After the Fall

by Kasey S. Pipes

  Khachigian, the consummate wordsmith, thought that Nixon had just created a more elegant solution than any he could have offered. “Mr. President,” Khachighian said, “that’s exactly what you tell Frost.”10

  As the two gladiators returned to the arena and prepared to go at it again before the cameras, Nixon seemed more composed. Perhaps his brief conversation with Khachigian had helped clear his mind. He knew what Frost wanted. But he also knew how to handle the interviewer’s demands. Frost wanted him to say he was legally wrong; instead, Nixon would offer something less exciting, but more profound, to Frost. No, he wouldn’t say he was legally wrong. But he would say he had been morally wrong.

  With the cameras on, Frost continued to push for an apology. But Nixon, who had previously been on the defensive, now pushed back hard.

  “It snowballed and it was my fault,” Nixon responded. “I’m not blaming anybody else. I’m simply saying to you that, as far as I’m concerned, I not only regret it—I indicated my own beliefs in this matter when I resigned. People don’t think it was enough to admit mistakes, fine. If they want me to get down and grovel on the floor, no. Never, because I don’t believe I should.”11

  Nixon also told Frost that whether he was impeached or not was not important because “I have impeached myself.” When Frost pushed him on this, Nixon explained that he had impeached himself “by resigning.”

  At last the interviews came to an end. Frost had them edited within weeks, and the first episode ran May 4. It was a ratings sensation, generating enough viewers to make it the most-watched news broadcast ever up to that time. Some fifty-five million viewers saw the performance. And although a Gallup Poll showed that most Americans felt Nixon was guilty of obstruction of justice, another 44 percent felt more sympathetic to him than they had been before the interviews.

  For Nixon, there were no celebrations. He had done the interviews because he had to financially. But going over all the details of his downfall had proved to be an emotional ordeal. As he settled back into life at La Casa Pacifica, he was ready to return to some sense of normalcy. And that meant finishing the memoirs and starting to think about really stepping out into public. He had gone to China and he had appeared on American television in the Frost interviews. But he knew the time was coming when he would have to do more. With a book coming out, he would have the perfect opportunity.

  As is typical with any writing, the editing of the book was turning out to be a challenge. The publisher sent editor Robert Markel to San Clemente to review the material that had been written thus far and make recommendations. Markel thought the manuscript was becoming too long, but the Nixon staff resisted his suggestions.

  “If you are going to know any of it,” Frank Gannon said of Nixon's life story, “you have to know all of it.”

  Markel was unpersuaded. He told Gannon that it was important to tell the whole story but also to be “able to live it.”

  The issue was taken to Nixon. After hearing the arguments from both sides, he acknowledged that cutting material could leave only “the bones” of the story. But then he suggested that was fine, if it was the only way to do it.

  Markel made a second appearance in San Clemente in April. That meeting was largely social, but Nixon did manage to talk about his goals for the book.

  “I want people to read it,” he said in describing why it was so important for him that the book be well written. “I want them to understand.”12

  To make the book more readable, Markel enlisted the help of a New York editor ironically named David Frost (Nixon took to calling him the “good” David Frost) and another editor, Nancy Brooks, who was from Texas. The two flew to San Clemente that summer and began their work in earnest.

  The work went on through the rest of the summer and into the fall. The last remaining piece of the Nixon story to be resolved was what exactly he would say about Watergate.

  When Diane Sawyer brought Nixon an outline detailing all the events of Watergate, he read through it all. Then, looking up from the document, he said simply, “This is the first time I’ve really understood everything that happened.”

  The former president then began a torrent of dictation that would eventually lead to 250 pages of content. Continuing what he had begun in the Frost interviews—the admission of moral, if not legal, mistakes—Nixon confessed in his dictation: “Instead of exerting presidential leadership aimed at uncovering the cover-up, I embarked on an increasingly desperate search for ways to limit the damage to my friends.” While not enough of a concession for his critics, the statement was largely true: Nixon hadn’t been involved in any way in the break-ins, and when he learned about them his goal was to protect his staff.

