RN

by Richard Nixon

  Something Daddy said makes me feel absolutely hopeless about the outcome. He has since the Butterfield revelation repeatedly stated that the tapes can be taken either way. He has cautioned us that there is nothing damaging on the tapes; he has cautioned us that he might be impeached because of their content. Because he has said the latter, knowing Daddy, the latter is the way he really feels.

  So many people had gone out on so many limbs for me already—and I knew better than most of them just how shaky some of those limbs had really been. Now others would have to take that risk if we continued to fight: Haig, Ziegler, the lawyers, the congressmen and senators who would support me during the impeachment hearings, the White House staff. I would have to inspire these people for the battle, even though I knew that in many respects the case was not very inspiring. What enabled me to justify fighting on and asking these people to fight with me and for me was that although the case was badly flawed, I convinced myself that the cause was noble and important.

  As I came to see it, the cause now involved the nature of leadership in American politics. I felt that if I could be hounded from office because of a political scandal like Watergate, the whole American system of government would be undermined and changed. I never for a moment believed that any of the charges against me were legally impeachable—none of them involved “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” as enumerated in the Constitution. If I had felt that I was actually guilty of a legally impeachable offense I would not have allowed anyone to extend himself in my defense. I would have resigned immediately. But this impeachment was going to be a political phenomenon; this was confirmed when the House Judiciary Committee could not reach agreement on the constitutional definition of impeachment. In December the New York Times reported that two-thirds of the committee’s members believed that an impeachable offense did not even have to be a violation of the law. Later, instead of deliberating until a consensus on a definition was reached, it was decided that each member would be allowed to make up his own mind along the way. If there had ever been any doubts before, this decision made it clear that a political rather than a legal standard would govern the impeachment proceedings.

  I felt that in terms of the important elements of presidential leadership, I still had much to contribute to America and the world. As crippled as I was and was bound to remain throughout the rest of my term because of Watergate, I was still more experienced than Jerry Ford, who had only just been confirmed as Vice President. And experienced leadership was needed. The North Vietnamese were clearly preparing for a new offensive in Cambodia and South Vietnam, aimed at testing our willingness and ability to enforce the Paris agreement. The Soviets were holding back from concluding a comprehensive SALT agreement and would need a firm U.S. position to encourage them in the right direction. At home, the economy was extremely shaky in the aftermath of its experience with controls, and the impact of the Arab oil embargo was going to make it a long hard winter for whoever was in the White House. The temptation to lash out against the Arabs would have to be kept in check in order to capitalize on the tremendous success of our policy during the Yom Kippur War.

  I was aware that the way I had handled Watergate so far and the inherent flaws in my case might endanger the very things I believed required my staying in office. I realized that for many people I had made a mockery of national security and executive privilege by using them, as they saw it, to cover my own guilt. I also realized that many people felt I was irreparably damaging the strength of the presidency by persisting in my determination to be a strong President despite the weakness created by Watergate.

  But I did not agree. Rightly or wrongly, I convinced myself that I was being attacked by old opponents for old reasons. I was instinctively geared to fight for my survival. After living and fighting in the political arena for so long, I was not going to give up now and leave the presidency because of something like Watergate. I would fight and do and say whatever I thought was necessary to rally my forces and maintain their confidence for this last campaign.

  On January 9, 1974, while I was spending a few days at Sunnylands, the magnificent Palm Springs home of my friend Walter Annenberg, I received a call from John Connally. He is not a man who becomes easily or unnecessarily alarmed, but he sounded agitated as he talked to me. He said that he had just been in Washington and talked to one of his close friends, who was the best source of political intelligence he had ever known. His friend had told him that a group of Republicans, primarily in the House but including one or two senators, some top party leaders among them, had been meeting privately and had concluded that my staying in office would be highly detrimental to all Republicans running in 1974. Some of these people, Connally said, were men who had been my friends in the past. He referred to the group as the “Arizona Mafia.” I asked if Goldwater was a part of it, and Connally replied that while Goldwater might be aware of the group’s existence and intentions, he was not one of its prime movers. He made it clear that the group was not limited to Arizonans; there were men from the East and the Midwest participating in the discussions. “Some of them are men you think are your very good friends,” he said.

  The supposed strategy of this alleged group was to delay the vote in the House Judiciary Committee until after the Soviet Summit in June. Then they would have some selected Republican leaders come to the White House and request that I resign in the best interests of the party, particularly because so many of my supporters in the House would lose their seats if I were still in office in November. Connally said that his source had emphasized that Jerry Ford had no knowledge of the group’s existence.

  Connally repeated that his source for this disturbing intelligence was extremely reliable, and he insisted that I should not brush it off as just another rumor. He urged me to have it checked very carefully. I told him that I would.

