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Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon
Order:37th President
Term of Office:January 20, 1969 - August 9, 1974
Followed:Lyndon Johnson
Succeeded by:Gerald Ford
Date of BirthThursday, January 9, 1913
Place of Birth:Yorba Linda, California
Date of Death:Friday, April 22, 1994
Place of Death:New York City, New York
First Lady:Thelma "Patricia" Catherine Ryan[?]
Political Party:Republican
Vice President:

Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 - April 22, 1994) was the 37th (1969-1974) President of the United States. He is the only President to have resigned from office. His resignation came in response to the complex of scandals called the Watergate conspiracy.


He attended Whittier College (a Quaker school), graduating second in his class, and Duke University Law School, where he received a full scholarship. He served as a noncombatant officer in the US Navy in World War II; and was elected to Congress in 1946, in a class of freshman war veterans that included his future rival John F. Kennedy, of Massachusetts.

Nixon climbed the ladder swiftly, making his name as an anti-Communist[?] and a rough, no-holds-barred campaigner. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives from California in 1948 where he became a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee and was instrumental in the trial of the ex-government official Alger Hiss for perjury as a part of the accusation that he was a Soviet spy.

Nixon was elected to the Senate in 1950, and in 1952 was elected Vice President on Dwight Eisenhower's ticket when he was only 39 years old.

One notable event of the campaign was Nixon's innovative use of television. Nixon was found to have been financed by a slush fund provided by business supporters. He went on TV and defended himself in an emotional speech in which he stated that his wife Pat[?] did not wear mink, but "a good Republican cloth coat" and stated that although he had been given a cocker spaniel[?] named "Checkers", he was not going to give it back because his daughters loved it. This broadcast resulted in a flood of support that required Eisenhower to keep Nixon on the ticket.

As Vice President, Nixon journeyed to South America and was praised for his courage in facing angry mobs protesting US foreign policy.

Nixon was notable among Vice Presidents in having actually stepped up to run the government three times when Eisenhower was ill: on the occasions of Eisenhower's heart attack on September 24, 1955; his ileitis[?] in June 1956; and his stroke in November 1957.

In 1960, he ran for President on his own but lost to John F. Kennedy, ironically a friend of Nixon's. (Kennedy was one of the first to congratulate Nixon when he was chosen as Eisenhower's running mate!). A crucial factor in his loss was the first televised presidential debate. Nixon refused television makeup and was feeling sick, having injured his knee on the way to the studio. He expected to win voters with his foreign-policy expertise, but people only saw a sickly man sweating profusely and wearing a gray suit that blended into the scenery while his rival, Kennedy, looked great. Later research showed that those who had listened to the debate on radio thought Nixon had won, but that the television audience gave the win to Kennedy.

In 1962, he lost a race for Governor of California. In his concession speech, Nixon stated that it was his "last press conference" and that "You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more". The defeated mood did not last. He moved to New York City and worked as a high-powered lawyer and in the election of 1968 completed a remarkable political comeback by defeating Hubert H. Humphrey to become the 37th U.S. President.

Nixon appealed to what he claimed was the "silent majority" of moderate Americans who disliked the "hippie" counterculture. Nixon also promised "peace with honor" by his "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War. He proposed the Nixon Doctrine to establish the strategy to turn over the fighting of the war to the Vietnamese. The war ended ignominiously during Nixon's term, but only after four more years of strategic bombing and defeat on the ground, and the withdrawal of US troops, leaving the battle to the South Vietnamese army.

On January 5, 1972 Nixon ordered the development of a space shuttle program.

Major initiatives during his presidency:

On January 2, 1974 Nixon signed a bill that lowered the maximum US speed limit to 55 MPH in order to conserve gasoline during an OPEC embargo.

Nixon was eventually investigated for the instigation and cover-up of the burglary of the Democratic Party offices at the Watergate office complex. His secret recordings of White House conversations were subpoenaed, and revealed details of his complicity in the cover-up. Nixon, however, was named by the grand jury investigating Watergate as "an unindicted co-conspirator" in the Watergate Scandal. He lost support from his own party as well as the country in the Saturday Night Massacre[?] in which he ordered Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor[?] in the Watergate case fired, as well as firing several of his own subordinates who objected to this move. The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee opened formal and public impeachment hearings against Nixon on May 9, 1974. Rather than face impeachment by the House of Representatives and a conviction by the Senate, he resigned effective August 9, 1974. His successor, Gerald R. Ford, issued a pre-emptive pardon, ending the investigations.

In his last years, Nixon managed to rehabiliate himself somewhat and gained respect as an elder statesman in the area of foreign affairs and was consulted by both Democratic and Republican successors to the Presidency. Further tape releases, however, removed all doubt as to Nixon's involvement, both in the Watergate cover-up and the illegal campaign finance and intrusive government surveillance that were at the heart of the scandal.

Nixon died on April 22, 1994, at the age of 81 from complications related to a stroke and was buried beside his wife Pat Nixon[?] in the grounds of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California.

The Nixon Library contains only Nixon's pre and post-Presidential papers as his Presidential papers have been retained as criminal evidence. Nixon's attempts to protect his papers and gain tax advantages from them had been one of the important themes of the Watergate affair. The library is unique in that it is privately funded; other presidential libraries receive support from the US National Archives[?].

Table of contents

Pepsi Prior to his political career, Nixon was a lawyer for PepsiCo.

Major Legislation

Supreme Court appointments


  • "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore. Because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference." 1962 after losing race for Governor of California.
  • "This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely." (concerning the Apollo Moon landing)
  • " I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well I'm not a crook." November 17, 1973 Televised press conference at Disney World, Florida.
  • "When the President does it, that means that it's not illegal." (explaining his interpretation of Executive Privilege)
  • "Well, I screwed it up real good, didn't I?"
  • "I don't know a lot about politics, but I do know a lot about baseball."
  • "Solutions are not the answer."
  • "I would have made a good Pope."
  • "Let me say this about that."
  • "I don't give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else, if it'll save it, save this plan. That's the whole point. We're going to protect our people if we can." (to Haldemann, tapes ordered released for the trial of Haldeman[?], Ehrlichman[?] and Mitchell)
  • "I recognize that this additional material I am now furnishing may further damage my case," (after the ordered release of the White House tapes August 5, 1974)
  • "Sock it to me?" (said by Nixon on the television comedy series Laugh-In)

Nixon in the media

Richard Nixon has appeared as a character, both major and minor, in a variety of movies:

Related articles

Further reading

  • For an interesting discussion of Richard Nixon, see the chapter, "The Birth of Culture', pages 257-289, Cultural Selection: Why Some Achievements Survive the Test of Time - And Others Don't, Gary Taylor, Basic Books, hardcover, 325 pages, ISBN 0465044883

External links

Preceded by:
Lyndon Johnson
Presidents of the United States Succeeded by:
Gerald R. Ford


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