Richard M. Nixon

Richard Milhous Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California on January 9, 1913. He grew up in a struggling middle-class household. As a boy, he worked long hours in the family's grocery-gasoline store. Although highly intelligent, Nixon was unable to secure a job with a major law firm or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Practicing law left him unfulfilled, so he tried his hand at various business schemes.

Nixon served in the U.S. Navy as a supply officer in the South Pacific. When he returned to civilian life, he returned to practicing law but soon broke into politics with the Republican Party nomination for his California district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Nixon won the election and then won the 1950 Senate race as well.

In 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969; served 1953–61) selected Nixon as his running mate in the presidential election. They won. Nixon worked hard to make the vice presidency more important than it had been in previous decades, but his relationship with the president was uneasy throughout their eight years in office.

Loses, then wins, the presidency

In 1960, Nixon ran unsuccessfully for president against U.S. senator John F. Kennedy (1917–1963; served 1961–63) of Massachusetts . In 1962, Nixon ran for governor of California and lost. Having served in Congress and as vice president for over a decade, Nixon had simply lost touch with state politics.

After his defeat for the California governorship, Nixon moved to New York City, where he took a job in a leading law firm. By 1968, his years of networking among the Republicans paid off as he was nominated for the presidency. He ran amidst the antiwar movement , a time of great protest during the Vietnam War (1954–75). Nixon's traditional values appealed to socially conservative Americans. He and his running mate, former Maryland governor Spiro Agnew (1918–1996), narrowly defeated Vice President Hubert Humphrey (1911–1978). Nixon became the country's thirty-seventh president.

A presidency of conflict

While he was president, Nixon proposed measures to reform the welfare system, Social Security, the postal service, the military draft, and the tax code. Nixon was also responsible for introducing job-training programs that are still in place in the twenty-first century. But the president's primary concerns were with foreign policy, and he focused his energies there. One key figure of the Nixon administration was Henry Kissinger (1923–), the national security advisor and secretary of state. Kissinger and Nixon worked closely together to develop foreign policy and build the White House staff.

President Nixon found the news media to be untrustworthy, and he did his best not to communicate with the press. In his first four years in office, Nixon held just thirty-one news conferences, compared to Eisenhower's hundred and Franklin D. Roosevelt 's (1882–1945; served 1933–45) five hundred. Nixon relied on his staff to keep him abreast of news and current events, and in doing so, he cut himself off from the American public.

The Vietnam War

Nixon took office while the Vietnam War was in full swing. America's involvement in the war divided the United States, as war often does. Nixon knew there were limits to what Americans would support, and they were quickly reaching the end of their patience with what would eventually be the longest military conflict in American history.

Nixon visited Vietnam in 1969 and met with President Nguyen Van Thieu (1923–2001). He agreed to a policy that became known as “Vietnamization,” in which American troops would be replaced with South Vietnamese troops. America's involvement declined steadily until 1973, when all U.S. troops were withdrawn. While this plan made the president look good to the American people, it actually secured the defeat of South Vietnam because their troops were not big enough or strong enough to fight North Vietnam on their own. But they were not defeated until 1975, by which time Nixon was out of office.

Inflation

War is always hard on a country's economy, and the 1970s were marked by one of the most severe inflationary spirals in history. Inflation is an increase in the cost of goods and services. To add to the problem, oil-producing nations drastically raised prices in 1973, creating an oil crisis. Gasoline rationing began throughout the country as Americans were inundated with an advertising campaign telling them “Don’t Be Fuelish.”

The year 1973 proved a difficult one for the vice president as well. On October 10, Agnew resigned. He had been accused of bribery, tax evasion, and money laundering (from before he was vice president). Nixon chose U.S. representative Gerald R. Ford (1913–2006) of Michigan to replace Agnew.

Relations with China

America's relations with China had been strained over the years for various reasons. When the People's Republic of China split from the Soviet Union, its longtime ally, Nixon saw an opportunity to align with China and shift the balance of power to the West. He relaxed trade controls and allowed tourists to enter China. Nixon visited China in 1972 and was granted a visit with Chairman Mao Zedong (1893–1976), China's ruler. This was a major sign of respect, and Nixon was able to repair nearly twenty-five years of conflict. In addition to an increase in trade that resulted in higher profits for American merchants, the success with China raised Nixon's approval rating with the American public.

SALT talks

America's relations with the Soviet Union were also strained. The Soviet Union was America's main competitor and considered a major threat to peace because of its nuclear arms. In an effort to ward off nuclear war, Nixon sought a lessening of tensions with the Soviet Union. Nixon and Kissinger managed to work with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) and developed two treaties. The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) treaty limited both countries to no more than two antimissile missile sites and to no more than two hundred antimissile missiles. The Interim Agreement imposed a five-year halt on the production of nuclear weapons as well as a maximum number of missiles each country could have.

In 1972, Nixon was reelected president. The progress he had made in foreign relations was largely responsible for his victory, but the good relationship between the president and his public would be short-lived.

Watergate

On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic campaign headquarters at the Watergate, a hotel-apartment-office complex in Washington, D.C. It was later discovered that the crime was committed at the request of the Committee to Reelect the President. The purpose of the Watergate break-in was to place wiretaps on the Democratic headquarters telephones. Nixon endorsed wiretapping and had relied on its illegal use before 1972.

Nixon discussed the arrests over the phone with various White House officials in the days following the incident. His conversation with the chief of staff on June 20 was recorded on tape but was later found to have an eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap, an erasure Nixon blamed on mechanical failure. Another conversation between the men, held on June 23, recorded the president and the chief of staff agreeing to order the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to interrupt the FBI investigation of the break-in. This was a clear order for obstruction of justice, and this conversation tape would come to be known as the Smoking Gun. The five burglars and others who were involved were indicted (formally accused of a crime) by September 1972. At this point, the public was still unaware that the president was involved.

The Watergate scandal continued to haunt Nixon, and in February 1973, a committee was established to investigate the break-in. That same month, Nixon and his counsel, John W. Dean III (1938–), made arrangements to cover up the involvement of the administration. They did this by paying those convicted to stay silent on the issue. One of the burglars indicated that the trial had been fixed through pressure to plead guilty. He implicated Nixon advisers in the crime by saying they gave their approval for the break-in.

Several key White House officials resigned. Nixon fired Dean, who in turn willingly provided documentation proving Nixon's role in the scandal. Nixon maintained his innocence even after it came to light that there were recorded phone conversations that would prove the president's guilt. Although adamant about his innocence, the president refused to hand over the tapes. By late July 1974, the House of Representatives voted to impeach (formally remove from office) Nixon. The transcript of the June 23, 1972, conversation was released on August 5, 1974. Four days later, a tearful Nixon resigned from office.

Post-presidency

Because of his criminal activity, Nixon was disbarred (forbidden to practice law) in the state of New York . He surrendered his other law licenses soon afterward. The former president spent his later years as a statesman who never stopped trying to improve foreign relations, and he even acted as a consultant to successors of both political parties.

After suffering a stroke and falling into a coma, Nixon died on April 22, 1994. He was eighty-one years old.