After the Fall

by Kasey S. Pipes

  But as the 1988 election approached, Dole would have to wait. It would be Vice President George Bush who would run as the Republican nominee.

  Nixon took time out in late 1987 to praise yet another potential political star. “I did not see the program, but Mrs. Nixon told me that you were great on The [Phil] Donahue Show,” he wrote to New York developer Donald Trump on December 21. “As you can imagine, she is an expert on politics and predicts that whenever you decide to run for office you will be a winner!” The next month, Trump— famously susceptible to flattery—would fly Nixon on his private plane to a juvenile diabetes fundraiser in Houston where the two men talked extensively about politics.11

  * * *

  On January 9, 1988, Richard Nixon celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday. The occasion was made even more special because on that day he completed the manuscript for his latest book. 1999: Victory without War would be published by Simon & Schuster later that year.

  Nixon found great enjoyment in this season of his life. He regularly attended New York sporting events. He had long enjoyed a close relationship with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and was sometimes seen at Yankees games. But Nixon always saw himself as an outsider, an underdog. And so he naturally grew quite fond of the New York Mets, often attending games in his friend Bob Abplanalp’s box at Shea Stadium. He even became friends with some of the players. Several times he and Mets captain Keith Hernandez met for lunch at Rusty Staub’s restaurant. And when pitcher Ron Darling was traded to the Expos, Nixon sent him a note celebrating his time as a Mets pitcher and lamenting that Darling had suffered from a “lack of support and too many no-decision games which should have ended up in the W column.” He wished Darling well in Montreal with the exception of “when you pitch against the Mets.”12

  Nixon's family often joined him at the games. He took great joy in spending time with his grandkids. Family can warm the cold of any life and Nixon found particular pleasure in being so close to both of his daughters and all of his grandchildren. He quite enjoyed the role of family patriarch and loved spoiling his grandkids. Jennie Eisenhower, Alex Eisenhower, and Melanie Eisenhower lived with their parents, David and Julie, near Philadelphia. And Chris Cox lived in New York with his parents, Ed and Tricia. Nixon often told the story of the time former Bulgarian President Todor Zhivkov visited him in 1982. Zhivkov told him, “You are a very rich man. Having grandchildren is the greatest wealth a man can have.”13

  Still, Nixon’s mind was restless, as always. He needed to be working. And the new developments in U.S.-Soviet relations were very much on his mind in early 1988. His latest book book centered on that topic and continued the evolution in Nixon’s thinking on the Cold War.

  “One of the more interesting developments on the American political stage over the past decade has been Richard Nixon’s metamorphosis from execrated figure of the Watergate affair to experienced conservative statesman and commentator upon world affairs,” began the review of 1999: Victory without War in the Washington Post.14

  Nixon was clearly still concerned about the Reagan negotiations with Gorbachev. His main take on the Soviet leader was not to underestimate him or what he was trying to achieve. Gorbachev, Nixon wrote, was motivated not by a desire to end Communism, but rather by a desire to “make the communist system work better.” But the former president shrewdly predicted that Gorbachev would face challenges that had been unthinkable just a few years before. Nixon believed that “Eastern nationalism” was a real threat to the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. “Without genuine reform,” he wrote, “a political earthquake in Eastern Europe is inevitable in the years before 1999.” Nixon called for an effort to “Finlandize” the countries of Eastern Europe to create pressure on the Soviets.

  In the meantime, he continued to push for a policy of standing firm against the Soviets. This included his long-held view that the Strategic Defense Initiative should be pursued and funded as leverage for negotiating for “massive reductions in not only Soviet nuclear forces but conventional forces.”

  As part of the promotion for the release of the book that April, Nixon agreed to an interview on the NBC News Sunday morning talk show Meet the Press. The questions inevitably turned to Nixon’s past. And the former president offered some surprising insights.

