RN

by Richard Nixon

  I decided to try to defuse the tension by holding a press conference. The risks were high, and my staff was deeply divided about the wisdom of having one at this time. Most of the reporters and commentators were bound to be bitterly critical, and it was highly possible that an acrimonious session would only make things worse. Nonetheless I decided to go ahead, and the conference was announced for prime time on Friday evening, May 8.

  I could feel the emotions seething beneath the hot TV lights as I entered the East Room at ten o’clock Friday night. Almost all the questions were about the Cambodian operation and Kent State.

  The first question was whether I had been surprised by the intensity of the protests and whether they would affect my policy in any way. I replied that I had not been surprised by the intensity of the protests. I knew that those who protested did so because they felt that my decision would expand the war, our involvement in it, and our casualties. “I made the decision, however, for the very reasons that they are protesting,” I said. “I am concerned because I know how deeply they feel. But I know that what I have done will accomplish the goals that they want. It will shorten this war. It will reduce American casualties. It will allow us to go forward with our withdrawal program. The 150,000 Americans that I announced for withdrawal in the next year will come home on schedule. It will, in my opinion, serve the cause of a just peace in Vietnam.”

  One reporter asked what I thought the students were trying to say in the demonstration that was about to take place in Washington. I wanted my answer to this question to be compassionate but not weak. I said, “They are trying to say that they want peace. They are trying to say that they want to stop the killing. They are trying to say that they want to end the draft. They are trying to say that we ought to get out of Vietnam. I agree with everything that they are trying to accomplish. I believe, however, that the decisions that I have made, and particularly this last terribly difficult decision of going into the Cambodian sanctuaries which were completely occupied by the enemy—I believe that that decision will serve that purpose, because you can be sure that everything that I stand for is what they want.”

  Immediately after the press conference I began returning some of the dozens of phone calls that had come in and placing calls to others. I was agitated and uneasy as the events of the last few weeks raced through my mind.

  I slept for a few hours and then went to the Lincoln Sitting Room. I put on a record of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto and sat listening to the music. Manolo heard that I was up and came in to see if I would like some tea or coffee. Looking out the windows I could see small groups of young people beginning to gather on the Ellipse between the White House and the Washington Monument. I mentioned that I considered the Lincoln Memorial at night to be the most beautiful sight in Washington, and Manolo said that he had never seen it. Impulsively I said, “Let’s go look at it now.”

  This event was spontaneous on my part and I purposely did not take any staff members along or alert any reporters to accompany me. Thus it was especially frustrating when the newspapers reported that I had been unable to communicate with the young people I met, and that I had shown my insensitivity to their concerns by talking about inconsequential subjects like sports and surfing. Some of this mistaken impression apparently came from the students themselves. One of them told a reporter, “He wasn’t really concerned with why we were here.” Another said that I had been tired and dull and rambled aimlessly from subject to subject.

  In a meeting a few days later John Ehrlichman referred to the problems that I had created by talking about sports to students who had traveled hundreds of miles to protest my war policies. I was tired and tense, and I snapped at him about the problems a President has when even his own staff believes the false stories that are spread about him.

  That night I dictated a long memorandum describing what had actually taken place, and I sent it to Haldeman with another memo analyzing my frustrations about this incident:

  The attached is a memorandum of what actually took place at the Lincoln Memorial.

  After you read it, I think you will share my complete frustration with regard to coverage of my activities. I can understand why John Ehrlichman got the idea from the news reports that I was tired and all I talked about was surfing and nonsensical things. . . .

  As I evaluated the situation, this was the one time this group of students—most of whom perhaps were middle class or lower middle class—most of whom were about as poor as I was when I was in college and who had driven all this long distance to Washington—this was the only time they had ever talked to a President of the United States. They will see me many times discuss these heated, angry subjects that they would hear about later at the Monument, and that they hear in their classrooms. Perhaps the major contribution I could make to them was to try to lift them a bit out of the miserable intellectual wasteland in which they now wander aimlessly around.

  I do not write this memorandum to you critically of our staff, because I think it is the best staff any President has had by far in terms of loyalty, willingness to work, etc.

  The only problem is that we seem to lack on the staff any one individual who really understands or appreciates what I am trying to get across in terms of what a President should mean to the people. Not news; not gimmicks like rushing out to that Negro junior college with a covey of newsreels following. All of this seems to be big stuff and I realize makes big news—perhaps it is.

  But on the other hand, I really wonder in the long run if this is all the legacy we want to leave.

  If it is, then perhaps we should do our job as easily as we can, as expeditiously as we can, and get out and leave the responsibilities of the government to the true materialists—the socialists, the totalitarians who talk idealism but rule ruthlessly without any regard to the individual considerations—the respect for personality that I tried to emphasize in my dialogue with the students.

