But the highlight of the event came during the question-and-answer period after Nixon’s remarks. Watergate inevitably came up. But when he was asked what the greatest lesson he had learned from Watergate was, Nixon smiled and looked confidently at his audience.
“Just destroy all the tapes,” he said to roars of laughter from the crowd. And one of those laughing the most was Katharine Graham. It was her paper that had done the most to end his presidency, and yet she couldn’t help but be impressed by this performance. After the speech, she made her way over to Nixon to shake his hand. Not long after the event, another of her publications, Newsweek, took her advice to publish a profile of the former president. When reporters from the magazine approached Nixon about interviewing him for the profile, Nixon played his cards shrewdly. He knew that a positive feature from a Graham-controlled organization marked yet another turning point for him. So he wanted to make the most of the opportunity.
Initially, he told Newsweek he would not agree to an interview. Then, as the negotiations continued, he made a counteroffer: he would agree to the interview if the article was made into a cover story. The magazine, no doubt with Graham’s blessing, agreed to the terms.
The cover of the magazine that spring featured a smiling Nixon and the headline “He’s Back: The Rehabilitation of Richard Nixon.” Inside, readers saw a lengthy article about Nixon’s post-presidency rehabilitation, as well as a series of photographs. But perhaps the most striking part of the feature was the interview that was posted under the title, “The Sage of Saddle River.” In the interview, Nixon did little to deny his rising influence in Washington.
“As far as President Reagan is concerned,” he said when asked about his relationship with the current president, “I talk to him quite regularly. Usually he calls me from Camp David, usually after he has had one of those, you know, tough decisions. For example, he called me after the Libyan business [the U.S. bombing of Gaddafi’s compound], and we chatted a bit about it. It’s a very natural relationship.”1
When asked how he thought history would remember him, Nixon gave an answer that was familiar to anyone who had ever discussed the matter with him: “Without the Watergate episode I would be rated, I should think, rather high.” But with Watergate, “it depends on who’s doing the rating.” This was a constant theme of Nixon’s—that history was too often written by historians who leaned left.
The former president went out of his way to encourage any historian he didn’t think was a liberal. One of his favorites, a former Dole Senate staffer named Richard Norton Smith, burst onto the scene in the 1980s with a biography of Thomas E. Dewey that became a finalist for the Pulitzer. Nixon would write to Smith and compliment him as an “honest historian.” It’s a telling remark that demonstrates how Nixon viewed the rest of Smith’s colleagues.
Nixon continued to plow away at his work either in his New York office or at his home in Saddle River. One day that April while he was working in Saddle River, he decided to go out for lunch. He and an aide drove down the New Jersey coast before stopping at a Burger King on Route 72 in Ocean County. If Nixon wondered how the general public viewed him, he got a positive answer that day. He made the rounds inside the restaurant, shaking hands and signing autographs for patrons. An employee named Doreen Johnson took him his food and even got a photo with him. After eating a Whopper, he left a signed note for the restaurant owner that read, “Best wishes to Burger King, home of the Whopper. Love, Richard Nixon.”2
Back at home, Nixon again set his sights on events in Washington. New rumors of a potential second summit between Reagan and Gorbachev were beginning to surface. Nixon believed it was inevitable that the two men would meet again because so much had been left unresolved in Geneva. And as he had before, he wanted to do his part. This time he would not only try to influence Reagan, but he would try to influence Gorbachev, as well.
* * *
In July 1986, Richard Nixon traveled to Moscow. A Kremlin spokesman described Nixon as coming to Moscow as “a private person, a tourist.” But the former president wasn’t interested in sight-seeing. He had a mission.
This trip represented Nixon’s first meeting with Gorbachev. British prime minister Margaret Thatcher had famously called the Soviet leader a “man we can do business with” after she met him, and Reagan himself had seemed to connect with Gorbachev at Geneva. Now Nixon would size him up and report back to the White House. One of the people helping to arrange the trip was Anatoly Dobrynin, the Kremlin’s foreign policy adviser and Soviet central committee secretary. He had previously served as envoy to the United States, and Nixon had known him since his own presidency.
