To understand Watergate, to understand the fall of Nixon, you need to look first at the rise. How the turbulence of his sky rocketing career left bruises and bitternesses that lingered. Don's guest today is Professor Nicole Hemmer whose latest book is "Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s". She takes Don on a journey into the psychology and politics of the most fascinating President of them all.Produced by Freddy Chick. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast.
Chapter 1: Who was Richard Nixon and why study his rise?
Es ist der 27. April 1994 in Yorba Linda, Kalifornien, tief in Orange County. Präsident Bill Clinton spricht an den Memorial Services seines Voraussetzungsvorsitzenden, dem alten Präsidenten Richard M. Nixon. Er beantwortet eine begründete Begründung von Dignitarien, verehrten Gästen und Medien, außerhalb der modesten Heimat, in der Richard Nixon und seine Brüder geboren wurden.
A small, white, wooden kidhouse, ordered by mail from a catalog, built by his father, who assembled it piece by piece on their lemon farm. One can imagine the scene. Richard Nixon as a young boy, his face gazing out of the tiny window of the attic loft bedroom he shared with his brothers, now a short distance from where his casket rests today, draped with an American flag.
Clinton, die Haus, der Kaskett, alle verkleidet von einem mächtigen Ochtree, der sich an die enormen Reise des Jungen im Fenster erinnert. Was würde Richard Nixon in diesen vielen Jahren passieren, als die Leber auf diesem Tiefen geflogen und geflogen und wieder geflogen?
Die vielen Saisonen, als er alt wurde, dann in der Krieg, in der Kampagne für den Kongress, in die Welt geflogen und dann in die höchste Office in der Welt geraten, nur um in Schmerzen zu fallen. What do we make of the man that boy became, now that he's gone? Who was, after all, the real Richard Nixon? Hallo alle, ich bin Don Wildman und ihr hört sich zu American History Hit an.
Willkommen zurück zu unserer Präsidenten-Serie, als wir heute Nummer 37 erreichen, Richard Milhouse Nixon aus Kalifornien, der zweimal in der Office gewählt wurde, von 1969 bis 1974, als er infamöserweise verabschiedet wurde, den White House an seinen Vizepräsidenten Gerald Ford übergeben hat. These were the late 60s, early 70s. Heady times in America. NASA landing on the moon.
Hippies tuning in and dropping out in Haight-Ashbury. Vietnam and Woodstock and Charles Manson. Draft cards being burned along with women's brassieres as soldiers marched on Kent State University firing real bullets. In New York, the twin towers of the World Trade Center rose up as the city teetered toward financial collapse.
Marvin Gaye crooned What's Going On, while Walt Disney conjured a new fantasy land in Florida. And the Supreme Court decided in favor of a woman's right to choose, if only temporarily. This was the age of the movie blockbusters, at once sublime, terrifying and absurd. The Godfather, The Exorcist, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And against this boggling backdrop was the Nixon presidency.
Those of us alive at the time have very personal feelings about the man, given the length and breadth of his very public career. The arms jutted up in victory, his consternation under duress, the famously sweaty upper lip. His love of country, his sense of duty was so clear, yet at the same time it seemed obscured by behavior that was grandiose and sometimes paranoid.
Who was Richard Nixon is a question we'll attempt to answer today with Professor Nicole Hemmer, political historian at Vanderbilt University, host of the This Day podcast, whose latest book is Partisans, the conservative revolutionaries who remade American politics in the 1990s. Greetings, Nikki. Welcome to American History Hit.
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Chapter 2: What were Nixon's early life and humble beginnings?
In Los Angeles one day, I used to live out there, I went to the Nixon homestead in Yorba Linda, drove myself down there to come to terms with the guy, because I grew up with this man. I remember walking through that impossibly modest kit house that he was born in. I mean, it's tiny, a postage stamp house. And then you come out and there's the plot with Pat Nixon right there.
And the helicopter that carried him out of the White House at the end. It's hard to conceive that such a life and career could possibly sprout from such simple roots.
And that arc, right, from that tiny little place in Yorba Linda to the final ignominy of his resignation from office. He grew up in poverty. He was raised by his two parents. His mom was a stay-at-home mom. He was raised as a Quaker and was deeply steeped in religion when he was growing up. But he was somebody who was scrapping from the very beginning.