  When I mentioned this information to Haig he was skeptical, and I agreed that it was the kind of thing that could be expected to turn up in the Washington rumor mills in times like these. Haig checked with Goldwater and reported that Goldwater claimed, and appeared, to be standing firm.

  At that time I did not believe there could be an organized Republican conspiracy to force me out of office. However, survival matters most in politics. Washington is ruled by Darwinian forces, and if you are in serious political trouble, you cannot expect generosity or magnanimity for long. Often a consensus develops, sometimes no more than a shared instinct, that the burden of the wounded must be removed in order for the rest to survive.

  The State of the Union address was scheduled for January 30 at 9 P.M. Pat and I sat silently in the car on the way from the White House to the Capitol. She knew as well as I did how tense the situation had become. The whole family had discussed whether the members of the House and Senate would receive the speech courteously or whether there might even be an open demonstration of hostility.

  As soon as I entered the Chamber door, however, there was a loud, almost raucous burst of applause and cheers. Our small but vocal group of Republican and Democratic loyalists cheered so lustily that their colleagues felt obliged at least to stand, if not to follow suit.

  This 1974 State of the Union address was to be the final summing up of my domestic stewardship. I was able to say at the outset: “Tonight, for the first time in twelve years, a President of the United States can report to the Congress on the state of a Union at peace with every nation of the world.”

  I believe that, had it not been for Watergate, the actual state of the American Union in 1973 would have been acknowledged as proof of the validity of the political philosophy on which I had run in 1972. The events of 1973 almost seemed designed to demonstrate just how inadequate the politics of the left would have been in dealing with the problems we had confronted and in solving them successfully. For example, the Mideast war ironically turned many of the prominent Vietnam doves back into hawks when Israel’s safety and survival were at stake. The recurrent inflation showed how recklessly the t
raditional liberal Democratic dollar politics would have affected the economy. Even Teddy Kennedy and Wilbur Mills tacitly acknowledged this by revising their highly publicized compulsory national health insurance proposal to make it resemble mine. And the realities of the energy crisis forced pragmatic re-evaluations of the fashionable but one-sided environmentalist bias.

  The country I had been elected to lead five years earlier had been on the ropes from domestic discord. The cities had been burning and besieged; the college campuses had become battlegrounds; crime was increasing at an alarming rate; drug abuse and drug addiction were increasing; the military draft cast a disruptive shadow over the lives of young Americans; there was no program to deal with the protection of our natural environment; and there were vital areas of social reform and governmental operation that needed attention and consideration.

  In the five years of the Nixon administration we could point to some signal successes. The cities were now quiet; the college campuses had once again become seats of learning; the rise in crime had been checked; the drug problem had been massively attacked, abroad as well as at home; the draft had been eliminated; and we had submitted to Congress the nation’s first environmental program, as well as major plans for national health care, education reform, revenue-sharing, and government reorganization. In this State of the Union I outlined ten landmark accomplishments that I felt would be possible in 1974: we could break the back of the energy crisis and lay the foundation for meeting our energy needs from our own resources; we could achieve a just and lasting settlement in the Mideast; we could check the rise in prices without causing a recession; we could enact my health care proposals and thereby begin to provide high-quality insurance for every American in a dignified way at an affordable price; we could make states and localities more responsive to local needs; we could make a crucial breakthrough in mass transportation; we could reform federal aid to education in ways that would make it do the most for those who needed it the most; we could begin the task of defining and protecting the right of personal privacy for every American; we could finally and belatedly reform the welfare system; and we could begin establishing an international economic framework in which Americans would share more fully.

  As the speech progressed I was surprised and moved by the warm reception it was accorded. By the end I had been interrupted by applause more than thirty times. At one point I came to a line I had not thought particularly exceptional: in discussing the overriding aim of establishing a new structure of peace in the world, I said, “This has been and this will remain my first priority and the chief legacy I hope to leave from the eight years of my presidency.” Suddenly the rafters seemed to ring. Almost all the Republicans and even a number of Democrats were on their feet, applauding and cheering. I looked up to my family. They were beaming.

  When I had finished the address, I turned over the last page of my text and concluded with an extemporaneous and personal note. The Chamber was completely hushed as I said:

  I would like to add a personal word with regard to an issue that has been of great concern to all Americans over the past year. I refer, of course, to the investigations of the so-called Watergate affair.

  As you know, I have provided to the Special Prosecutor voluntarily a great deal of material. I believe that I have provided all the material that he needs to conclude his investigations and to proceed to prosecute the guilty and to clear the innocent.

  I believe the time has come to bring that investigation and the other investigations of this matter to an end. One year of Watergate is enough.

  And the time has come, my colleagues, for not only the executive, the President, but the members of Congress, for all of us to join together in devoting our full energies to these great issues that I have discussed tonight which involve the welfare of all of the American people in so many different ways as well as the peace of the world.