Gorbachev, for his part, likely saw a meeting with Nixon as another way of demonstrating that he was a different kind of leader— one who was open to conversations with leaders (and former leaders) from around the world. Just before Nixon arrived, Gorbachev met with American broadcast executive Ted Turner, who had helped found the Goodwill Games—an Olympic-style competition between nations that was held that summer for seventeen days in Moscow. Gorbachev, leaving behind the drama of the last two Olympiads, played the gracious host and told Turner the games were a “real positive force in U.S.-Soviet relations.”3
On July 19, Nixon got his turn. After several days of meetings with government officials, Gorbachev staffers ushered Nixon in to see the Soviet leader. He met with Gorbachev for nearly two hours. Gorbachev made quite an impression on the American. “I have met with three of the principal postwar leaders of the Soviet Union—Nikita S. Khrushchev in 1959 and 1960, Leonid I. Brezhnev in 1972, 1973, and 1974, and Gorbachev in 1986,” he would remember. “Gorbachev is by far the ablest of the three.” He even went so far as to say that Gorbachev was in the same “league” with some of his favorite leaders in history, like Churchill and de Gaulle.4
“He received me in a more richly decorated room than those in which I had met Khrushchev in 1959 or Brezhnev in 1972 and 1974,” Nixon said.
Earlier in the week I had had a highly detailed, two-hour meeting with Soviet President Andrei A. Gromyko and the foreign-affairs adviser Anatoly F. Dobrynin about arms control and a wide range of other issues. Even though Gorbachev had spent the entire previous day with the Politburo, it was clear from his questions and comments that he had acquainted himself with everything that had been said in my earlier meetings. This permitted him to use his own time to refine nuances or to cover new ground. All in all, it was the most impressive performance I have witnessed in nearly 40 years of meetings with world leaders.5
During the meeting, Nixon urged Gorbachev to take advantage of the remaining years of the Reagan administration and get a deal on arms control. He told the Soviet leader that the American president was “enormously popular” and that Reagan needed to “have a stake in a new, improved U.S.-Soviet relationship.” If Gorbachev didn’t reach a deal with Reagan before the American left office, that could create additional problems for the Soviets. In fact, it could “create a situation where President Reagan might become a powerful critic” during his post-presidency. Nixon watched as the Soviet leader listened carefully to the translator. “I don’t believe anything I said during the conversation had a greater impact on him,” he later told Reagan.6
Inevitably the conversation turned to the one major sticking point in the U.S.-Soviet negotiations—the White House’s insistence on SDI. Gorbachev tried to downplay the issue by telling Nixon that contrary to an American talking point, it was a “myth” that the Soviets were against SDI because of the potential financial strain it would put on them to keep up. “His major objection,” Nixon later reported to Reagan, was that “if it went forward there would be a massive spiral in the arms race.”7
After returning to Saddle River, Nixon prepared a twenty-six-page summary of the conversation for the president. In it, he suggested that Reagan press ahead with another summit. He also returned to his suggestion that Reagan use SDI as a bargaining chip. To counter Gorbachev’s obstinance on SDI, Nixon suggeste
d that Reagan propose trading “restrictions on deployment [of SDI] for reductions in Soviet missiles.”
Nixon hoped his meeting with Gorbachev would prove helpful to Reagan; but it had already been helpful to himself. Nixon aide John Taylor made sure stories about the trip appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post. And the memo to Reagan mysteriously found its way to Time magazine, where it was reprinted in its entirety.8
That fall, plans were announced for a second Reagan-Gorbachev summit. This one would be held in October in Iceland.
