Nixon: The Comeback

He’s baaack, thanks to a spate of books, movies, and in an unvarnished version now playing at the Nixon library in Yorba Linda. But how will the former president’s image change now that it’s in the hands of historians and scholars?

by Patrick J. Kiger

What better evidence do you need of an incipient revival of interest in Richard M. Nixon, Orange County’s favorite-son president, than that his retired cinematic double, the esteemed Richard M. Dixon, is planning a professional comeback? “I’ve been getting some calls,” says the actor-comedian, who according to the Internet Movie Database has appeared as President Nixon in eight movies, including such low-budget ’70s-era classics as “Presidential Peepers” and “The Faking of the President.” “That’s after I hadn’t gotten any in years.”

Like Nixon’s small-but-determined cadre of diehard political loyalists, the late president’s satirical doppelganger still revels in the halcyon days of the Nixon administration, when he could drive down to La Casa Pacifica, Nixon’s Western White House in San Clemente, and Nixon’s security detail would come out to joke with him. “Henry Kissinger and I got to be friends,” he recalls with some wistfulness. “I raised $11 million for Israel when I did a benefit with Golda Meir. I told the ushers to block the exits, and not let people out to go to the john unless they signed a donation pledge. And I did commercials. A Nixon voice-over; I got it in one take. That was after David Frye had 35 takes and couldn’t get it right. Mine was superb.”

The president’s resignation in 1974 was as painful for Dixon as it was to Nixon loyalists. “I was out of a job, too,” he says. But now, 34 years later, things are on the upswing.

We’ve heard these rumblings before—remember those “He’s Tanned, Rested and Ready: Nixon” T-shirts that periodically resurfaced at Republican national conventions?—but there are other signs pointing to a genuine Nixonian resurgence. Director Ron Howard’s movie version of the smash Broadway drama “Frost/Nixon,” based on the late president’s celebrated 1977 interview with British TV host David Frost, is scheduled to hit the theaters this year. A cable-TV miniseries based on Nixon’s infamous White House tapes also may be in the works. The past year and a half also has seen an assortment of major new scholarly tomes on Nixon, including Margaret MacMillan’s “Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World,” and Rick Perlstein’s “Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America,” which highlight the influence that Nixon’s legacy still exerts upon current events.

And last year, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, which had existed since 1990 as a privately financed, privately run stronghold against critical historians and investigative journalists, officially became part of the National Archives system of presidential libraries. Now, plans are under way to transfer Nixon’s presidential trove of 44 million documents—seized by Congress in 1974 to prevent Nixon from destroying evidence of lawbreaking—to a new building in Yorba Linda by 2010.

What’s more, the library’s new director, historian and author Timothy Naftali, has embarked upon an ambitious program to remake the library into a trendy Internet-age tourist attraction and a staunchly nonpartisan institution catering to scholars of all persuasions. Already, Naftali has dismantled the infamous Watergate exhibit that portrayed Nixon as victim of a Democratic vendetta, and has invited speakers such as Nixon’s journalistic arch-nemesis Carl Bernstein, the sort of visitor that Nixon partisans once vowed to bar from the premises. In June, the library even staged a reprise of the 1971 “pingpong diplomacy” match between the U.S. and Chinese national teams that served as a curious precursor to Nixon’s historic visit to China the following year.

But in this new era of Nixonian détente, what will happen to the much-contested public image of Yorba Linda’s most famous resident? Will the lofty, visionary statesman of his admirers win out over the malevolent dirty trickster and conspiratorial paranoiac so familiar to his detractors? Or, when exposed to the light, will the strange duality of Tricky Dick morph into a more nuanced—or perhaps even more enigmatic—portrait?

It’s strange to think that Nixon’s 1974 departure by helicopter from the White House lawn was seven presidencies ago. It’s stranger still to think that the scene recently was reenacted at the library in Yorba Linda for “Frost/Nixon,” with Tony Award-winning actor Frank Langella, whose previously best-known role was Dracula, mimicking that last, somber double-V gesture. But even after his death in 1994, Nixon never really went away. Not in a literal sense, of course (though the security guard who once reported a luminous green mist hovering over the former president’s gravesite and strange noises emanating from the Watergate exhibit at night might disagree). Instead, Nixon’s spirit looms large over recent history and current events.

