After the Fall

by Kasey S. Pipes

  But if the public accepted it, the media did not. John Herbers, reviewing the televised interview for the New York Times, characterized it as “another step” in Nixon’s ongoing effort to “erase the stigma of Watergate” and rehabilitate his public image. Herbers was sharply critical of the choice of Gannon as the questioner, yet he acknowledged that Gannon asked tough questions. Indeed, at one point Gannon asked if Nixon was sorry for Watergate. Herbers seemed mainly angry not at Gannon, but at Nixon. He saw the interview as more of a cover-up and lambasted CBS for airing it. “Tonight’s segment made no important disclosures that could be called news,” he sneered.

  Herbers was not entirely wrong in suspecting that the interviews had been scripted. Nixon had indeed worked closely with Gannon in the run-up to the interviews. “I know that you will be tempted to insert questions about me,” he wrote to Gannon on June 16, 1983, after some of the tapings had already been completed. “I think I am far more effective talking about others than about myself.” As for questions Gannon might ask about other leaders, Nixon had advice there too. “Again here I think that like the questions on the presidency, we should try to bring out what to average people will be unexpected characteristics and/or achievements.” He further suggested that Gannon propose answers to the questions, and he thought Gannon might peruse his book Leaders to get a sense of how those answers might be worded. Nixon was careful not to overstep, however. He congratulated Gannon on his stage presence and said, “I think your questions have been right on target in both tone and substance and that you will come [across] very well on the tube.”2

  Nixon was right. The interview proved to be a success. It showed Nixon taking stock of his career and acknowledging his shortcomings. Besides, Watergate was old news at this point. Politics had moved on. In the spring of 1984, most people were focused on the upcoming presidential election. And so was Nixon.

  His first task was to ensure that Reagan ran for reelection. “You should run and you will win in 1984,” he wrote to his friend in the Oval Office. “Bush has been a fine companion and a good soldier—but only you can hold the party together and give the Reagan revolution a chance to be permanent rather than temporary.”

  He then struck a more ominous note—Nixon had been concerned for some time about the quality of Reagan’s staffers after the Stockman and Allen episodes. Now, he took the opportunity to urge the president to make changes. “I know that because of your innate decency and loyalty to your friends that you are repelled at the thought of dropping people who are loyal to you but who are not effective on the stump or on TV,” he wrote. “But I urge you to bite the bullet and do what is necessary to field a tough, intelligent, hard-hitting team for the 1984 campaign. . . .”3

  Nixon often spoke to colleagues about the importance of a leader being tough—or, to use the words of William Gladstone, to be a “good butcher.” Now with the 1984 election on the horizon, Nixon urged Reagan to pick up the ax and start chopping.

  But who got cut seemed less important than who was doing the cutting. Nixon wanted the public to see Reagan as a strong, decisive leader. After suggesting that the president make changes to his staff, Nixon added that it would have a side effect that could benefit Reagan greatly. If “done the right way, as I’m sure you would, it increases your stature at home and abroad as a strong leader who will not tolerate ineffectiveness.”

  By the spring of 1984, the presidential campaign was in full bloom. Reagan was indeed running again, as Nixon had hoped. And the Democrats seemed to be in a race to the left, which also pleased Nixon. In the end, former vice president Walter Mondale won the nomination over a spirited challenge from Colorado senator Gary Hart. And Nixon continued to expand his public presence. In May, the American Society of Newspaper Editors held its annual convention in Washington. Nixon agreed to deliver a speech. Ironically, this was the same group that Nixon had spoken to in 1973 during Watergate when he defiantly proclaimed his innocence. It was a measure of how successful his comeback had been thus far that he was invited back to speak to the same group and that he was so well received. Nixon even told the newspaper editors that his philosophy on the media was “when they give it to me, I give it back in kind, and that’s just the way it’s going to be.” He then commented on the nature of the relationship between reporters and politicians. “I don’t think the press has changed,” he said. “And as far as I’m concerned, I probably have changed some. There has to be an adversarial relationship between press and candidate.”4

