Posted on 08/09/2014 5:41:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
During his farewell remarks in the White House East Room on August 9, 1974, President Richard Milhous Nixon told the truth.
Nixon remains a controversial and tarnished historical figure. But his impact on America was significant. Only Franklin Roosevelt’s name appeared on as many national ballots (five). His presidency, though now remembered by many for the way it ended, was actually filled with great achievement and success in many ways. Nixon was a brilliant visionary.
But he also had a weakness.
It was a failure to tell the truth that became Nixon’s undoing. The highly publicized tapes of what he thought would remain private conversations revealed that shortcoming. Nixon really did have enemies, but he later acknowledged that he was the one who gave them the sword to use with relish.
Forty years ago this weekend, I was a few days away from beginning my first year of college and was finishing up a summer job at a Taylor, Michigan menswear store. I asked my boss if I could leave a bit early on August 8th, and he asked me why. I told him that I wanted to watch the President’s speech. I made it home just as the living room clock chimed nine times. The image of President Nixon came on the screen, and he began: “Good evening. This is the 37th time I have spoken to you from this office.”
My mother was crying. Mom and Dad were Nixon people since voting for him when he was Vice President under Eisenhower. I was an “Alex P. Keaton” type of kid who often defended Nixon to my high school teachers. Fortunately for me, the summer of 1974 began and school was out by the time I finally realized that Watergate indeed involved Nixon, saving me from a litany of condescending voices saying, “I told you so.”
However my interest in Nixon, his work and legacy, did not end when he waved, flashed a victory sign, and got into Marine One on the White House lawn. I wrote about him in graduate school, and years later had the privilege of writing some for his library in Yorba Linda, as well as doing some of the voice-over work that continues to be used in a few exhibits there.
As we note the 40th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation, I think it’s what the man said to his staff and other assembled guests that continues to resonate with me. It was an unusual address for someone who was a master at extemporaneous speaking.
Among the gifts and passions possessed by the 37th President of the United States was a love for the English language. He was a wordsmith and actually quite good at it, in spite of the fact that his White House staff included a stable of excellent speechwriters. Not since Woodrow Wilson had a president been so involved in writing his own speeches. And Nixon never used a teleprompter.
When Nixon spoke that Friday morning, just after signing his resignation letter for Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, there were about 300 people in the East Room. I watched it on television, along with millions of others.
His remarks were at times rambling and mawkish. His tone wasn’t defiant like when speaking in 1962 after losing the race for Governor in California, when he talked about not having him to “kick around” anymore. But it was somewhat painful to watch.
After talking about mountains, valleys, young people, his “Old Man,” and his saintly mother, Mr. Nixon shared words that are worth remembering no matter what our lot in life. They were likely among the most self-aware words Nixon ever uttered in public:
“Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.” [Emphasis added]
In a very real sense, Richard Nixon explained Watergate in that moment. He was a man with the capacity for greatness, one of the smartest men ever to hold the nation’s highest office. But he wrestled with a very common problem: Unresolved anger.
I could be wrong, but I wonder if that day, as Nixon was talking about his Quaker mother, he wasn’t remembering something she had most certainly taught her gifted son. It was what Jesus said, “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” [Matthew 5:44].
..........hmmmm......I reread the post I commented on and read for the first time the post he/she was presumably commenting on and I still don’t read into it any sarcasm and I sure don’t “see” a “sarcasm” tag.
If that was indeed his intention then so he it and I thank you for taking the time to point it out.
Excellent link at post #4—Something they never bothered to include in the history books—and that’s the ones we used to have.
Nixon was a brilliant pro-American in foreign policy and a complete liberal schmuck on domestic policy but the number one thing I think of when I think of the Fall of Nixon is: without Watergate, there might not have been a Jimmy Carter. Without Jimmy Carter, there might not have been a Ronald Regan.
So the Downfall of Richard Nixon is not one of those things I’ll be targeting for change when I perfect my time machine.