“Richard Nixon is one of the two or three dominant figures of the last half of the 20th century,” says University of Wisconsin historian and law professor Stanley I. Kutler, who boasts that he’s been ferreting out Nixon’s secrets for more than 20 years. “He’s everywhere, like Zelig. From the time he’s elected to Congress until his death, he had our attention. I think that people who remain interested in that period can’t help but find him fascinating. Some see him as a hero, while others find him loathsome—but that’s what makes him even more interesting. He arouses a powerful reaction, and nobody is neutral about him.”

At the same time, others say, the generations who came of age in the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush II years are rediscovering Nixon, and not just seeing him as a distant historical figure. Rutgers University historian David Greenberg, author of the 2004 book “Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image,” sees Nixon being looked to as a primary progenitor of 21st century events and controversies.

“For a while, it seemed that Reagan had displaced Nixon as the most important conservative figure of the 20th century, but I think the pendulum is shifting back to Nixon,” he says. “People are starting to recognize that it was Nixon who really started a lot of the trends that we’re seeing today, from the anything-to-win mentality in Republican politics to the idea of attacking the ‘liberal’ media. And while I don’t think that George W. Bush’s behavior in office is as bad as Nixon’s or that he should be impeached, I think there’s a general recognition that Bush has Nixon in his DNA. A lot of the people around him—Rove and Cheney and Rumsfeld—all got their start with Nixon. So it’s natural that their political style should recall Nixon and lead us back to him.”

John Taylor, a former Nixon aide who now is executive director of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace Foundation, also sees the late president as having plenty of relevance to today. “I’m amazed by the number of Richard Nixon comparisons and parallels—favorable and unfavorable—which are made each week by commentators and politicians,” he says.
The analogies aren’t confined to conservative figures. Taylor points to a recent Huffington Post essay that suggested parallels between Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s comments about working-class Americans being bitter about their economic circumstances and Nixon’s construct of a “great silent majority” that supported his policies. “The commentator was granting President Nixon some absolution by way of doing so for Sen. Obama—just a small irony,” Taylor notes. “And yet an important quality Mr. Nixon brought to the presidency was an instinctual understanding of the yearnings and character of everyday Americans.”

It may have been easier for Nixon to understand ordinary Americans than for people to understand him. More than any other modern president, Nixon intently sought to control how he would be perceived by history, an effort that continued in his post-White House years and was carried on by Nixon family members and a dedicated cadre of loyalists after his death. For decades, the pro-Nixon forces struggled fiercely against all comers—or at least, the ones perceived as having a liberal, anti-Nixon agenda—over control of Nixon’s presidential papers, secret White House tapes, and other materials, all of which had been impounded by Congress after Nixon’s resignation. Nixon waged a long and ultimately unsuccessful court battle against public release of his documents and tapes, and also sought compensation for the material (a claim that his heirs ultimately settled for $18 million in 2000).

At the same time, Nixon’s supporters raised $25 million to build the library and museum at his birthplace in Yorba Linda, which opened in 1990. It was an institution that, for years, had the ignominious distinction of being the only presidential library in the nation with no presidential documents in its collection, though it did have papers from before and after Nixon’s White House years. What the library lacked in scholarly substance, it made up for in hagiography. Visitors, for example, could gaze at a collection of Time magazine covers on which Nixon appeared, or hear a recording of Nixon humanizing himself by reminiscing about being a young hepcat in pre-suburbanized Southern California. (“I have often thought that if there had been a good rap group around in those days I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics,” he said on that recording.) And of course, there was the infamous exhibit that presented a peculiar, alternative-universe version of the Watergate scandal, in which Woodward and Bernstein bribed sources and engaged in grand jury tampering, and the infamous 18½-minute gap in a White House tape that “could easily have been caused by a mechanical malfunction.”

The library’s first director, Hugh Hewitt, didn’t help its reputation by proclaiming that researchers would be screened for the ideological slant of their proposed projects. “I don’t think we’d ever open the doors to Bob Woodward. He’s not a responsible journalist. … President Nixon’s always been a Republican, he’s always been partisan, he’s always stood for certain things,” Hewitt told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. “It would be far more of a taint to let the premises be used indiscriminately by groups who oppose everything he worked for.” (After howls of outrage from journalists and academics, Hewitt backed off the policy.)