  I recognize that the House Judiciary Committee has a special responsibility in this area, and I want to indicate on this occasion that I will cooperate with the Judiciary Committee in its investigation. I will cooperate so that it can conclude its investigation, make its decision, and I will cooperate in any way that I consider consistent with my responsibilities to the office of the presidency of the United States.

  There is only one limitation. I will follow the precedent that has been followed by and defended by every President from George Washington to Lyndon B. Johnson of never doing anything that weakens the office of the President of the United States or impairs the ability of the Presidents of the future to make the great decisions that are so essential to this nation and the world.

  Another point I should like to make very briefly. Like every member of the House and Senate assembled here tonight, I was elected to the office that I hold. And like every member of the House and Senate, when I was elected to that office, I knew that I was elected for the purpose of doing a job and doing it as well as I possibly can. And I want you to know that I have no intention whatever of ever walking away from the job that the people elected me to do for the people of the United States.

  Now, needless to say, it would be understatement if I were not to admit that the year 1973 was not a very easy year for me personally or for my family. And as I have already indicated, the year 1974 presents very great and serious problems, as very great and serious opportunities are also presented.

  But my colleagues, this I believe: with the help of God, who has blessed this land so richly, with the cooperation of the Congress, and with the support of the American people, we can and we will make the year 1974 a year of unprecedented progress toward our goal of building a structure of lasting peace in the world and a new prosperity without war in the United States of America.

  Back at the White House I found the whole family elated by the reaction to the speech, particularly the ovation that had followed my statement about the eight years of my presidency. Everyone felt that this was a positive sign that there was still a great deal of solid support for me in Congress.

  The State of the Union speech seemed to have a generally positive reception. For a while it even seemed to supply the momentum that I had been seeking to break out of the Watergate morass. New Confident Nixon was the headline in the New York Times.

  I decided to take advantage of this situation while it lasted, and I made several trips out into the country. On February 18 I went to Huntsville, Alabama, where more than 20,000 people gathered for an Honor America Day rally. George Wallace was my host, and he could not have been friendlier. On March 15 I went to Chicago for a televised question-and-answer session. The next day I flew to Nashville for the opening of the new Grand Ole Opry House. Three days after that I held a press conference at the convention of the National Association of Broadcasters in Houston. Inspired by the success of these appearances, and buoyed by the obviously sincere enthusiasm of the people I met, I made a note to myself that I would take my case directly to the country right after the Soviet Summit in June.

  In the meantime Congress, distracted by impeachment, passed only about half the number of bills it had passed in a similar period the year before.

  On December 21, 1973, UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim had opened the Geneva Peace Conference on the Middle East. Syria did not attend, but Egypt, Israel, Jordan, the United States, and the U.S.S.R. sent representatives. On December 22 the initial round of talks ended, with instructions to Egypt and Israel to begin immediate discussions on the disengagement of their forces along the Suez Canal.

  From January 10 through January 17, 1974, Kissinger began what came to be known as his “shuttle diplomacy.” President Sadat had requested that Kissinger help work out the disagreements between Egypt and Israel relating to the disengagement of their troops. Thanks to the success of our earlier policies, Kissinger had become a common denominator for the two countries: a man both sides felt they could trust, representing an administration both sides thought could and would be evenhanded. The opening of these negotiations with Kissinger as
the go-between called for great faith on the part of Golda Meir and for exceptional courage on the part of Anwar Sadat. Kissinger repaid Mrs. Meir’s trust and President Sadat’s courage with a tireless effort to adjust each side’s position until an agreement had been produced that would make a substantial beginning in resolving the differences between Israel and Egypt.

  On January 17 the Egyptian-Israeli troop disengagement was finally achieved. It was a tribute to Kissinger’s enormous stamina, his incisive intellect, and, not least, his great personal charm. It was an even greater tribute because he had to cope with the burden of a President weakened by political attack at home.

  After I announced the disengagement, I called Mrs. Meir. She sounded as if a weight had been lifted from her. “Your statesmanship has played a key role,” I said to her. “It would not have happened except for what you did in October,” she replied. “You and Dr. Kissinger deserve great credit for bringing this about,” I responded. Before I hung up, she added warmly, “Take care of yourself and get plenty of rest.”

  I also called President Sadat. “Congratulations on your statesmanship. I’m looking forward to meeting and working together with you for a permanent peace in the Middle East,” I said. “Thanks to you and your wise guidance, and the efforts of Dr. Kissinger,” he replied.

  ENERGY

  During the winter of 1973-74 America had an encounter with the future. We passed a milestone of national awareness when we recognized for the first time that the bounty of energy resources we had taken for granted for so long was not as limitless as we had once thought.

  This was not something that had happened overnight. The predicament of the 1970s was the result of shortsighted government policies compounded by decades of wasteful habits.

  The United States, with only 6 percent of the world’s population, was consuming one-third of the energy used on earth, and the supply of fuel was getting tight.