* * *
The Reykjavík Summit would become famous in history for what didn’t happen there. Reagan and Gorbachev talked extensively about eliminating an entire class of weapons. Reagan pushed his idea of a nuclear-free world and Gorbachev responded in kind. But as the negotiations neared the end, the Soviet leader insisted that any deal must include Americans abandoning the Strategic Defense Initiative. Reagan refused. The summit collapsed and the Cold War seemed further away from ending than it had in years.
Reagan felt betrayed. He told the American people that he wouldn’t abandon SDI because he would never compromise “our freedom or our future.” Yet the event, seen at the time as a diplomatic disaster, set the stage for a later agreement. By essentially walking out on Gorbachev when the Soviet leader came after SDI, Reagan had shown the world that he would never agree to a deal that didn’t preserve the possibility of defense against nuclear weapons.
Nixon, for his part, now found himself worried about Reagan’s idealism. Ironically, the man most associated with détente now found himself to the right of Ronald Reagan. Nixon’s major concern was that Reagan had offered too much in Iceland. Eliminating nuclear missiles would leave the Soviets with a strategic advantage because the Soviet Union’s conventional military was so much larger than the American one.
Meanwhile, the negative reviews of the summit were soon eclipsed by a scandal that shook Washington, D.C. Allegations emerged that the Reagan administration had illegally sold arms to Iran in the hopes of gaining the release of American hostages. In addition, some of the money had been sent to support the Contras fighting the Communists in Nicaragua. At the time, Iran was subject to an arms embargo and Congress had prevented further funding of the Contras through passage of the Boland Amendment. Washington immediately became obsessed with the scandal and whether it might bring down the Reagan presidency. Almost from the moment that the news of “the Iran-Contra Scandal” broke comparisons to Watergate began to circulate.
One observer who did not share the view that Iran-Contra represented another Watergate was Richard Nixon. On December 10, Nixon spoke to a group of Republican governors in Washington. After sharing his thoughts on world affairs, Nixon addressed the new controversy. For starters, he said, “Watergate was a domestic matter. This is a foreign policy matter.” And in very candid remarks, he pointed to an even more important difference, saying, “Watergate was handled . . . abysmally. This is being handled expeditiously.”
Then Nixon proceeded to give his audience some insight into how the mess had gotten started in the first place. Reagan’s goal, Nixon told the governors, had been to create ties with moderates in Iran who “would be less anti-American than the current government.” Furthermore, Reagan wanted to “get our hostages back”—referring to the Americans that were being held in Lebanon by Iran-linked Islamic militants. This, combined with the administration’s desire to “get aid to the Contras at a time when Congress was denying aid” had created the decision-making environment that led to Iran-Contra. Nixon made sure to distinguish between Reagan’s policy goals, which he called the president’s “right and responsibility,” and the “execution,” which was “something else.”
Nixon laid the blame for the fiasco squarely on the president’s staff. Reagan’s team had “screwed it up” in combining what should have been separate efforts to free the hostages and court moderate Iranian leaders. Left out of Nixon’s remarks was the fact that his friend Bud McFarlane had been directly implicated in the scandal. Instead, Nixon sharply criticized marine lieutenant colonel Oliver North for “skimming” the profits and then using the money to help the Contras.
Nixon told the governors that this last piece—the funding of the Contras—was the real problem. “That was illegal, apparently,” he said. But he was careful to defend the president to the governors. “But President Reagan didn’t know that,” he said. “I know that because he just was not involved in details. He has told me so. I believe him.”
