I finished volume 2 of Richard Nixon's memoirs. Nixon's memoirs
actually end with Nixon leaving the Presidency, even though they were
written a few years after that. I wonder if that is a pattern with
presidential memoirs: to cover the events in a President's life from
birth to the end of his Presidency, without talking much about what
happened after the Presidency. I suppose that I could overturn my room
and find the memoirs of Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan just to find out,
but I don't want to do that!
I have two items for today's post:
1.
Although H.R. Haldeman (who was no longer Nixon's aide in an official
capacity) recommended that Nixon pardon those who were involved in
Watergate while also granting amnesty to those who dodged the draft
during the Vietnam War, Nixon chose not to do so. Regarding amnesty for
draft dodgers, Nixon did not explain his opposition to that in my
latest reading, but I did read somewhere that he was opposed to granting
them amnesty because he thought that would be a disservice to the
Americans who did go to Vietnam to fight. On Nixon's refusal
to pardon those who were involved in Watergate, Nixon justifies his
position by saying that he was hoping that his resignation would be
healing to the country, and that pardoning those who were involved in
Watergate would have the opposite effect due to its potentially
controversial nature. One could argue that Nixon was saving his own
skin, while leaving those who were involved in Watergate in jail to
rot. But, at this point, at least, Nixon was aware that he was not home
free, for he could still be prosecuted after leaving office. But Nixon
said that perhaps he could get some good writing done in jail, as Lenin
and Gandhi did!
2. There were a lot of tears in my latest
reading. Some did not particularly care that Nixon was leaving office,
but there were others who cared deeply. The Speaker of the House told
Nixon that he was not happy to see him go, and Nixon reflected that the
two of them actually entered the Congress in the same year, in 1947!
Nixon
quotes from his farewell speech to his staff. I especially liked the
part where Nixon said that he was lucky to have passed the bar, since
the examiners thought that his writing was so poor! Even if that was
the case, I'd say that his writing improved vastly by the time that he
wrote Six Crises, for his writing is quite clear and engaging.
You can watch Nixon's farewell speech to his staff here, and the moving dramatization of that event in Oliver Stone's Nixon here.
I remember this speech being in TV Land's top 100 TV moments, and one
lady on that said (as I remember) that this was one of the few times
when Nixon opened up. It's a good speech about Nixon's family, about
keeping up hope even when things are going badly, and about not giving
in to hate. While the movie dramatization has powerful music, the real
footage of the event is even better, in my opinion, on account of the
tears in Nixon's eyes as he says good-bye.
The next book that I will read and blog through will be anti-Nixon. Stay tuned!