Critics saw the library as a sort of Nixonland theme park, designed to obfuscate Watergate and the other less savory parts of Nixon’s presidential saga, and replace them with a sanitized version of events. Nixon loyalists, in turn, perceived a vast left-wing conspiracy to besmirch the good name of a leader who achieved a history-changing diplomatic breakthrough with China and founded the Environmental Protection Agency. Taylor, who succeeded Hewitt as director, argues that historians’ criticism of the library over the years was over the top. The library “was friendly to its president, but no more so than museums at publicly funded libraries,” he insists. “As for access to the Nixon White House records, they’ve been under the control of government archivists for years, and we’ve done everything we can on the family and foundation side to speed their opening. In any event, what governs historians’ thinking and conclusions is the quality of their own discernment and the extent of their own open-mindedness, not the Nixon Library’s.”

Over the years, the seemingly irreconcilable conflict morphed into a stalemate studded with vitriolic recriminations and multiple lawsuits, not to mention a split between Nixon’s daughters, Julie Eisenhower and Tricia Cox, who reportedly disagreed about whether the library should remain a family-controlled museum or, as Eisenhower wanted, morph into a nonpartisan institution run by a professional staff of historians. After feuding in California and Florida courts over control of a $19 million behest by longtime Nixon pal Charles “Bebe”

Rebozo, the sisters reconciled, with Eisenhower’s vision for the library finally winning out.

Eventually, to borrow a catchphrase from Nixon himself, peace with honor was achieved. After extensive lobbying by the Nixon family and Gerald Ford, Nixon’s hand-picked presidential successor, the 2004 GOP-controlled Congress repealed the legal restrictions on custody of Nixon’s presidential documents. A year later, newly appointed National Archives and Records Administration head Allen Weinstein got in touch with Taylor, and the two met in Washington and Yorba Linda to work out an agreement under which the National Archives would take over running the library in consultation with the Nixon foundation, the library’s exhibits would be revamped, and the Nixon papers eventually would be moved to Yorba Linda.

Given the bad blood that had developed, it’s not surprising that the latter part of the deal prompted protests from historians, including 16 prominent scholars who wrote to members of Congress, asking them to block the transfer. And despite Taylor’s pledge that the Nixon camp wouldn’t try to obstruct access to potentially embarrassing information about Nixon—“Because we believe that the full picture about the president and his times resides in those records … let the chips fall where they may,” he told the Los Angeles Times—some remain suspicious.

“Nixon wanted to control his papers, while he was alive,” historian Kutler said. “He and his friends believed the tapes and the papers would exonerate him. Of course, we know this is not true. The opening of the tapes and papers have only solidified the case against his criminal behavior. I know that historians and others will continue to plow through the papers, listen to the tapes, and find endless things new and old to say about him. But exoneration? I am confident that will not happen.”

Those fears notwithstanding, Naftali, who officially became library director last summer, proclaims a new era of non-ideological openness in Nixonland. “One of my roles here is to be an honest broker,” he says. “My goal is to ensure, as best I can, transparency and accessibility, and to let other people make up their minds. I’m here to make sure the facts are accessible, that we have big-tent programming, and that everybody feels welcome here” regardless of their political philosophy or how they feel about Nixon. “As for promotion of the Nixon legacy, that’s what the Nixon foundation does.”

To that end, Naftali has ambitious plans to remake the library’s museum presentations. The much-maligned Watergate display already has been consigned to a trash bin; in its place, he hopes to unveil this summer a Watergate exhibit 2.0, which will feature big-screen videos of oral history interviews with John Dean, Alexander Haig, Len Garment, and other figures in the scandal. “We believe it’s really important to have them tell their stories,” Naftali says. “You have to remember, 15-year-old visitors don’t have any memory of Watergate. They’re meeting these people for the first time, and hearing what they remember of Nixon is a way to create a human connection to the events. In addition to some of the secret White House tapes, we’re also going to have TV news coverage from that era, which we think will bring home some of the excitement and anxiety that Americans felt during the 1973 Saturday Night Massacre—you can see how breathless the journalists were as they reported it, how people worried about what it meant for the country when the president fired the special prosecutor. One of the big challenges for historians is to try to convey the feel and texture of an era, what it was like to be alive then. We’re going to do that.”

Naftali plans another new multimedia exhibit focused on Nixon’s post-presidency and his impact on the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s.

