Hello, and welcome to Western SIV. In this bonus author interview, I
sit down with historian Paul Carter and talk about his most recent book, Richard
Nixon, California's Native Son. If you're a fan of the show, then
you know I love things that complicate the narrative, and the narrative usually with
Richard Nixon, his Richard Nixon Equal Sign, Watergate, full stop. But
the reality is is that Nixon was a lot more than that, and I
think even in light of recent contemporary politics, he deserves a reevaluation for not
only how he approached some of his mistakes, but also for some of the
really important things that he did both as president and in the years leading up
to being president that put our country on a good path. But I'll let
the interview speak for itself. As always, the link is in the show
notes. If you'd like to pick up a copy of the book, it's
it's available right now. And so, without further ado, here's the interview.
So, as I mentioned just moments ago, I'm sitting down here with
his story and Paul Carter, and we're going to talk about Richard Nixon because
he has a new book out aptly titled in such a way, and I
think, let me tell you at a base level why I like the book.
I like the book because it's not just, you know, Richard Nixon
equals signed Watergate, you know, and full stop, and that's where the
story ends. I think, you know, as we'll kind of talk about
when we get through. As we go through this, there's a lot more
to this person than one incident. And I think even his reaction to that
incident tells us a lot about him. As I was reading the book,
I was kind of reflecting a lot on his character as a person. And
that's a lot of what I want to focus on today with the questions.
But I kind of want to start out by getting our setting be goes.
Richard Nixon is Californian, but I don't know that the California that Richard Nixon
grew up in would be as familiar to people who are listening to this in
twenty twenty three, you know, Can you kind of explain to me what
California was like when Richard Nixon was young and how different that is from our
modern idea, because I think we have to get that to sort of get
the ball rolling. Well. First of all. Thank you very much for
having me on the show. I really appreciate it. And it's a great
opportunity to talk about Richard Nixon's you know, California life. And you have
to remember, you know, if you go to southern California now, which
is where I live, you can go almost from Santa Barbara to the border
of you know, Mexico, and it's just one community after another. But
back when Richard Nixon was born, you know, like Yorba Linda, it
was it was a wide open town and nothing more than a wide open town.
There was three hundred and fifty people in the city of Yorba Linda when
he was seven years old in nineteen twenty. And each of the communities,
whether it be Yorba Linda or Whittier, Pomona, or Pasadena, they were
balkanized in a way where you would have thousands of acres of orchards and wide
open spaces in between those little communities. And the people that inhabited the area
at the time were self sufficient and self reliant, and they were really coming
from the East Coast, which was much more populous, and sticking it out
on their own and had like this independence and self reliance about them, and
that was the culture that he was raised in, which was, as you
noted, so different than it is today. Yeah, And I think I
think it's just important too. It's always important to ground ourselves in history and
in the historical period because you know, when we say southern California today,
people probably picture a very urban environment, and rightly so to a large extent,
that's not the case when he's growing up. And this self reliant idea
is something that as I was reading the book, just kept coming up again
and again and again in my mind of this person who's raised we would think
more today would probably picture someone in like I don't know, Oklahoma, Kansas,
like a small community kind of set tucked away, set back. And
his faith is a big part of that, because a lot of people might
not realize that, you know, Richard Nixon was born Quaker, and that's
that's also extremely unique. So did what did that mean for him growing up
in his early years and how do we see the influence of at least the
faith he was raised in throughout his life and maybe even later in life.
Well, the Quaker faith was, you know, it was really the center
of the social life for young Richard Nixon growing up, everything revolved around the
church. You know. When he was in Yorba, Lnda, his father
built the first church in town, which was the Quaker church that he attended.