  I dictated this long diary-like memorandum describing the visit to the Lincoln Memorial because I wanted to make a record of what was for me a memorable event, and because I wanted to knock down the idea that I would have engaged in the kind of inane conversations the news reports had indicated.

  Manolo and I got out of the car at approximately 4:40 and walked up the steps to the Lincoln statue. . . .

  By this time a few small groups of students had begun to congregate in the rotunda of the Memorial. I walked over to a group of them . . . and shook hands. They were not unfriendly. As a matter of fact, they seemed somewhat overawed, and, of course, quite surprised.

  When I first started to speak to the group there were approximately eight in it. I asked each of them where they were from and found that over half were from upper New York State. At this point, all of them were men. There were no women. To get the conversation going I asked them how old they were, what they were studying, the usual questions. . . .

  Two or three of them volunteered that they had not been able to hear the press conference because they had been driving all night in order to get here. I said I was sorry they had missed it because I had tried to explain in the press conference that my goals in Vietnam were the same as theirs—to stop the killing and end the war—to bring peace. Our goal was not to get into Cambodia by what we were doing, but to get out of Vietnam.

  They did not respond, so I took it from there by saying that I realized that most of them would not agree with my position, but I hoped that they would not allow their disagreement on this issue to lead them to fail to give us a hearing on some other issues where we might agree. And also particularly I hoped that their hatred of the war, which I could well understand, would not turn into a bitter hatred of our whole system, our country, and everything that it stood for.

  I said, I know that probably most of you think I’m an SOB, but I want you to know that I understand just how you feel. I recall that when I was just a little older than you, right out of law school and ready to get married, how excited I was when Chamberlain came
home from Munich and made his famous statement about peace in our time. I had heard it on the radio. I had so little in those days that the prospect of going into the service was almost unbearable and I felt that the United States staying out of any kind of conflict was worth paying any price whatever. I pointed out, too, the fact that I came from a Quaker background. I was as close to being a pacifist as anybody could be in those times. As a result I thought at that time, that Chamberlain was the greatest man alive, and when I read Churchill’s all-out criticism of Chamberlain I thought Churchill was a madman.

  In retrospect, I now realize I was wrong. I think now that Chamberlain was a good man, but that Churchill was a wiser man and that we in the world are better off than we would be because Churchill had not only the wisdom but the courage to carry out the policies that he believed were right even though there was a time when both in England and all over the world he was extremely unpopular because of his “anti-peace” stand.

  I then tried to move the conversation into areas where I could draw them out. I said that since some of them had come to Washington for the first time I hoped that while they were young that they would never miss an opportunity to travel. One of them said that he didn’t know whether he could afford it, and I said I didn’t think I could afford it either when I was young but my wife and I borrowed the money for a trip we took to Mexico and then one to Central America. The fact is, you must travel when you are young. If you wait until you can afford it you will be too old to enjoy it. When you’re young, you can enjoy it. . . .

  At that time a girl joined the group and since I had been discussing California I asked if anybody there was from California. She spoke up and said she was from Los Altos and I said that was one of my favorite towns in Northern California and I hoped it was as beautiful as I remembered it. She did not respond.

  In trying to draw her out, I told the rest of the group that when they went to California that they would see there what massive strides we could take to deal with the problem of the environment which I knew they were all interested in. I said that right below where I live in California there was the greatest surfing beach in the world, that it was completely denied to the public due to the fact that it was Marine Corps property, and that I had taken steps to release some of this property for a public beach so that the terribly overcrowded beaches further north could be unburdened, and so that the people could have a chance to enjoy the natural beauty which was there. I said that one of the thrusts of our whole “quality of life” environmental program was to take our government property and put it to better uses and not simply to continue to use it for military or other purposes because it had been used for that way from time immemorial.

  Most of them seemed to nod in agreement when I made this point.

  I then spoke of how I hoped that they would have the opportunity to know not only the United States but the whole world. I said most people will tell you to go to Europe. I said Europe was fine, but it’s really an older version of America. It is worth seeing, but the place that I felt they would particularly enjoy visiting would be Asia.

  I told them my great hopes that during my administration, and certainly during their lifetime, that the great mainland of China would be opened up so that we could know the 700 million people who live in China who are one of the most remarkable people on earth. Most of them seemed to nod in agreement when I made this point. . . .

  I then moved on to the Soviet Union. Then one of them asked me what Moscow was like, and I said “gray.” It’s very important if you go to Russia, of course, to see Moscow because of the historical and governmental operations that are there, but if you really want to know Russia, its exciting variety and history, you must go to Leningrad. I said that in Russia Leningrad was really a more interesting place to visit. The people were really more outgoing there since they were not so much under control and domination of the central government.