  For his part, Markel generally liked the Watergate dictations. But he did feel like Nixon hadn’t said enough about the missing eighteen-and-a-half minutes of tape. In October, he met with the ex-president and urged him to say more about the tape. Working with Nancy Brooks, Nixon wrote that while “the only explanations that would be readily accepted” were that either he or his secretary, Rose Wood, had erased the tape, he was emphatic in denying both. “I know that I did not do it. And I completely believe Rose when she says she did not do it.”

  With that, the manuscript of the memoirs was completed. Markel had told Frost and Brooks that he wanted the writing done by September. “It must not, it cannot, it will not go longer than that,” he had implored in July. But even though the writing has stretched into October, Markel seemed pleased with the product.13

  So did Nixon. At a celebration of the book’s completion with his researchers, Nixon raised a glass for a toast: “To the book! And to the future!” he said after thanking them for their work.14

  As 1977 came to a close, Nixon had begun finally to come to terms with Watergate. In the Frost interview he had offered an emotional apology for his “moral mistakes” while staunchly denying any legal mistakes. Even the formulation of the phrase “impeached myself” was a way of taking the matter out of the legal realm and placing it into the realm of personal responsibility. And in the memoirs, while not accepting any role in the actual criminal cover-up, Nixon took responsibility for “covering up” for his friends. This was now the Nixon line on Watergate: he had failed personally, but he had not committed a crime. He had impeached and punished himself by resigning from office. And he had been too loyal in trying to protect his friends. This is the same line he would return to any time Watergate came up for the rest of his life.

  In a way, the Frost interviews and the memoirs had settled Watergate for Nixon. Now he was ready to move on. But a lingering question remained. Was the country ready to move on?

  As 1978 began, Nixon was about to find out.

  Chapter Seven

  The First Steps Back

  “You’ve come back and I’ve come back.”

  On January 9, 1978, Richard Nixon celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday. He was joined at Casa de Pacifica by his family. As typically happened on his birthdays, calls from well-wishers came in from around the country. But one in particular meant the most to him. From a hospital in Minnesota, Hubert Humphrey called to wish Nixon well on his birthday. The two men had long been friendly rivals. After Nixon narrowly won the 1968 election, he felt genuine empathy for the Democratic candidate. “Pat and I know the heartache you and Muriel must be going through,” he wrote to Humphrey in the days following the 1968 election, “to have come so close, then lost the biggest prize.” Four years later, when Humphrey came up short in his bid to win the Democratic nomination again, Nixon wrote to console him again: “As friendly opponents in the political arena, I hope that we can both serve our parties in a way that will serve the nation.” Nixon had always liked Humphrey; Humphrey had always respected Nixon.1

  Nixon’s birthday was not the first time the two men had spoken in recent months. On Christmas Eve, Humphrey had called La Casa Pacifica only to hear the voice of a discouraged Nixon on the line. Afterward, Humphrey, who was dying of cancer, told his family h
ow disturbing the conversation had been. He seemed genuinely worried about his old rival’s state of mind. He worried that Nixon was isolated and alone in California.

  “No former president should live in exile from the nation’s capital,” he told his wife when he hung up the phone.

  Humphrey was so worried that he had called Nixon again on Christmas Day. This time Humphrey called bearing gifts. He told Nixon that he only had a few days to live and said that when his body lay in state in the Capitol, he wanted Nixon to be there.

  “Dick, I’m not going to be around much longer,” he told Nixon. “There is going to be a memorial service for me in the Capitol Rotunda. I want you to attend that service.”2

  It was an extraordinary act of grace. Here, a man whom Nixon had vanquished during the presidential election in 1968—someone who could have found pleasure in the suffering that Nixon had endured—saw fit to include Nixon in his public funeral. At the end of 1977, the American people still gave Nixon overwhelmingly negative ratings in opinion polls. But Humphrey wanted to help bring him back, in a sense. He told Nixon that if anyone objected to his presence at the funeral, Nixon should say he was there “at the personal request” of Hubert Humphrey.