  His biggest regret? Bombing North Vietnam in 1972 rather than 1969. “I wanted to do it,” he said. “I talked to Henry Kissinger about it, but we were stuck with the bombing halt that we had inherited from the Johnson administration, with Paris peace talks. I knew that, just like the cease-fire talks down here in Nicaragua, I didn’t trust them at all. And they proved to be, of course, phony. But if we had done that then, I think we would have ended the war in Vietnam in 1969 rather than in 1973. That was my biggest mistake as president.’ ”

  In response to questions about Watergate, Nixon again expressed contrition while asking that the whole context of the times be considered. “In 1972, we went to China,” he said. “We went to Russia. We ended the Vietnam War effectively by the end of the year. Those were the big things. And here was this small thing, and we fouled it up beyond belief. It was a great mistake. It was wrong, as I’ve pointed out again and again.” Nixon directly addressed his role and his regrets over it. “It was a small thing, the break-in, and break-ins have occurred previously in other campaigns, as well,” he said. “At that point, we should have done something about it. We should have exposed it, found out who did it, rather than attempting to contain it, to cover it up. It was the cover-up that was wrong, and that was a very big thing; there’s no question about it at all.”15

  * * *

  On December 8, 1987, just a few months before the publication of Nixon’s new book, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty they had been negotiating. It essentially eliminated all nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers, with ranges of 500–1,000 kilometers (short-range) and 1,000–5,500 kilometers (intermediate-range). The treaty was a triumph for Reagan, although many in his conservative base criticized him at the time. George Will sneered at the president’s performance in his syndicated column: “Four years ago, many people considered Reagan a keeper of the Cold War flame. Time flies.”16

  One of the sharpest critics at the time was Richard Nixon. For some time he had feared that Reagan would give away too much. He had pleaded with him in the Los Angeles Times op-ed and in person at the White House the previous April to focus more on the Soviet advantage in conventional weapons. But Reagan believed that Gorbachev was a unique person representing a unique opportunity at a unique moment in time. Since the Strategic Defense Initiative had been left alone in the negotiations, Reagan felt like he had gained much more than he had given.

  Nixon didn’t agree. The patron saint of détente had now come full circle: he was more of a hardliner on confronting the Soviets than Reagan. Still, he measured his words with the president. Nixon wrote diplomatically to Reagan that “Rome was not built in a day and it takes more than three days to civilize Moscow.”17

  As the Senate prepared to ratify the treaty in 1988, Nixon continued his subtle critique in the form of promoting his book. “The beginning of the Gorbachev era does not represent the end of the rivalry between the two superpowers,” read his words in the cover story in a March 1988 edition of the New York Times Magazine. “Rather, it represents the beginning of a dangerous, challenging new stage of the struggle.” The article was excerpted from his book. “We must respect the Soviet Union as a strong and worthy adversary,” Nixon urged. “Respect is important between friends; it is indispensable between potential enemies in the nuclear age. Gorbachev himself is a powerful reminder that we underestimate the Soviet Union at our peril. He is a highly intelligent, sophisticated man of the world and a great communicator—the antithesis of the common perception of a bearded Bolshevik intent on blowing up the world.”18

  Nixon’s view of the treaty and of the Soviet Union was both wrong and right. He was
wrong to think that Reagan had given away too much in the treaty; indeed, Reagan had been right all along about the advantage the U.S.—when combined with Western European countries—still held in conventional weapons. But Nixon was right about the relative weakness of the Soviet economy. In his book he predicted that the economies of Japan and China would race past the Soviet economy in the coming century. In fact he did not see the full implications of that insight or foresee how powerful a factor the weakened Soviet economy would be in the eventual demise of the Soviet Union.

  On the whole, Nixon’s advice to Reagan through the summits with Gorbachev undoubtedly led to a more effective American negotiating strategy. Using SDI as a negotiation tool and offering to share the technology with the Soviets helped to neutralize the issue and preserve the program for the U.S. It was an inspired piece of diplomacy. And once that objection had been neutralized, Gorbachev—painfully aware of his country's anemic economy—could do little but negotiate the best terms possible with Reagan. That those terms were more generous than Nixon advised does not mitigate his importance in helping Reagan get to that point.