Richard Nixon made a number of poor decisions while in office, including his appeasement of a dem held Congress that left us with new alphabet agencies that now terrorize us. That said, I’d take old Dick in a New York second over the filth that now soils the White House.
Some lib talking points are so inane they require no sarcasm tag
What wrong with that Picture notice all way to 43 LOL!
I see Obama wearing headdress never mind
Maybe, but I think the title meant more that Nixon was representative of the America of his day:
The title of my book is One of Us, and the publisher, for example, was puzzled by that -- a lot of people have been. But I maintain that Richard Nixon is one of us because I think in all of our character there's good and there's bad, and depending on circumstance, depending on events, depending on pressures, the good dominates or the bad dominates -- not necessarily all the time, but as things happen. I think Richard Nixon is one of us in that sense, that sometimes the well-known dark side of his character has dominated and sometimes what Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature" have dominated.
See more at: http://www.booknotes.org/Watch/17444-1/Tom+Wicker.aspx#sthash.6OYrlCGi.dpuf
When people get older they may realize that they share an outlook and a common human nature with contemporaries that they disliked and disagreed with in earlier days.
Lol, I can usually pick up sarcasm in the first few words, but not this one.
it was sarcasm-
what all NEWSSSS org. have to say is Nixon was Evil-
Even if they try to frame “Something nice”
It will always come out- ALL republicans are Evil-
Do not vote for Them-! another list:
1. Jimmy Carter- greatest humanitarian in the world
and Nobel prize winner!
2. Barak Hussein O’bummer- Greatest orator of our time-
and a nobel prize winner!
3. Bill Clintooon- Rhoady scholar and smartest guy
married to the smartest women in the world.
4. Vice president -Al gore- cheated out of being president
And nobel peace prize winner!
Everyone should vote democrat
sarc
Got it!
Thanks!
To me, it can mean only one thing, that Nixon really was like the NY Times liberal columnist, meaning he was a liberal. And if you look at Nixon's policies, he was a big government guy through and through. The only policy difference with the liberals, was that Nixon was an anti-communist, while liberals just considered communists to be "liberals in a hurry". Another phrase from the day was that "there were no enemies to the left". Every conservative or even moderate could be considered a political enemy, but not a socialist, marxist, communist or other statist.
Nixon engendered the hatred of the elitist liberals back when he was outing communists in the government and went after Alger Hiss, the epitomy of "one of us". Nixon was also declasse, a nobody with a nothing background and definitely not an alum of one of the right schools.
What else could Wicker mean by "one of us"?
Don’t forget “no child left behind”.
It sounds pretty shallow and tinny if it's just a statement about ideology. That may be part of it, but I think it's more this:
What Wicker sees in Nixon--and what he believes the American public saw--is "one of us." Forget that John F. Kennedy beat Nixon in 1960. For Kennedy--the handsome, charming millionaire's son--beating Nixon should have been easy. Kennedy was the nation's "romantic dream of itself." That Nixon, who represented a "harder and clearer national self-assessment," came so close to winning (and in fact probably did, but for some vote-rigging in Chicago) is the real story, Wicker suggests.
In Nixon, the middle-class son of a saintly mother and a loud, nasty, Black Irish father, Americans saw "themselves as they knew they were . . . working and scheming without let to achieve their dreams, soured by the inequities of life." Asks Wicker: "Which of us in the national rush to get ahead has never cut a corner or winked at the law?" Businessweek
This sort of thing happens with reporters and politicians. After their fighting days are over, they can look at each other in a different light.
So sure, sometime in the 2020s a liberal reporter will write something like that about George W. Bush (not Paul Krugman, though, who's close to autistic). It may be that he sees some good in Bush's policies, but I think it's more that he sees that the human story is more interesting and maybe even bigger than the ideological one.
You may be right. I haven’t read the book. I’m making assumptions based on the fact the author was a NY Times columnist. You don’t get there by writing human interest stories. Also, liberals always play up popular conservatives, once they are dead and can’t respond, that current conservatives aren’t like the sainted Goldwater or Reagan. It’s all political with liberals and it’s all based on hatred of the normal.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.