And then when he moved to Woodier in nineteen twenty two when he was
nine years old, they ended up out in Eastwoodier, which was out in
the country again, and it was across the street from the eastwood your Friend's
church, and everyone would attend church all day on Sundays, you know,
there was a morning Sunday school with the morning church service. After then in
the afternoon there was Christian endeavor, and then in the late afternoon they had
an evening service which was more akin to a traditional service that you might think
of now. And so much of his his lifestyle traits can be seen in
the way he approached church and was raised in the church. You know,
the morning service oftentimes would be a quiet service for you go in and and
meditate, and the church when it would make decisions, it would require that
it be something. Whatever the decision was, that they talked all the way
through it and then everyone agreed unanimously. So they considered all proposals and really
it was a situation where people weren't afraid to think and express themselves and meditate
in front of each other and you know, analyze issues, which is what
really Nixon was all about throughout all of his life. Everyone talks about how
intelligent he was, and he was, but also being comfortable thinking in front
of others and being comfortable exploring the whole range of issues when you're thinking about
what to do. It's all related back to his Quicker church and his quicker
beliefs, and really the Quicker religion is that you know, there's a spark
of good, a divine light, and every individual, and that every individual
has to make their own decisions and be respectful of others decisions. And it's
really interesting how you see that come up throughout his life. Yeah, the
deliberative nature of Richard Nixon was something that when I read the chapter and we're
talking about his early life and talking about his Quaker faith, and then as
we come back in subsequent chapters, especially when he's trying to decide, I
guess I'll say, his own path, his own way. When he's trying
to decid do I run for this particular office or don't die He's very willing
to solicit advice from the people whose lives matter and who are important to him
in his context, his close family, his friends, his associates. And
he struck me as someone who was willing to listen to the different opinions.
And I saw that coming back from the earlier sections on his faith. So
that is one of the I thought was the biggest takeaways from how he was
raised to think about an issue not just from one side, but from all
sides. I think it's important to remember that with Nixon, especially when we
talk about Watergate later on. But I am interested about him as a person.
You know, he's a modern roughly a modern figure, so we can
talk about how I was as a person in ways that, you know,
I mean, we can't about Charlemagne or I don't know, Caesar Augustus or
someone like that's just not possible. But with Richard Nixon, he seems like
to have been a really impressive, especially young person that I remember the part
in the chapter he got his first job out of law school after just one
real brief interview, Like he must have been someone that you walked away with
feeling like he's made a very good impression. So I wondered if you could
talk about just his personality a little bit. We can stay in his younger
years if we want to to try to keep up the chronological standpoint. If
you look at his whole upbringing, you can see that he had he just
as you mentioned, he had success after that one interview, and that was
really the way he was in his life. He was successful in everything he
participated in, whether it be debate in elementary school. You know, he
was eighth grade class president and spoke at his graduation. He was very active
in high school and in college he was extremely active and very successful. And
then when he was a young lawyer, in addition to getting his job at
Wingerton Bewley, which was the premier lawferman town. He is so dynamic in
so many different ways. In civic opportunities. You know, he's president of
the twenty thirty Club and under his leadership hasn't started largest increases in membership.
Ever. He goes to other service clubs and gives talks. He give talks
on pre election issues or ballot measures. He is Duke Alumni Association president.
He's on the Woodier College Board of Trustees. You know, he's a program
chairman for the Junior Chamber of Commerce. He teaches a course in practical law
a Whittier College. He's really a person that is deeply invested in his community
and volunteering his time in addition to his hard work as an attorney and even
having himself appointed as the Woodier Assistant City Attorney and doing that work in addition
to his legal work. And during that same period, and you know,
when you talk about his legal career and what you're really only talking about from
June of nineteen thirty seven until December of nineteen forty one, so it's really
about three and a half year or four and a half years, and it's
incredibly busy and successful. He went and even went into the frozen orange juice
business, which in the nineteen thirties was a pioneering endeavor. But he you
see a person that's extremely active and extremely engaged in his community and very very
hard work and in diligent and I think he is civically minded. And I
want to draw this distinction here because I don't think there's this sense that I
think sometimes comes out from Richard Nixon of this you know, very sort of
this image of this variation, you know, let's say, shady, almost
machiavellian political worker. And I don't get the sense in these these earlier chapters
when you were talking about his commitment to civic life. I don't get the
sense that this was a box checking sort of ambition driven commitment. In other
words, he wasn't simply doing that delay the groundwork so that he could say
that he did all these things when he ran for office. I got the
sense that he really felt passionately about being connected to civic life and his community.
Do you agree? Could you give me an example? That's what I
came away with. I absolutely agree. And in fact, if you look
at his goals that he wrote when he was in the eighth grade, he
wrote out what he wanted to do in life, and he basically wrote out
that he wanted to graduate from when you're high school and where your college,
and go to law school and become an attorney so that he could be of
some good other people. And he basically lived that goal throughout his life.
And when he was in high school, he started doing a debate on a
competitive level, and he would participate in like the constitutional law rahtorical contests that
were put on by the Los Angeles Times, and he really studied the Constitution
in preparing for those competitions, and he came to the determination that the Constitution
was the finest document struck by the hand of man. And between his desire
to want to be as some good of the people and his high regard for
the Constitution, you see that this is really something in eight with him,
within him that he wants to he wants to work on behalf of others.