  Statecraft is almost always a team effort. Many people are involved at many different levels. Several people deserve credit for the 1987 INF Treaty. First among them is Ronald Reagan, who took on his own party to sign a treaty that many conservatives reviled. But Richard Nixon’s role in providing advice and counsel merits credit, as well. He used a lifetime of experience and knowledge to advise Reagan. Just thirteen years before, he had been politically radioactive. Now he had helped achieve one of the most monumental foreign policy achievements of the twentieth century. From this point forward, no one needed to ask if Nixon was back. The facts spoke for themselves.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The 1988 Election and the Bush Administration

  “People don’t vote against peace and prosperity.”

  “Governor Dukakis won the Democratic nomination without the advice of Mr. Nixon and I think he will win the election on November 8 without heeding Mr. Nixon’s advice.” That was the statement from Michael Dukakis's press secretary, Lorraine Voles. The occasion for her comment was a memo Nixon had written about the upcoming election that was sent to his friends and leaked to the press.

  In “The Final Four Weeks: Predictions for November 8th” memo, Nixon handicapped the race between Republican nominee George Bush and Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis. He thought Dukakis had little chance of success. And he explained why.1

  Nixon wrote that “it would take a genius” to squander the massive eighteen-point lead that Bush had at the time. “Jim Baker is smart,” he quipped of the Bush campaign chairman, “but he is not that kind of a genius.” To Nixon, the race came down to a thriving economy and relative tranquility in world affairs. “People don’t vote against peace and prosperity,” he wrote.2

  At a tactical level, Nixon was critical of the Dukakis television ads. “Dukakis should file a malpractice suit against his ad agency,” he wrote. “His ads look as if they have been produced by Roger Ailes”—who was doing ads for the Bush campaign.3

  Bush went on to win a landslide victory over Dukakis that November. The Reagan Revolution would continue. And what would Nixon’s relationship with the new White House be? No one seemed to know. Nixon had always had ambivalent feelings about the president-elect. But he certainly hoped to continue his role as outside counselor.

  The former president immediately began conversations with James A. Baker, Bush’s long-time friend who had been tapped to become the next secretary of state. Nixon respected Baker’s intellect and realized how much the president-elect valued him. Baker, for his part, appreciated Nixon’s insights on foreign policy. In early December, Baker arrived at Saddle River to talk things over with Nixon. The two men began with an hour-long conversation in the library, followed by another forty-five-minute discussion over lunch, and then concluded with more talks over coffee back in the library.

  With his perfectly tailored suit and Texas accent, Baker cut a striking figure. And he was the consummate Washington insider. That George Bush’s campaign manager in 1980 could end up as Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff was a measure of his skill. And that he could do what almost no other Reagan staffer had been able to do—successfully manage the expectations and demands of Nancy Reagan—was proof of his talent as a diplomat. Nixon knew that Bush foreign policy decisions would start with Baker. So he went out of his way to ingratiate himself with the soon-to-be secretary of state.

  After the two men discussed ideas on how to staff the State Department, talk turned toward negotiations with the Soviets. After the signing of the INF Treaty, the Reagan administration had proposed what would become known as the START Treaty (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) with the goal of making even further cuts in the nuclear stockpiles of both nations. Nixon was concerned about the talks and returned to much of the messaging he had used with Reagan on dealing with the Soviets in his discussion with Baker. Fearing that Baker had been “brainwashed by Shultz,” Nixon went “chapter and verse” through his concerns about where the Reagan negotiations with Gorbachev had left the United States. Nixon even got in a personal plug, suggesting that for more detail Baker could “read our book.”4