  Nixon had been moved by the offer. Not that his former political rival gave him any choice as to whether he would accept it. “You must attend,” Humphrey had told him. Now, on his birthday, Nixon could tell from the strained voice on the other end of the line that Humphrey was losing his fight with cancer. He sensed his old friend didn’t have long to live. “He’s only got a few days,” he told Jack Brennan after the call ended. Then he gave unequivocal orders to his chief of staff: “I don’t care what it takes, but I’m going to his funeral. Start working on it.”3

  When Humphrey died on January 13, Nixon issued a statement calling him a “dedicated patriot” who “commanded the genuine respect and affection of his political opponents and allies alike.” Humphrey’s death provided another reminder to Nixon of his own mortality. He had already suffered a political death and had very nearly suffered a physical one, as well. Yet Nixon found himself moved by the death of his friend and the grace that Humphrey had shown him.

  On January 15, Nixon and Colonel Brennan boarded a United Airlines commercial flight to Washington. When he landed at Dulles around 9:20 that night, it marked the first time he had been back to Washington since the resignation. Indeed, echoes of Watergate still chased him as about a hundred protestors waited for him at the airport terminal.

  The next day, Nixon joined President Carter and former president Ford at the service. Nixon, dressed in a black suit and black tie, sat stoically through the ceremony as Vice President Walter Mondale called Humphrey his “country’s conscience.” After the ceremony concluded, Humphrey’s widow, Muriel, turned to shake hands with the Fords. When she got to Nixon, the former president kissed her on the cheek.

  President Carter and former presidents Ford and Nixon together for the funeral of Hubert Humphrey. (National Archives and Records Administration)

  It was an extraordinary moment, unthinkable only a few days before. Here was Nixon at the U.S. Capitol honoring a former rival—and except for the protestors at the airport, no one seemed to object. Of all the ironies of Nixon’s return to acceptance, none is more striking than the fact that Hubert Humphrey helped make it happen.

  Back home in California after the funeral, Nixon was beginning to see some rays of light in early 1978. “He never talked about a ‘comeback,’ ” son-in-law Ed Cox remembers of the days following the Frost interviews and the completion of the memoirs. “But he wanted to be active again.” The Humphrey funeral had allowed him to re-enter Washington and be accepted as an elder statesman. He was eager to capitalize on this moment.4

  The Frost interviews had marked a turning point in Nixon’s post-presidential life. At last he had spoken publicly about Watergate. The public had watched him for hours. And the reviews had been mostly positive. Now he had been invited by a former Democratic rival to a place of honor at a state funeral. Nixon had seemingly come quite a long way since August 1974.

  And Nixon’s financial situation had improved, thanks to the payments from the Frost interview. With his financial status stronger and with the memoirs completed, Nixon began to think about what would come next. That year on his sixty-fifth birthday, Nixon confronted his future.

  “I had to decide what to do with the rest of my life,” he would write. “In a sense, this was a life-or-death decision. If a person quits after a defeat, he dies spiritually and will soon die physically.”5

  As Nixon looked back on the sixty-five years of his life, he couldn’t help but reflect on the recent valleys he had been through. He had wallowed in the sorrows of Watergate for nearly four years. He had faced a health crisis that nearly killed him. He had watched his wife suffer through a stroke. He had lived with constant financial pressure. And he had wondered how he would make a living.

  But Nixon had endured. Despite the constant struggles of the nearly four years since his resignation, he had survived. But any survivor wants more than just to exist; he wants to live fully again.