If you even look at when he's at Whittier College. Now, Richard Nixon
was known to be very talented musically, and so I'm sure that he was
very rhythmic, but he was not known to be someone that would go out
and dance and like to dance. And when he was at Whittier College,
he was a senior. What are your College didn't allow dancing, and they
were firmly against dancing. There had been a guy in town that was a
bank teller and he tried to start a movement to allow dancing, and the
president of whiti Your College was so incensed with him that he hadn't fired from
his job, and then they ran him out of the church. And then
along comes Nixon in his senior year, and he persuades the school and the
board of trustees to allow dancing, even though he's really not someone that is
into dancing himself, but he knows that his fellow students want to do it.
He knows it's quite frankly and the best interests of the school to allow
it on a local level because the students will go elsewhere and dance. And
it was it's an example of how he's doing something, that he's doing it
for others when he doesn't even have a very you know, it's not like
he grew up a dancer. Yeah, And the point about his reverence for
the Constitution, I think is incredibly important, especially when we come back and
evaluate him later on. But after the end of World War Two, Nixon
runs for office for the first time, I believe in nineteen forty six in
the book, and the takeaway that I got from this section as I was
reading it was, I just kept thinking over and over again, here is
one of these people, one of these human beings who just is unwilling to
lose, and he is going to work so hard to really pull what is
you know, maybe serious upset, but he is he's able to just outwork
all of his all of his contemporaries. I wonder if you agree with that,
and if you could maybe expand on it. So that was that was
what I felt I was reading it. He absolutely worked and earned that that
victory. And you know, the common perceptions of Nixon are that, you
know, he always wanted to be a Northeasterner, and he wanted to be
part of the whole Northeastern establishment, and that he had a chip on his
shoulder because he couldn't he couldn't go to Harvard or Yale, and he went
to a Whittier instead, And that he wanted to get a job on a
New York law froom after graduating from Duke, and he couldn't get an offer,
so he had to return home to lowly Whittier or bitter and disappoint it.
And it's just nonsense. And this campaign in nineteen forty six is a
perfect example of that. First of all, Richard Dixon was offered a job
when he graduated from Duke from a Los Angele, a New York law froom,
and he turned it down. But if you look at his service in
the at the end of World War Two, he's negotiating the termination of war
contract between big business and the government, and he's in New York City.
He's at Lower Manhattan doing it. And he's so successful that he's soon negotiating
the termination of contracts within five hundred miles in New York City. And many
of the men he served in the South Pacific before that with were successful businessmen
in New York City. Probably could have written his own ticket in New York
City when the war ended and just stayed back there where he was already living
at the end of the war. Instead, he chose to come back to
Whittier. And if you look at Jerry vorheis who was the congressman that he
took on. He was a five term incumbent Democrat. He was voted as
having the safest the third safest seat in the House Representatives, and he was
voted best congressman west of the Mississippi. The Republican Party had taken him on
in the prior elections and lost every time and basically washed their hands of the
race against Jerry Orheast because it was a losing proposition. But Nixon comes out
and there was a group that was called the Committee of One hundred that formed
to try and find a candidate that could run against Jerry Vorheas, and it
was basically primarily composed of people from Whittier and some from Pomona and also Pasadena
because the district spread out that throughout that whole area. And they selected Nixon
as their candidate, and he did an audition for it and wanted to run.
And once he decided to take that on, he was just unfailing in
his work ethic and nobody really thought that he had a chance, and he
just went. You know, he had coffee meetings where he would go to
different people's houses and communities and meet for coffee. He went and he called
on all the newspapers in the district and by the end of the campaign,
you know, twenty six of the newspapers in the district endorsed him, and
he challenged Vorheast to five debates. He beat him in each of the five
debates. And these were debates where you know, a thousand people would show
up and they'd have to put speakers in the parking lot for people to be
in the overflow crowd to hear, which you don't even hear of people that
interested today being involved in a congressional race, are interested in a congressional race,
And it was just sheer, hard work and campaigning, and he ended
up even beating Jerry Vorheast and Jerry Vorhees's hometown and Diamond Bar, And it
was just, like you pointed out, that hard work they carried the day.