  “Where we had our biggest disagreement was in regard to linking START with conventional weapons,” Nixon would recall of his meeting with Baker. The Texan demurred, saying that if Bush insisted on an agreement on conventional weapons it would put the negotiations on nuclear weapons in jeopardy. Nixon left the meeting feeling like it was a lost cause. And he blamed the professional staffers at the State Department. “Here is one that the foreign service has won” he would later write, since they were “unalterably opposed to linkage.”5

  When the talk turned to Latin America, Nixon urged Baker to seize the opportunity, especially with Bush’s “ties to Mexico,” to create a new policy. He suggested continuing to stand strong against the Communist infiltration of Latin America and said that regardless of whether the Monroe Doctrine was still in effect, the U.S. could not tolerate Communist interference south of the border.

  On the Middle East, Baker told Nixon he had never been to the region and asked for his advice. Nixon responded by recounting a story from his own trip to the Middle East not long after war there broke out in 1967. Upon his return, a friend asked him what the U.S. should do in the Middle East. Nixon said he thought about the question for a long time and then replied, “Nothing.” Baker listened to the story, but he seemed determined to try and do something. At that point, Nixon suggested that it was “in Israel’s interest to make a deal now when they were strong rather than waiting until later when the strength of the Arabs would force them to do so.”

  The men also discussed what impact domestic issues would have on foreign affairs. Kissinger had already met with Bush and told Nixon that he had gotten the distinct impression that Bush wanted a deal with the Soviets to cover for the difficulties he would have domestically with the budget. When Nixon raised the point with Baker, the Texan responded that the pressure for Bush and Gorbachev to meet was going to be “unbearable.”

  That led to a discussion of Bush’s predicament on the budget. He had promised not to raise taxes, but clearly that was an option now being considered. “I made the political point that he should not be concerned about Bush having to renege on his campaign promise,” Nixon recalled. But Baker suggested it would be difficult to do. He said the “read my lips” pledge from the 1988 GOP convention speech was “a very powerful signal” and it would be “devastating” for Bush to back off it. Nixon mentioned that as president he had never called for raising taxes but that his successor, Gerald Ford, had. “Why in the hell did Ford do it?” he asked, knowing that Baker had been a senior advisor to Ford.6

  Overall, Nixon left the meeting with Baker with cautious optimism. “This is a very bright man,” he would recall. “He asks the right questions.” He had carefully observed Baker’s demeanor throughout the meeting. “He is also a very c
old man,” Nixon concluded, “which is not said in a condemning way but more in a respectful way.” He did record that Baker had made one odd and revealing comment. He told Nixon that because “he had known Bush as a friend and advisor for thirty years or so he felt that he would have considerable influence.” Nixon found this to be a “defensive comment to make.” Only a person worried and trying to “reassure himself” would say such a thing.7

  Baker was not alone in seeking out Nixon’s advice. In the fall of 1988, a steady stream of visitors came to see Nixon and get his insights on events. In fact, Nixon had decided the time had come to conserve more time for advising, thinking, and writing and to spend less time on the commute to New York City each day. In September, he announced that he would close down his office in Manhattan and would begin working from New Jersey. “It occurred to him that if he could move the office to New Jersey,” Chief of Staff John Taylor told the media, “it would allow him to have an office within walking distance of his house.”

  Nixon would not go without in his new office digs. “His new premises, roughly equivalent in space to his office in the Manhattan building, [is] in a two-story building built in an ornate Italianate style, with a copy of Michelangelo’s David crowned by a Florentine chandelier, at the middle of a central rotunda,” reported the New York Times. “The style was a bit luxurious for the former president’s taste, Mr. Taylor said, but the GSA picked the site because it suited the agency’s rental guidelines and security needs.”8

  Once settled into his new office, Nixon continued in his old routine. One exception was that nowadays Nixon often met in the morning with a political figure or intellectual to discuss foreign policy. “Perhaps he had a fear that if he stopped working, his mind would atrophy,” Taylor recalled, “but the more time I spent with him the more I realized that here was an extraordinarily powerful and unorthodox intellect which simply had to exercise itself.”