Not surprisingly, Nixon’s main focus in the opening stages of the scandal was to fight for the president. “He [Reagan] is going to continue to serve as president,” he told the audience. Then he directly addressed those who were blaming the president for the scandal. “To his critics, I say, ‘Get off his back.’ ”
Nixon used Reagan’s reputation as a leader who delegated authority to explain how the scandal could have happened. Reagan, Nixon said, was a “big-picture man” who thought his role was “deciding big issues and then delegating to subordinates the carrying out of these things.” This allowed overly zealous staffers to “screw up” the policy and create the scandal. Nixon’s overall message was clear—the Republican governors should stand by Reagan.9
The speech represented Nixon at his best or worst, depending on one's point of view. He would stand by his friends and put spin on the issue to help defend them. It wasn’t just political friends that Nixon stood behind. For years he had maintained a friendship with Woody Hayes, the pugnacious head football coach at Ohio State University. When Hayes was fired in 1978 after punching an opposing player in the final moments of the Gator Bowl, he received a sympathetic letter from Nixon. “When you win you hear from everyone,” the former president wrote with words he had used often to describe how he felt after Watergate, “when you lose you hear from your friends.” The feeling of goodwill between the two men was genuine and mutual. After a game in Los Angeles in 1974, Hayes took the time to drive down to La Casa Pacifica to visit the recently deposed president. And two years later after Pat suffered her stroke, Nixon received a kind letter from Coach Hayes. “You and I are about the two luckiest men in the world from the standpoint of marriage,” the coach wrote to the president. “I know you will agree that neither of us could have done better and neither of us deserves to do so well.”10
When Hayes died on March 12, 1987, the family asked Richard Nixon to deliver the eulogy. He was delighted and honored to do so.
Nixon arrived early for the service at First Community Church in Columbus on the morning of March 18, 1987. There he was greeted in the church library by the church’s pastor, the Reverend Jeb Stuart Magruder. Magruder had worked for Nixon and served time for Watergate. After getting out of jail he had attended Princeton Theological Seminary and became a pastor. The two men had not seen or spoken to each other since Watergate. Nixon was genuinely moved to see his old aide and asked questions about his life since politics. “Fate has its strange way of working things out,” Reverend Magruder said.
After their brief reunion, Nixon, dressed smartly in a black suit, was ushered into the sanctuary. The packed auditorium waited for Nixon’s turn to take the pulpit and honor their hero. He did not disappoint. “I wanted to talk about football,” Nixon said in describing the first time had met Hayes decades before, “and Woody wanted to talk about foreign policy. You know Woody,” he said, pausing for effect, “we talked about foreign policy.”
Then Nixon delivered a tour de force defense of the controversial football coach. “Over the next 30 years, I got to know the real Woody Hayes, the man behind the media,” he told the audience. “I found that he was not the Neanderthal know-nothing that some people thought, but that he was a Renaissance man. A man with a great sense of history, and a profound understanding of the great forces that rule the world. I found that instead of just being that tyrant that you sometimes see on the ballfield, he was actually a softie, a warm-hearted man.”
Nixon lavishe
d praise on the coach’s toughness and his will to win. The heart of the oration described the risks that Hayes had taken throughout his career. The former president noted that the coach had won his third national title in 1969. “He could have retired then at the top,” he observed. “But he didn’t. He wanted to go on and do more. If you think of why he didn’t retire, you must remember that Woody knew there were risks. After all, there’s a rule of life: If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you will win no victories.”
As Nixon neared his conclusion, he surprised many in the audience and in the media by confronting the greatest controversy and most infamous moment of Hayes’ career—the night at the Gator Bowl when he punched a player and was fired the next day. “Woody was not one to play it safe,” he said. “He played it to win. The incident at the Gator Bowl in 1978 would have broken and crushed an ordinary man. But Woody was not an ordinary man. Winston Churchill said, ‘Success is never final and failure is never fatal.’ That was Woody Hayes’ maxim. He was never satisfied with success and he was never going to be discouraged by failure.”
It was an extraordinary moment; not just for what it said about Hayes but for what it said about Nixon. Here he was challenging Hayes’s critics to remember not just one night at the Gator Bowl but all the other great moments that had come before it. And he was saying that even after Hayes had lost everything, he had still made something out of nothing in the remaining years of his life. Nixon’s eulogy served as a powerful tribute to Woody Hayes, but it was also one of the most introspective statements he ever made about how he felt about failure and why he persisted in staying in the arena.11
Chapter Sixteen
The Public Critic
After the Fall Page 17