  Perhaps no industry is more transactional than the media. Reporters often fall prey to the charms of their subjects, especially when they are given exclusive or extensive access to them. Nixon’s new relationship with the press was generating some of the best news coverage of his career. With the presidential campaign in high gear, what better source for the media to interview than Nixon? In June he told a reporter that the Soviets’ decision to boycott the Los Angeles Olympics was a mistake. “They think they can hurt Reagan in the next presidential election, but I think they’re wrong,” he said. “That’s their intention and they won’t change their minds. Absolutely not.” He went onto add that perhaps the Olympics could move to a neutral site to avoid politics in the future. Nixon had become something of a go-to source for reporters looking for insight.

  In July, Nixon unexpectedly showed up at a Smithsonian reception commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the famous “Kitchen Debate” he had held with Krushchev in Moscow. He appeared in the Great Hall at the Smithsonian looking fit and healthy. Just as in his old campaign days, he worked the crowd and shook hands before delivering brief remarks.

  “It is difficult to believe it all happened 25 years ago,’’ Nixon said to the audience. “Do we look 25 years older?’’ The crowd laughed as Nixon reveled in the moment. The former president then referred to a brief tape of some of the exchange with Kruschev that was shown to the crowd that night. “The last round was a five-hour off-the-record debate that I am sorry to say was not on tape,” Nixon said. Then he joked, “We had a lot of other things on tape that I wish were not recorded.” The crowd roared with laughter.

  Nixon went on to say that he respected Khrushchev, who possessed a “fast mind, a marvelous sense of humor and he was highly combative. He was a man of great warmth and totally belligerent.” As he left the venue, Nixon shook more hands, signed autographs, and even posed for some photos.5

  A few days later, John Herbers wrote about Nixon again in the pages of the New York Times. This time it was to note the tenth anniversary of the resignation and marvel at the former president’s return to prominence since leaving the White House. In an article called “After Decade, Nixon Is Gaining Favor,” Herbers expressed shock at how far Nixon had come. “A decade later he has emerged at 71 years of age as an elder statesman, commentator on foreign and domestic affairs, adviser to world leaders, a multimillionaire, and a successful author and lecturer honored by audiences at home and abroad,” he wrote. After recounting the Watergate debacle and “the long road back” that Nixon had traveled, Herbers noted that Nixon’s net worth was now estimated at $3 million, in large part thanks to his books and public events.6

  In fact, in the first ten years following Watergate, Nixon had done more than just survive as a former president—he had unknowingly established a template for future ex-presidents to follow. Before Nixon, former presidents in the modern era mostly stayed behind the scenes. Truman had returned to Missouri and Ike split his time between his farm in Gettysburg and summers in Palm Springs. Neither of them made many public appearances or waded into public issues.

  But Nixon, largely because he wanted to rehabilitate his name —and in any case was never one for retirement—chose a different path. He made money from delivering speeches and writing books. He gave interviews with the media in which he tried to shape public opinion on important national issues. He became something of an elder statesman. The Nixon template is the template used by former presidents to this day.


  * * *

  By May 1984, the Reagan and Mondale teams had their sights trained on each other. The Mondale team thought their candidate would look best in debate settings that fall with the president. When a Reagan aide was quoted in the press saying that the president would agree to multiple debates against the challenger, Nixon decided it was time to circulate another memo among Republican luminaries. In his New York office, Nixon penned a memo detailing his thoughts on the upcoming race. “The set speech rather than the debate is Reagan’s best forum,” he wrote. “No one can challenge him in that regard. An incumbent is always at a disadvantage in a debate. He has no choice but to defend, as was the case with me in 1960, Ford in 1976 and Carter in 1980. This time Reagan will have to defend and Mondale will be on the attack.”