Yeah. And so then you know, after, you know, serving
successfully in Congress, he winds up, maybe rather unexpectedly, being selected to
be running mate for Eisenhower. That's maybe not expected, But I'm curious as
to you know, what was the thought process that went into Richard Nixon being
chosen as the most I mean them of certainly the running made of the most
famous general to come out living general to come out of World War Two?
And what did Nixon bring to the table that made him a good choice.
When Nixon was elected in nineteen forty six to Congress, he then ran for
reelection, and back in those days, you could do what was called cross
filing, so a Republican could run in the Democrat primary and Democrat could run
in the Republican primary, and that was a typical thing that the candidates would
do. So he actually won re election in nineteen forty eight, by carrying
the Democrat vote, and it gave him an opportunity where he didn't have to
campaign his heart in nineteen forty eight because he really had no significant challenger.
And at that time he was on the House on American Activities Committee, and
you have this whole issue of Alger Hiss and his testimony in front of the
committee and whether or not he had perjured himself, which Richard Nixon proves that
Algier Hiss had perjured himself and apparently had been providing information to the Soviet Union
or at least been a supporter of the Communist Party in America, which up
until that point really was not a big issue. The bigger issue in like
nineteen forty six was running for or providing for GI benefits and dealing with the
poppylation explosion and dealing with the housing crunch. And so that whole issue of
the alger His case really brought Nixon to the national prominence. The Republicans lost
control of the House, and Richard Nixon was faced with do I stay in
the House of Representatives in nineteen fifty or do I try and move on to
the United States Senate. Sheridan Downey was the sitting Democrat senator from California,
and Nixon decided to challenge him in the general election. Helen g. Hagen
Douglas was also a congresswoman from southern California in a neighboring district, and she
decided to challenge Sheridan Downey on the Democrat ticket. She got into such a
nasty fight with Sheridan Downey that he ended up withdrawing from the race, and
there was a tremendous amount of fighting on the Democrat side, and Richard Nixon
came in and most of the Democrats supported him in that race, and he
ended up winning that Senate race in nineteen fifty and the largest landslide of any
Senate candidate in the country, which really brought him to national prominence and showed
how strong he was as a candidate, which put him in Eisenhower's you know
scopes, so to speak. Then they went and they had the convention,
because you also had Earl Warren was the governor of California, and the delegates
really supported Nixon and Eisenhower at the fifty two delegation or fifty two convention,
and all of this together with also you know, general Eisenhower was older at
the time, maybe not compared to today's age of presidents, but back in
those days he certainly, you know, had already had basically a career and
was a hero of World War Two. And so Nixon brought youth, in
vigor and political skills and an incredibly strong work ethic to the ticket. That
was all very appealing to General Eisenhower. And I think what's interesting then is,
obviously Eisenhower emerges victorious Eisenhower and Nixon and win the election. And Eisenhower's
of course gonna win reelection. As I'm sure everyone who's listening to this knows,
but most vps throughout American history are relatively forgettable. Relatively speaking, they
don't do much other than potentially try to use the office as a stepping stone
in most cases, to succeed to the presidency. At some point, I
was struck by how different Nixon was in this role, that he seemed to
see this position as a position from which he could do genuine good right now,
not waiting for his turn, so to speak. And one another the
other areas that I found it particularly interesting, and I'm guessing some listeners will
be surprised by this, but by his civil rights work. Most people probably
know him as sort of the law and order presidential candidate from the seventies,
but his role in the fifties is very different, and I thought fascinating.
