Nixon, Richard Milhous

Nixon, Richard Milhous (b. 9 Jan. 1913, d. 18 Apr. 1994). 37th US President 1969–74 The only President ever to be forced to resign from office on threat of removal by the Senate. Born of Quaker parents in Yorba Linda, California, he attended a Quaker school and studied law at Duke University. He served in the US navy in World War II. Nixon began a career of Republican elective office-holding marked by a highly effective if negative campaigning style and patriotic, anti-Communist rhetoric in 1946, when he was elected to the US House of Representatives. He became prominent as an anti-Communist campaigner and a leading congressional prosecutor of Alger Hiss. Nixon was elected to the Senate in 1950, aged 36. His slashing campaign against his liberal Democratic opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas (whom he nicknamed the ‘Pink Lady’) earned him the sobriquet ‘Tricky Dicky’, which he could never quite shake off.

He became Eisenhower's running mate in 1952, but narrowly avoided removal as the vice-presidential candidate following revelations that he took large sums of private money to supplement his congressional salary. The speech in which he defended himself was noted for its innovative use of TV, then a new medium. He served as Vice-President until 1961, and worked hard at broadening his base within the Republican party to ensure more moderate support. In 1960 he lost a very close presidential race to John Kennedy and returned to California, where he was defeated for the Governorship in 1962. Declaring his retirement in a bitter speech, he moved to New York to practise law whilst continuing to travel the USA campaigning for Republican candidates and building up personal support.

He re-emerged in 1968, following Johnson's withdrawal from the race, to be elected President with a plurality of votes, against a deeply divided Democratic Party. In office, he issued a new price and incomes policy, devalued the dollar, and thus ended the Bretton Woods system. He created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, and promoted civil rights, albeit with less rigour than Johnson. In trying to fulfil his pledge to obtain ‘peace with honor’, by widening the Vietnam War he tried to force the North Vietnamese leadership into submission by saturation bombing in Cambodia and Laos. When this failed, he reluctantly agreed to end the war in 1973. He initiated a new round of disarmament talks with the Soviet Union which led to the SALT I agreement. Similarly, he recognized the People's Republic of China and opened diplomatic relations with it. This did not mean that his anti-Communism had diminished, as he very successfully undermined the Allende regime in Chile. He won a landslide victory in the 1972 presidential election. Revelations about his paranoid and possible criminal behaviour consequent upon the Watergate scandal forced him out of office. President Ford subsequently gave him an unconditional pardon, but the Watergate scandal and his resignation had profoundly shaken the authority of government. Nixon's re putation recovered gradually during the 1980s, amidst a resurgence of Republicanism and a re-evaluation of his political achievements.