Will that openness possibly in-fluence America to take a more nuanced, or even sympathetic view of Nixon? “It’s a great question, and I leave that to others to answer,” Naftali says. “I’m really interested in public history, which has a love of debate and discussion. I think it’s important that the library be a place with no particular story line, where we make the material available so that people can come in and judge the president for themselves.”

But the national love-hate relationship with Nixon may never be fully resolved, and further insights may make his rise and fall even more puzzling. For his part, even Nixon’s professional double feels conflicted. “I loved the guy, of course,” says Richard M. Dixon, who’s embarking on a speaking tour, as soon as he returns from China—a trip that he’s making not for diplomacy, but to get a stem-cell treatment for ataxia that’s not yet approved in the United States. “I did think he was too conservative, a bit stodgy, especially compared to someone like me, who lives to talk and act and tell jokes.” But in retrospect, he thinks that the rap Nixon got for Watergate and other indiscretions may need rethinking. “Next to George W. Bush,” Dixon quips, “Nixon is looking like a great president.”

Patrick J. Kiger is an Orange Coast contributing writer and co-author of  “Poplorica: A Popular History of the Fads, Mavericks, Inventions, and Lore That Shaped Modern America,” (Harper-Resource) and “Oops: 20 Life Lessons from the Fiascoes That Shaped America” (Collins).

Related links:

http://nixonarchives.gov/

http://www.nixonlibraryfoundation.org/index.php?src=

Nixon at the Movies

He didn’t have the matinee-idol profile of John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan’s actual Hollywood pedigree, but when it comes to having movies made about him, Richard Nixon deserves a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He’s been portrayed in more than 20 films, ranging from docudramas, including the upcoming “Frost/Nixon,” to wacky teen comedies. Here are some of the most—and least—memorable performances.

“Tricia’s Wedding” (1971) 
Kreemah Ritz, better known as a member of the transvestite troupe the Cockettes, appeared in a rare non-drag role as the president in a low-budget spoof of the Nixon daughter’s White House nuptials.

“Blind Ambition” (1979) 
In this eight-hour TV miniseries based on former White House counsel John Dean’s tell-all, Rip Torn delivered an uncharacteristically low-key performance, though his mimicry of Nixon’s body language was eerily realistic.

“Where the Buffalo Roam” (1980)
Nixon look-alike Richard M. Dixon (real name James La Roe) suffered the ignominious fate of being hosed down with a fire extinguisher by gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson (Bill Murray).

“Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy” (1982) 
In this auto-biopic about the Watergate burglary mastermind, Nixon didn’t appear onscreen, however impressionist John Byner did his voice.

“Secret Honor” (1984) 
Offbeat director Robert Altman cast a then-virtual unknown, Philip Baker Hall, as a post-resignation Nixon delivering a 90-minute soliloquy on his life and career into a tape recorder. Critic Roger Ebert raved about Hall’s “savage intensity,” even though many of the fictional Nixon’s shocking revelations—
for example, that Marilyn Monroe was murdered by the CIA—were pure fantasy.

“The Final Days” (1989)
Lane Smith, more recognizable as Daily Planet editor Perry White in the ’90s TV series “Lois & Clark,” played Nixon in this made-for-TV retelling of the Woodward-Bernstein book. The former president reportedly was offended AT&T sponsored the movie and switched his long-distance service to MCI.

“Nixon” (1995) 
Director Oliver Stone cast Anthony Hopkins, best known for his role of cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter, in the title role. That tells you something about the slant. As Nixon once reportedly said of Stone’s 1991 conspiracy-fest “JFK”: “Why would you give Oliver Stone $7 of your money?”

“Kissinger and Nixon” (1995)
In this made-for-cable opus, Beau Bridges was painfully miscast as an in-over-his-head president who spent virtually all his screen time offering up cocktails and spouting football trivia.

“Elvis Meets Nixon” (1997) 
Bob Gunton’s Nixon was, in the words of one reviewer, “a stoop-shouldered, jowl-jiggling buffoon.” But the Nixon-Elvis duet on “My Wild Irish Rose” is definitely worth catching.

“Dick” (1999) 
Dan Hedaya as a dyspeptic Nixon with pet issues (“Checkers, shut up! I’ll feed you to the Chinese!”) —P.J.K.