So I was wondering if you could talk about that for a second. Nixon
always had from his youngest days a very open mind towards civil rights, you
know, he he he would talk about how as a young man growing up
in a quicker church, there was never any talk of any prejudice or holding
anything against anybody based on the color of their skin or even the there's you
know, whether it was a male or a female. And when he was
at you know, what are your college? And he he was one of
the guys that formed a new society to compete against the existing Franklin's. He
had a teammate on the football team with him that was an African American,
and he invited him to join their new Orthogonian organization. And when he was
in World War Two in the South Pacific fighting with his fellow servicemen against the
Japanese, he was really with a melting pot of people, and you know,
they were Italians, Mexicans, Irishmen, all different people, and he
reflected on how he really saw that everyone was equal and worked together, and
he didn't view he viewed racial issues as a moral problem in addition to a
legal problem, and he didn't view race relations as a political issue in terms
of saying that it was a Democrat or Republican issue. He always looked at
it as a moral issue and what was right and what was wrong. And
so he always was a proponent of advancing the rights of all people. And
he did that as in his services vice president by meeting Martin Luther King Junior
when he was in Ghana recognizing its independence and proposing along with Eisenhower and helping
support the nineteen fifty seven Civil Rights Act and really pushing that through, and
interestingly in terms of women's rights. When Richard Nixon was the elected Vice president,
one of the duties of the vice president was to deliver the different proclamations
and resolutions that are passed by the various states to the Senate floor. And
so he had a lady in his office that had been with him from his
Senate years, and he gave her the duty of delivering these proclamations and resolutions
to the Senate floor, and when she went to do it, the Senate
Sergeant at Arms told her the job had to be done by a man,
and so she came back to the office and she told that to Nixon,
and he got it from his desk, and he walked down to the Senate
chamber and he told the Senate Sergeant at Arms that Loie Gaunt was the woman
from his office that he assigned the task, she was capable of performing the
task, that she was going to be performing that task from that day forward,
which she did. And so he really conducted himself in a way where
he stood for equality of all people. And I think a lot of this
is also just we talked about it at the beginning, but his willingness to
be deliberative, to listen to different people of different sides and come to what
was in many ways sort of a natural conclusion about the capabilities of different individuals
who are more than able to perform these tasks. This jumps forward a little
bit, but as you were talking, I was remembering one of my favorite
Nixon anecdotes to talk about, and again does nothing to do with Watergate,
is actually when he's president after the Kent state shootings that happened because and a
lot of people don't know this, but he went out. There were massive
protests in Washington after words, and he left the White House, went down
and spent really an entire overnight sitting with the protesters and listening to their complaints.
I mean, that's just crazy. You can't imagine a president nowadays doing
that. That would be bananas. I mean, it's very different than some
of the images that we get, But I see this as sort of a
consistent character trade. Wouldn't you agree? Oh? Absolutely? And I also
agree with you that people would look at it as bananas. And you know,
the media really didn't know how to even deal with what he was doing,
and they almost kind of portrayed as him dissembling in front of their very
eyes, whereas it wasn't that at all. It was him recognizing the humanity
of the situation and wanting to, you know, connect with the people and
let them know that he was interested in how they viewed things, and he
was interested in sharing with them how he viewed things. And it was extremely
human of him to do that, and it really was reflective of the way
he looked at life. And you know, another example of him having this
willingness to take a look at different viewpoints that he might not agree with.
You know, he grows up as a Quaker. The Quakers generally are pacifists
and they don't subscribe to participating in war or armed conflict. And although historically
we have had many Quakers, you know, like Nathaniel Green was in George
Washington's army and he was a Quaker, I mean, he was a general
in George Washington's army. But Richard Nixon, as a Quaker, volunteers for
service during World War Two, and in the nineteen sixties, you know,
we still have conscription, we had Vietnam going on, and he heard about
this proposal by a guy named Martin Anderson, which was to have an all
voluntary military really didn't agree with it, but he thought it was interesting conceptually,
and so when he became president, he appointed a study group to analyze
it, and he even appointed a high ranking military person to oversee it that
he thought probably would disagree with the whole idea. And they looked at it,
they studied it, they analyzed it, they really dug into it,
and they ultimately concluded that an all voluntary military force was in our country's best
interests and recommended that to the president, and then he endorsed their decision,
and he brought us the all voluntary military that we now have and ended conscription.
And it started off as an idea that he was not in favor of,
but it shows you that ability to fully analyze issues and bring them to
our country. Yeah. I think that sort of deliberative quality is just it's
not something, at least in contemporary politics that is oftentimes seen as a strength
anymore. If you are debating something, you know, oftentimes that's scene as
what flip flopping or being you know, wishy washy. But for Nixon,
it really was one of his key strengths, at least in my opinion.