  On the issues, Nixon believed Reagan held the high ground. He could run on his economic record and on national security. “Incidentally,” he wrote, “if Mondale tries to pick up Hart’s “new ideas” theme, my answer would be, ‘The people voted for a new idea in 1980, and it works.’ ” On foreign affairs, Nixon was still concerned about the pressure for a “get acquainted” summit. “I think this would be a major mistake,” he wrote. Nixon was also worried that at this point in the political calendar Reagan might feel pressure to invite Mondale with him to the summit. Better to leave summitry to the second term.7

  Having outlined his thoughts on the upcoming election, Nixon returned to his own writing. Of all the elements of Nixon’s post-presidency, he most excelled at writing books. In May 1984, news emerged that he was under contract for yet another book. With the Cold War raging and President Reagan defending his staunch foreign policy in the 1984 election, Nixon chose to revisit the lessons of Vietnam and the fight against Communism. The new book, it was announced, would be called No More Vietnams.

  “It’s Mr. Nixon’s opinion about why we went into Vietnam, what in his view we did right and wrong and what we can learn from that now,” his literary agent, Swifty Lazar, told reporters. “It touches on Central America, although it has a global viewpoint. He believes that we shouldn’t repeat the mistakes of Vietnam in other parts of the world.”8

  More evidence of Nixon’s return to prominence appeared when the book proposal was shopped around publishing houses. A bidding war ensued with Arbor House offering a 15 percent “topping privilege” promising to raise the highest offer from another publisher by 15 percent. “I wanted to make it worth his while,” Arbor House publisher Eden Collinsworth said, “and perhaps discourage competitors from making a very determined bid.” The strategy worked. Warner Brothers, which had published The Real War in 1980, bowed out of the bidding, saying that Arbor House’s offer was beyond where “we wanted to go.”

  And Nixon was experiencing not just professional success, but happiness at home, as well. On June 20, Julie and David welcomed their third child, Melanie Catherine (Alexander Richard, their second son and Nixon’s second grandson, had been born in 1980). Nixon was overjoyed. “It’s not uncommon,” Julie said at the time, “to receive a phone call from my father’s secretary announcing, ‘The president is on the phone.’ ”9

  But not all was well for Nixon in the summer of 1984. On July 4, Pat was taken to the hospital for a pulmonary infection. The year before she had suffered another mild stroke. The combined impact of these health setbacks left Nixon worried about his wife. He even considered selling the New Jersey estate and moving to a smaller place back in the city. “It’s a question of whether she wants the burden of a big house,” he remarked.

  But Pat didn’t mind the burden at all. She especially enjoyed the scenery in Saddle River. “Julie,” she said one night to their daughter, “even though it is fall and the flowers are almost gone, it is still so beautiful. The leaves make a garden in the sky.”

  That fall, the Reagan team ran a nearly flawless campaign complete with television ads proclaiming that it was “morning in America.” The Gipper, as he had been known since he had starred in a Hollywood movie as the legendary Notre Dame football player years earlier, seemed well on his way to a smooth reelection until the first presidential debate with Walter Mondale on October 7 in Louisville, Kentucky. There, as Nixon had feared, Mondale gained the upper hand. For once, Reagan’s gift for communication failed him. The president appeared tired, and even old. He struggled with his responses. The Reagan team later would blame staffers for “overpreparing” him with books of information on various policy matters. The phrase “Let Reagan be Reagan” was borne out of concern over how poorly the first debate had gone and the insight that Reagan would need to be his old self in the second and final debate.

  One observer who did not share Republican dismay over Reagan’s debate performance and its impact on the election was Nixon. He had known Reagan would struggle in the debate since, as he had written in May, the president would be on the defensive. And watching the debate with Pat in their Saddle River, New Jersey, home, Nixon sensed Reagan wasn’t on top of his game. But he also knew that Reagan had a handful of aces: the economy was booming and Mondale was a personification of the failed Carter years. To Nixon, the test for Reagan would be whether he could resist overreacting to one poor debate performance and stay the course for the duration of the campaign.

