LAWRENCE AT LARGE: Nixon remains a fixture in American life

Posted 8/5/14

Dan Rather, then the CBS News White House correspondent who had repeatedly clashed with Nixon, surprisingly offered praise, while others dismissed Nixon’s speech for not expressing his regrets and apologizing to the American people.

His …

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LAWRENCE AT LARGE: Nixon remains a fixture in American life

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It was a rainy Thursday on our farm, and while I was interested in a baseball game on the radio, there was something on TV that needed to be seen: The president was quitting.

President Richard Milhous Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, was walking away from the job he had craved for more than two decades. It was Aug. 8, 1974, and Nixon said he would officially resign at noon the following day.

Dan Rather, then the CBS News White House correspondent who had repeatedly clashed with Nixon, surprisingly offered praise, while others dismissed Nixon’s speech for not expressing his regrets and apologizing to the American people.

His departure had been anticipated for days, since he had been battling the growing number of revelations about his conduct in office for nearly a year and a half. It’s gone down in history as the Watergate scandal, but it was much more than that comically failed effort to bug the Democratic National Headquarters.

Nixon had long thought his enemies were out to get him, and his paranoid beliefs had created a maelstrom of trouble. Now his worst nightmares were coming true.

It was an amazing period in American history. In 1973-74, millions of Americans watched the legal process wind through congressional hearings and federal courtrooms. My mother and I were glued to the TV for the Senate Watergate Hearings, which starred the Southern-fried Sam Ervin, a white-haired North Carolina senator right out of central casting.

We used to watch the hearings during the day and catch the repeats that night on PBS. The entire country was Watergate-crazed and as the stories came out, it became like a slow-moving detective story, with the president of the United States as the chief bad guy.

It all ended in the Oval Office 40 years ago this week, with a weary-looking Nixon addressing the American people, saying he had lost political support in Congress — a vast understatement — and would resign.

I watched the speech again last week on YouTube and realized I recalled most of the words.

While some conservatives have talked about impeaching President Barack Obama, claiming he has committed the high crimes and misdemeanors set by the Constitution for removing a president, that seems highly unlikely.

A short tutorial: The House impeaches a president, which is similar to an indictment. The trial is then held in the Senate, which can, by a two-thirds vote, remove the president from office.

Nixon was about to be impeached when he departed. The House Judiciary Committee passed three articles of impeachment and many members of Congress and angry citizens wanted the process to move ahead.

They wanted blood, but Nixon had slipped the noose by resigning.

Two presidents have been impeached: The first was Andrew Johnson, a Democrat who served as Republican Abraham Lincoln’s second vice president. After Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson assumed the presidency but never satisfied Radical Republicans, who sought to remove him office because of his post-Civil War policies.

Johnson narrowly avoided being convicted by the Senate in 1868. One more vote cast against him and he would have been tossed out.

After his presidency ended, he returned to Tennessee and spent six years trying to get back to Washington either as a senator or a congressman. He finally won a special election in 1875 but just served a short time before dying on July 31, 1875.

He is the only former president to serve in the Senate.

The other president who was impeached was Bill Clinton, and that mess is fresh enough in most people’s mind.

A GOP-controlled House impeached him in late 1998 for perjury and obstruction of justice. Basically, the House came after Clinton because of his sordid personal conduct and their stark political differences.

The Senate, also controlled by Republicans, realized Clinton had not met the standard for impeachment. It acquitted him, with some Republicans joining a unanimous Democratic coalition to vote down the two charges.

Johnson and Clinton’s impeachments are viewed by historians as being politically motivated. Nixon, however, is seen as someone who crossed the line into illegal behavior, as proven by the tape-recording system he had ordered installed.

Other presidents recorded their conversations, but none captured themselves planning break-ins, payoffs and the whole litany of the “White House Horrors,” as they were dubbed at the time. When Nixon wept through his farewell address to the White House staff and his loyalists before he waved a final V sign as his helicopter departed from the White House, he seemed a man assigned to the ash heap of history.

Forty years ago, Nixon headed to California to heal his ailing body, which had some close to him worried about his life. He also sought to rebuild his reputation.

Amazingly enough, he was able to do both and ended his life in 1994 as a respected elder statesman who advised presidents.

He moved to New York City, where he attended baseball games and hosted long dinners where he talked politics and history with a collection of politicians, journalists and academics. A cartoon version of him even appeared on “The Simpsons,” albeit as a servant to Satan.

Nixon was always the Dark Prince of American politics. But a more-balanced view is emerging.

With a rush of new books analyzing his presidency and personality, it is evident we will have Dick Nixon to kick around in our collective minds for years to come. His triumphs and travails are under review.

Clinton may have said it best at Nixon’s funeral: “May the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to a close.”

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