Let's go back to the nineteen sixty election, because I think that tells us
a little bit more about him as well, because so he cruises through the
Republican primary, no problem there, and then he's going to face as we
know, John F. Kennedy. All right, John F. Kennedy comes
to the race with baggage, some personal baggage, some things that you know,
some people around Nixon are saying we should take advantage of this, and
he doesn't want to do it, though, And I thought that episode was
really interesting because it told us a lot about Nixon that, again, I
don't think jives with the off presented view of Nixon as the political manipulator,
as the guy for which there is no boundaries and is willing to spy an
opponents and so on and so forth. That's not That's not the guy who's
in nineteen sixty up against JFK. So I was hoping you could talk about
that for a second. Richard Dixon, his core belief was that when it
comes to running for office, the boys seek office to be somebody, and
men seek office to do something. And so he wasn't the type of person
that says I want to grow up and be president to be president. He
wanted to attend the office to accomplish things. And because of the way he
viewed political office and he viewed work, he didn't believe in politics that you
should make personal attacks on people. He believed that you could attack them rightly
for their policy beliefs and their voting record, for example. But like with
John Kennedy, John Kennedy had a lot of back issues and had been in
traction and had you know various treatments through the nineteen fifties. Nixon was quite
well aware of because he visited John Kenny in the hospital. He was pretty
friendly with him. And he also knew that John Kenny's quick Catholic religion was
an issue in the nineteen sixty campaign, but he absolutely forbade people from making
any issue out of John Kennedy's health or his religious beliefs because those were not
policy issues. And it's interesting because when John Kennedy was in the primary against
Lendon Johnson, he made a big issue of Lyndon Johnson's prior heart issues,
and so Kennedy was willing to do something and Nixon wasn't willing to do the
same thing because he did not believe that it was appropriate to attack somebody on
personal issues. He felt that you have to separate personal issues from policy issues
when it comes to running, and he really showed that in that campaign.
And people have attacked him for his various campaigns, but if you actually look
back at those campaigs, he never did engage in the personal attax. He
always stuck to policy. Yeah, and then the boy, wouldn't that be
a breath of fresh air? Nowadays? Is things have changed a little bit
if you're not aware. But so he's not going to do the personal attacks
and he's trying to do something Nixon in nineteen sixty that's hard if you look
back over American political history, which is he's trying to maintain power with one
party, passing it off from one president who's served two terms to someone who's
going to serve another. That's hard. It doesn't happen very frequently in American
politics. So what is Nixon's strategy then? Going into this nineteen sixty campaign.
He really felt that if he campaigned against all or in all fifty states,
that he would carry the day. And a lot of people think that
he made a miscalculation by making a promise to campaign in all fifty states because
it spread him too thin in trying to make sure to cover all fifty states
rather than cover states that he needed to spend more time in. But one
thing that is really interesting about the nineteen sixty campaign, especially in comparison today,
is and it really is reflective of Nixon and his idea of service over
self. Once John Kennedy won, and by the way John Kennedy wins,
what is the closest election in our history, and there was actual evidence of
fraud, and especially in Chicago and Texas that was done in favor of the
Democrat Party. There was an author named Earl Mozo who was a reporter for
the New York Carol Tribune, and he started doing a twelve part series talking
about the election fraud that he personally was uncovering. And he had affidavits and
different proof demonstrating the thousands of votes that had been miss tallied. And we're
talking about an election that was so close that if you change one vote per
precinct it changes the outcome of the election. So this idea of thousands of
votes really is a substantial issue. And Eisenhower wants Nixon to challenge the election
results. Eisenhower's cabinet offers to raise the money to undwrite the legal challenge,
and Richard Nixon called up Earl Maso and he invited him to lunch in early
December, and Earl Maso spent about forty five minutes outlining all this election fraud
that he had uncovered, and Richard Nixon told him, that's really interesting,
And then Richard Nixon spent about forty five minutes talking about democracy in America and
how there was all these fledgling democracies throughout the world, that we're looking to
America as a beacon of light for those countries pursuing democracy, and that America
doesn't have fraudulent election, and that he needed Earl Maso to kill his twelve
part series and that he wasn't going to challenge the election. And Earl Maso,
you know, basically, he said, I thought it was a goddamn
fool and he refused to kill the stories. So Nixon went to his publisher
and had his publisher kill the stories. And then Nixon had the you know,
if you think about Mike Penson, what he went through in the last
election, Richard Nixon was in Mike Pence's situation and had to certify the election
in favor of John Kennedy because he said, it's in our country's best interest
to not have you know, a week president for a year when we're in
the Cold War against the Soviet Union and too many countries depend on our democracy.
And it really is reflective of this person who always grows up with the
idea of service over self and all of his community service, and like you
had mentioned earlier, he wasn't just checking a box to obtain an office later.
It was a way he was living his life, and he believed it
was in our country's best interest, although it probably wasn't in his best interest,
and he undertook the high road, which would be interesting to see today
on many levels. Yeah, sometimes things change over time. But I thought
it was an interesting you know, if you really and you make a great
point, if you really want to look at an election where there's real evidence
of fraud, the nineteen sixty election is where you need to go and no
further. And he's but he makes this calculation that listen, the overall health
of the United States is more important than anything that I would do right now
as president of the United States. And he takes a pass on it.