  After the debate, Nixon called Reagan and congratulated him on his performance. Reagan disagreed with Nixon’s assessment; he thought he hadn’t done very well. After the phone call, Nixon decided to reassure Reagan in writing. In his memo, after acknowledging Reagan’s concern that he had not been in “top form for the first debate” Nixon pointed to the positives. As someone who had been judged the loser by those watching his debate with Kennedy on television and the winner by those listening on radio, Nixon believed that there was a difference between the visual appearance of Reagan and the substantive arguments he had made. On the latter, Nixon thought Reagan had done better than he realized. He told the president that “your performance on substance could not be faulted. In fact, right after it ended Pat turned to me and said ‘Mondale lost.’ ”

  Reagan’s real problem was managing expectations. “Only because he did better than expected and you did not knock him out of the ring did the media seize on the opportunity to make it appear as if he had won.” Still, the expectation game worked both ways. Now that the media was ridiculing Reagan’s performance, it would become “an advantage to you. You go into the debate Sunday as an underdog. . . .”

  Nixon’s broader point in his message to Reagan was that the president was on track. Even the seeming shift in the polls toward Mondale was to be expected. “What we are seeing is the predictable pattern of registered Democrats returning to their party as the election draws closer.”

  Nixon remained convinced that Reagan would not only win in November, but that he would win big. He wrote, “you will win an overwhelming victory in the popular vote on Election Day and a decisive victory in the electoral vote approaching the one you achieved in 1980.”10

  A few days later at the second presidential debate, Reagan directly addressed the concerns about his first debate performance. When asked a question about his age, Reagan quipped, “I do not believe age should be an issue in this election. I will not exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” The crowd roared with laughter; so did Mondale. That moment effectively ended any concerns about Reagan’s ability, and it essentially ended the election.

  As Nixon had predicted, Reagan won in a landslide and became the first president since Nixon himself to carry forty-nine states.

  Nixon wasted little time in congratulating the president and his team; he quickly began offering more advice. Nixon saw clearly that the second Reagan term would be dominated by foreign affairs and that the Republican president had a unique chance to shape history. Nixon met with Chief of Staff James A. Baker shortly after the election and urged a second-term domestic policy that would strengthen Reagan’s hand overseas. Specifically, he wanted the White House to reduce deficits. “A defense bu
dget which makes it impossible to reduce the federal deficit weakens our foreign policy,” he told Baker in a follow-up communique to their meeting. “One which makes it possible to reduce the budget deficit strengthens our foreign policy.”11 Though Nixon had been moving to the right on foreign policy, he still represented orthodox Republican philosophy on economics. He didn’t like deficits and didn’t much care for the large Reagan tax cuts that he thought helped create them.

  As the 1984 holidays approached, Nixon celebrated with his family at his home in Saddle River. It was a happy time. Ten years after Watergate, he had reemerged from the abyss as an influencer and confidante to Reagan and his senior staff. Now as his second term began, the president fixed his eyes on the Soviet Union. He and his friend in Saddle River could not have imagined the dramatic events that lay ahead in the coming four years.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Sage of Saddle River

  “Beneath the velvet gloves he always wears there is a steel fist.”

  He had them in the palm of his hands. On April 22, 1986, Richard Nixon went into the lions' den and emerged almost as unscathed as Daniel. The event was a speech to the American Newspaper Publishers. Looking better than ever and dressed immaculately in a dark blue suit, the former president gave a tour de force speech on foreign policy issues at a luncheon speech the Associated Press had helped set up. Sitting in front of him were publishers from newspapers all across the country, including Katharine Graham of the Washington Post.

  Nixon gave a ringing endorsement of Reagan’s foreign policies, particularly the administration’s efforts to confront Soviet aggression. He even suggested that the Soviets were afraid that the Reagan-backed Contras in Nicaragua might prevail and inspire other uprisings in other outposts of the Communist empire. On politics, he went further than he had before in predicting a Republican victory in the 1988 election.