  I also said that in terms of beautiful cities, they would find Prague and Warsaw of much more architectural beauty than Moscow. I made this point because I was speaking directly to one of the students who said he was a student of architecture. In fact, there were two who said they were studying architecture and I thought that they would be interested. But the most important point I made about Russia was that they should go to places like Novosibirsk, a raw, new city in the heart of Siberia, and Samarkand in Asian Russia where the people were Asians rather than Russians.

  One of them asked whether it would be possible to get a visa to such cities, and I said I was sure they could and if any of them took a trip to Russia and wanted to contact my office I would help out. This seemed to get a little chuckle from them.

  I then moved back to the problem and my thrust then that what really mattered in the world was people rather than cities and air and water and all other things that were material. I said, for example, of all the countries I have visited in Latin America, Haiti is probably the poorest . . . but that the Haitians, as I recalled from 1955, while they were poor, had a dignity and a grace which was very moving, and that I always had wanted to return, not because there was anything in Haiti worth seeing in terms of cities or good food, etc., but because the people had such character.

  I then made this same point again with regard to the people I had seen in Asia and India and returned again to the United States, where I again emphasized the importance of their not becoming alienated from the people of this country, its great variety.

  I expressed distress that on the college campuses the blacks and whites, while they now go to school together, have less contact with each other than they had when they weren’t. . . . This seemed to get through, although none of them had much to say and none of them responded specifically.

  By this time the group around me had begun to get considerably larger. I would say that the original group of approximately eight to ten had now become perhaps thirty and some of those who seemed to be more leader types and older began to take part in the conversation.

  One spoke up and said, “I hope you realize that we are willing to die for what we believe in.”

  I said, I certainly realize that. Do you realize that many of us when we were your age were also willing to die for what we believed in and were willing to do so today? The point is that we were trying to build a world in which you will not have to die for what you believe in, in which you are able to live for it.

  I put in one brief comment with regard to the point I had made in the press conference, that while we had great differences with the Russians we had to find a way to limit nuclear arms and I had hoped that we could make some progress in that direction. They seemed to have very little interest in that subject. Perhaps it was because we moved through so fast and perhaps because they were overawed by the whole incident.

  Then another spoke up and said, “We are not interested in what Prague looks like. We are interested in what kind of life we build in the United States.”

  I said the whole purpose of my discussing Prague and other places was not to discuss the city but the people. For the next twenty-five years the world is going to get much smaller. We are going to be living in all parts of the world and it is vitally important that you know and appreciate and understand people every place, wherever they are, and particularly understand the people in your own country.

  I said, I know that the great emphasis that is currently being put on the environment—the necessity to have clean air, clean water, clean streets—that, as you know, we have a very bold program going further than any has ever gone before to deal with some of these subjects. But I want to leave just one thought with you. Cleaning up the air and the water and the streets is not going to solve the deepest problems that concern us all. Those are material problems. They must be solved. They are terribly important. . . . But you must remember that something that is completely clean can also be completely sterile and without spirit.

  What we all must think about is why we are here—what are those elements of the spirit which re
ally matter. And, here again, I returned to my theme of thinking about people rather than about places and about things. I said candidly and honestly that I didn’t have the answer, but I knew that young people today were searching, as I was searching forty years ago, for an answer to this problem. I just wanted to be sure that all of them realized that ending the war, and cleaning up the streets and the air and the water, was not going to solve spiritual hunger which all of us have and which, of course, has been the great mystery of life from the beginning of time. . . .

  By this time the dawn was upon us, the first rays of the sun began to show, and they began to climb up over the Washington Monument and I said I had to go, and shook hands with those nearest to me, and walked down the steps.

  A bearded fellow from Detroit was taking a picture as I began to get in the car. I asked him if he wouldn’t like to get in the picture. He stepped over with me and I said, Look, I’ll have the President’s doctor take the picture, and Tkach took the picture. He seemed to be quite delighted—it was, in fact, the broadest smile that I saw on the entire visit. As I left him I said . . . that I knew he had come a long way for this event and I knew, too, that he and his colleagues were terribly frustrated and angry about our policy and opposed to it. I said, I just hope your opposition doesn’t turn into a blind hatred of the country, but remember this is a great country, with all of its faults. I said, If you have any doubt about it, go down to the passport office. You won’t see many people lining up to get out of the country. Abroad, you will see a number lining up to get in.

  He smiled and took it all in good humor. We shook hands, and I got into the car and drove away.

  I knew that those days in April and May were as hard for my staff as they were for me. Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Kissinger, in particular, had borne the brunt of the Cambodian crisis. I wanted to do something to show how much I appreciated their strength and support. While we were in Key Biscayne over the weekend of May 15, I asked Bebe if his girl friend, Jane Lucke, would mind doing a little sewing for me.