And I think that tells us a lot about him. And when we come
back to water Get at the end, I'll just ask about that. But
he walks away, He does not challenge the election. So what does he
do after that? He returns to southern California and he starts practicing law.
And there's an interesting dynamic that went on through California during the period of Nixon's
vice presidency, which is that in terms of the powerful California politicians. You
have Earl Warren who's Governor of California. You have Goodie Knight, who's his
lieutenant governor, and you have Bill Nolan who is the Senator from San Francisco,
and they're all strong Republicans. And Bill Nolan's family, I believe it
in the San Francisco Chronicle and powerful California families. Well, Richard Nixon's elected
vice president, Earl Warren is appointed to the Chief Justice of the United States
Supreme Court, Goodie Knight is elevated to the governorship, and Bill Nolan is
President of the Senate. By nineteen fifty two, or as a result of
the nineteen five two elections. In nineteen fifty eight, the Republicans were no
longer in control of the Senate. Bill Nolan was no longer President of the
Senate and he wanted to advance his career, so he decided to run against
Goody Knight for Goody knight'sublic governorship rather than defend his seat. Goodie Knight decided
to run for Bill nolan Senate's seat, and the voters did not appreciate the
swapping of seats there and the Republican Party fractured over what these guys were doing,
and it allowed the Democrats to sweep all the offices in California in terms
of the state wide offices. And so then you have Nixon lose two years
later to Kennedy and he returns home in January of nineteen sixty one to start
practicing law, and the Republican Party comes to Richard Nixon and says, you're
the most powerful Republican in California. You're the only guy that can heal this
party in this state, and we need you to run against Pat Broun for
governorship and in doing so, unite our party. But really what is fascinating
about that election is Richard Nixon said it's the one time in his life that
he ran for office for the office and not for to accomplish something. And
he was doing it to help hill the party and to obtain the office.
And in doing it, because of the voting registration in California, the Democrats
had about a million dollar or a million voter increase over the Republicans. And
so the only way Richard Nixon can win is if he gets every single Republican
to vote for him and a million Democrats in nineteen sixty two, that John
Birch Society is a big issue in California. And the leader of the John
Birch Society basically despises Eisenhower and is highly critical of Eisenhower, and Richard Nixon
is very fond of General Eisenhower, and he's very opposed to the John Birch
Society. And the only way that he can unite the Republicans is if he
doesn't make the John Birch Society an issue. Instead, he declares that he
will not support a new Republican running for office is affiliated with the John Birch
Society, and that Republicans had to make a decision that they were either going
to be Republicans with him or they were going to be with the John Birch
Society. And so he undertook a course where it was impossible for him to
unite the party, but he did it because it was the right thing to
do morally, and he did it knowing what the outcome was going to be,
and the outcome was that he lost. And it's again it goes back
to this whole idea of putting the population in the state of California first,
where it was in everyone's best interest to not be a proponent of the John
Birch Society, and he refused to do it. Yeah, so just another
example of him putting sort of the best needs of the population at a whole
ahead of himself. I'm in time again. Well we're getting close on time.
But I do want to jump forward and ask a Watergate question or two.
And I'm not as much interested in sort of the machinations of what happened
up to and leading to the Watergate scandal. What I'm interested in, and
the question that's always been interesting to me is when we look at Richard Nixon's
legacy, the first word that everybody brings up is, of course Watergate.
But I've always wondered Richard Nixon's decision to resign, which was not necessarily supported
by all of his friends and family. Shouldn't he get some credit for doing
that, because again, it strikes me as a decision that I'm not going
to put the nation through a contentious, potentially painful impeachment hearing that I may
win. Instead, I am going to put the needs of the country first
and resign. I've always thought that he should get a little bit more for
that than he has gotten. But I'm not sure what do you think about
that. It's very interesting because if you look at his presidency in nineteen sixty
eight, our country was so divided. We were at war in Vietnam,
and we had people, you know, fleeing to Canada to avoid service.
Martin Luther King was assassinated, John Robert Kennedy was assassinated, and Richard Nixon's
elected, but he's not elected on a majority. He's elected on a plurality.