  Now for the first time since he resigned the presidency, Nixon truly was ready to live again. He wanted to be able to use his voice and his mind to be involved in public affairs again. And he fixed his eyes on a new and specific goal: using his status as a foreign policy expert to become a player once again in politics. Above all, Nixon was an intellectual, and such a person doesn’t need public office to have a public impact.

  “As I analyzed the world scene, I was profoundly troubled by the geopolitical momentum behind Moscow’s expansionism and by the paralysis of political will in the Western world,” he would remember. “I therefore chose to devote myself to advocating a more energetic and assertive American role in leading the free world, a stronger and more skillful strategy for the continuing East-West conflict, and a more far-sighted geopolitical approach to managing global affairs in a world with new emerging power centers in Europe and East Asia.”6

  Nixon’s future would be based on his past: he would focus on foreign policy, the issue that had always motivated him most. It made perfect sense. The former president had long been seen as a savant on foreign policy. And he hoped his abbreviated presidency would be remembered for foreign policy triumphs, namely ending the war in Vietnam and opening the door to China.

  Now in 1978, Nixon surveyed the foreign policy landscape and decided the time was right to enter the fray again. As he watched the policies of the Carter administration, he became agitated. Even at this early stage in Jimmy Carter’s presidency, there were signs that the job—especially the role of the president on the world stage—was too big for him.

  When Nixon learned at one of his briefings with Gulley that Carter had ordered a reduction in line officers in the military, he exploded.

  “Who gives a damn how many generals and admirals there are anyway?” Nixon asked rhetorically. “When a war breaks out, right here in San Diego the marines have got a training facility that you damn well know about. They can turn out killers every ninety days. But it’s no use turning out killers if you haven’t educated the generals and the admirals to see the big picture and understand what has to be done.”

  This was Nixon’s main criticism against Carter: he couldn’t see the forest for the leaves. Carter was so bogged down in minute details that he had no sense of strategy.

  Nixon also sensed that Carter was unknowingly undermining the power of the presidency. The man who famously approved the schedule of the White House tennis courts was not a man who had time to think strategically about how to use the power of his office. When Nixon heard that Carter had denied talking to the Justice Department about Robert Vesco, a fugitive financier who was suspected of involving the president’s brother Billy in a bribery scheme, Nixon scoffed at the idea that no one at the Justice Department had paid attention to Carter’s overture in the case of his brother’s associate. “When the attorney general get
s a memo from the president,” he told Gulley, “he shits in his pants.”7 Nixon believed Carter almost certainly had spoken to his attorney general about the matter and felt there was no way that either person didn’t remember the conversation.

  For Nixon, Carter’s presidency presented the perfect opportunity to speak up again and to make an impact on foreign policy decisions in Washington. For that purpose, he would choose a familiar vehicle and write a series of books. Nixon had always enjoyed the writing process, whether it was writing his recent memoirs or his Six Crises book in 1962 detailing six major moments in his career up to that point. Now he would write policy books outlining his vision for America’s place in the world and what America's strategy should be.

  But if Nixon wanted to be back in the public’s eye, then writing books would only take him so far. He would also have to start appearing in public again. His memoirs, published that spring of 1978, enjoyed largely positive reviews and strong sales. Was now the time to start making public appearances? Nixon began discussing the possibility with staff and family.

  Meanwhile, to celebrate the launch of the book, he hosted a reception at La Casa Pacifica where he handed the first three copies of the book to his wife and daughters. A few days later in late May, he hosted three hundred prisoners of war who had returned from Vietnam. Nixon went all out in throwing a party for them: alcohol was served at six different stations around the pool and flowers had been placed all around the house. It was hard to know who enjoyed themselves more—the Vietnamese heroes or Nixon. The former commander-in-chief autographed a copy of his book for each man.

  A few weeks later, Nixon ventured up the Pacific Coast Highway to Angel Stadium in Anaheim. The California Angels were playing against the Kansas City Royals. Nixon enjoyed being at the stadium. Before the game, he even spent a few minutes talking baseball with announcer Dick Enberg.