led by
Egypt and
Syria --allies to the Soviets--attacked in October 1973, Israel defeated them, after initial losses. By the time the U.S. and the Soviet Union then negotiated a truce, Israel had penetrated deep into enemy territory. A long term effect was the movement of Egypt away from the Soviets toward the U.S. But the victory for its ally and the support provided to them by the US came at the cost of the
1973 oil crisis. Some historians have argued that throughout the war, Nixon's handling of the 1973 oil crisis demonstrated that neither he nor Kissinger could truly grasp the importance of economic factors.
Domestic policies
He established the
Environmental Protection Agency on December 2, 1970.
On July 20 1969, Nixon addressed
Neil Armstrong and
Buzz Aldrin live via radio during their historic moonwalk. Nixon also made the world's longest distance phone call to Neil Armstrong on the moon. On January 5, 1972, Nixon approved the development of the
Space Shuttle program, a decision that profoundly influenced U.S. efforts to explore and develop space for several decades thereafter.
On January 2, 1974, Nixon signed a bill that lowered the maximum U.S.
speed limit to 55 miles per hour in order to conserve
gasoline during the
1973 energy crisis. This law remained in effect until 1995.
Committed to wide-ranging bureaucratic reforms, in a last-minute bid to save his presidency Nixon signed a significant reform of the federal budgeting process and granted wide authority to Congress in shaping the final budget.
School integration
The Nixon years saw the first large-scale integration of public schools in the South, after the region had stalled in compliance with the 1954 Supreme Court's Brown ruling. Strategically Nixon sought a middle way between the segregationist
George C. Wallace and liberal Democrats, whose support of integration was alienating white ethnics. Nixon concentrated on the principle that the law must be color-blind. "I am convinced that while legal segregation is totally wrong, forced integration of housing or education is just as wrong.". Though Nixon thought of appealing to southern whites by slowing school desegregation, he decided to enforce the law after the Supreme Court, in Alexander v. Holmes County , prohibited further delays. Nixon's Cabinet committee on school desegregation, under the leadership of Labor Secretary
George P. Schultz, quietly set up local biracial committees to assure smooth compliance without violence or political grandstanding. By fall of 1970, two million southern black children enrolled in newly created unitary fully integrated school districts. "In this sense, Nixon was the greatest school desegregator in American history," historian Kotlowski concludes. . In the North, meanwhile, the Brown decision did not apply directly but in city after city federal Judges started ordering busing programs to integrate schools, a policy Nixon opposed.
Landslide reelection
In
1972, Nixon was re-elected in one of the biggest landslide election victories in U.S. political history, defeating
George McGovern and garnering over 60% of the popular vote. He carried 49 of the 50 states, losing only in
Massachusetts.
Major initiatives