And at no time during his presidency did he have a Republican House or
Republican Senate. Yet. You know, here's the first president to go to
Moscow. He's the first president to sign a nuclear arms reduction treaty. He
ends Vietnam, he does the all voluntary military. He believes that clean error
and clean water birthrights every American citizen. He creates the EPA, and he
introduces the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. All five of the
Man Moon missions that landed on the Moon were during the nexton presidency. You
know, he signs Title nine into effect, fundamentally changing women's sports. He
brings women into government. He quadruples the amount of women in management and government.
And he you know, for the first time you have women that are
Secret Service agents and FBI agents and tugboat captains and forest rangers, and he
really opens up the government to women. He tried to appoint Mildred Lilly to
the United States Supreme Court as the first woman in the American Bar Association voted
at eleven to one to say she's unqualified. She happened to be a Democrat,
and she was the longest serving justice on the California Court of Appeal.
She was eminently qualified. And he does all of these things, opens China,
and you know, has a tremendous domestic agenda as well, and is
incredibly successful. He wins reelection in basically the second largest landslide in our history,
five hundred and twenty electoral votes, ninety six point six percent of the
electoral college. And then you have Watergate, and the House and the Senate
are opposed to him because he's never had a Republican House or a Senate,
and he knew he couldn't accomplish anything more. And so instead of putting us
through the long docket of Watergate and a fight for his own self interest,
he walks away from it, and what really I find fascinating about him as
an attorney, where people come to me and tell me things all the time,
and then I have to go look at the evidence. And if you
look at him, he has this recording system which is recording everything that he's
doing. He knows he has the recording system. He knows what they've said
on the tapes. I'm sure he doesn't remember all of it, but he's
the one that's aware of it all. And see it comes out that he
has this taping system. Everyone told him bring the tapes on the White House
lawn, like have a bonfire, destroy everything, and he doesn't. He
refused to. Then the subpoena the tapes, he fights him in court,
but he doesn't destroy anything. He doesn't do anything to hide anything other than
do the court battle. He loses the court battle, then he gives them
the tapes, and the tapes are what are used to then bring the impeachment
charges against him. And and that preservation of that information, which you know
is not going to be beneficial to you, really shows fundamental honesty above all
else. And then the willingness to say it's in our country's best interest to
not have a president on the dock again, you know, for a year
in a fight over this. It's just not our best interest with everything going
on in the Middle East, with what was going on with the Soviet Union.
It's again it's service over herself. And it's so fascinating to me that
for so long people have used these things against him to villainize him, when
all of the evidence has been right in front of us as to it actually
demonstrating the quality of his character. Yeah, I absolutely agree. You know,
what I saw when I was reading, you know, the latter chapters
of the book was someone who was behaving consistently throughout his entire life. He
had always put these moral questions first. And the fact that you bring up
about the reality is that he could destroy the evidence. That would be probably
the only plausible way that he goes down for this, and he doesn't do
it, And that tells us so much about him as a person. You
have to be very committed to honesty to say I'm going to be the first
president to resign the presidency at this point under threat of impeachment, and you
know, that's I think that tells us a lot. But really, you
know, my takeaway from the book was that Richard Nixon, he's he's far
down the list of US presidents often times, but I don't know that that's
necessarily fair. And I also think he's done so many other things, not
just as president. He did a lot as president, as you mentioned,
but did a tremendous amount as vice president. He did a tremendous amount both
in his time in the House and the Senate, did a tremendous amount for
the for the Party. He did everything, and that I think he should
get some more credit for that. Well, we're running out of time.
Is there anything else that you'd like to add? I find that what's most
interesting about Richard Nixon is, you know, we have to answer the question,
is he a villain that God has just desserts or was he an all
American man that had this incredible life but made an incredible miscalculation for which you
know, his legacy has stained and from the evidence that I have seen,
and he is not a villain. And the continued villainization of him really says
more about us as Americans than it does say about Richard Nixon. And we
should really evaluate him and his life in full and all of the accomplishments,
the ups and the downs. Yeah, in many ways he's a very tragic
figure in sort of even just his arc and his life, where one maybe
mistake, one character flaw was the thing that brought him down in the end.
But I think some reevaluation is important, and I also agree with you.
I think sometimes it does say a little bit more about us and how
we behave nowadays than anything that Richard Nixon actually did. Well. Thank you
so much for coming on the show. It was a wonderful conversation. Is
a great book, and I have every every desire and belief that is going
to do extremely well. Thank you so much. It's great speaking with you.
I really enjoyed it.