Who believed that he was destined for bigger things and who couldn't necessarily immediately see a path out. And so he was intent on making a path out of Yorba Linda onto a bigger stage.
He grows up in a, we say Yorba Linda, in those days, this is Orange County for a reason. This is citrus country in those days. His dad was a lemon farmer to start with, ends up owning a gas station and all of that. But This was very much a rural countryside place that he grows up in and how he identifies himself. Whittier is right nearby. It's the Quaker College down the road.
He goes there and then he goes on to Duke and that's when his life starts to grow up. But it's really important to register the fact that he comes from this modesty.
Very much so. And that's the thing that he's always struggling against. When he enters that East Coast world, when he starts to become part of that East Coast elite, he thinks about Whittier and where he came from and how much he has to prove himself. And that sort of metastasizes into something more than just a drive.
For sure.
It definitely gains some edges of paranoia and vengeance by the time he becomes president. But Whittier is always with him.
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Chapter 3: How did Nixon's anti-communist stance shape his early career?
If you're going to cover up, he says, you're going to get caught. And if you lie, you're going to be guilty of perjury. Basically, that's the whole story of the Hiss case. It's not the issue that will harm you. It's the cover up that will be damaging, which is so much the case with Nixon's career that things resonate forward, don't they?
Es ist definitiv ein Fall von intensiven Vorstellungen. Das würde natürlich das Cover-Up werden, ein großer Teil von Nixons Geschichte, wenn er Präsident ist. Aber an der Zeit, wie wiederum, ist es das Opportunismus. Es ist, dass man kann, dass man kann, dass man kann, dass man kann, dass man kann. Ich bin zurück mit mehr amerikanischer Geschichte nach diesem kurzen Break.
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I'm going to keep repeating this throughout this conversation. Nixon is so much a part of bigger themes that we are still experiencing today. He is part of the famous resurgence of conservatives in the 1950s. After decades of FDR, New Dealism has been in charge through the war and all the rest of it. Now, in the 1952 election, famously, the conservatives come forward.
They have both houses and the White House Nach der 52-Elektion, es verändert sich nach der 54-Elektion. Aber das ist ein sehr wichtiger Punkt, dass das beginnt, dieses Ding, das wir wirklich noch Teil davon sind, was Teil 2 des 20. Jahrhunderts ist, das in den 21. Jahrhundert gespült wurde. Deshalb ist es wichtig, Nixon zu verstehen.
Absolut. Und wenn Sie den Weg von Nixon nachschauen, wie wir ihn machen werden, werden Sie sehen, wie der Cold War-Konservatismus, der noch in 1952 ein außerirdischer Bewegung war. So viel des Cold War-Konservativen-Bewegungs würde Eisenhower ausdrücken, weil er fühlte, als würde er nicht weit genug gehen.
Aber wenn Sie Nixon im Büro sehen, sehen Sie einen viel stärkeren, viel mehr tiefen, in den Republikanischen Partei-Konservativen-Bewegung. Und Nixon ist dafür verantwortlich. He's chosen in many ways in 1952 because of his red-baiting credentials, because he's seen as somebody who's more to the right than Eisenhower is.
And over the course of his career, he's going to chart a path through a more conservative Republican Party and arguably by the 1970s, a more conservative country.
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Chapter 4: What was the significance of the Alger Hiss case for Nixon?
Natürlich ist der große Teil, er hat den Kitchendebat mit Khrushchev. Das ist im zweiten Termin der Eisenhower-Administration. Tell me how his vice presidency affected his larger career. What did he learn as a VP?
Eine der Dinge, die Sie erwähnt haben, waren seine extensiven Außenreise. Außenpolitik war wirklich das Brot und Butter von Nixons politischen Karriere. Es war die Sache, über die er gebraucht hat. Es war die Sache, über die er all seine Zeit gelesen hat. Er verstand internationale Politik. Er war wahrscheinlich besser als irgendein Präsident im 20. Jahrhundert.
Und das betrifft jemanden wie Eisenhower, der der Alliierte Supreme Commander in Europa war. Er war jemand, der Weltpolitik verstanden hat, aber Nixon verstand es philosophisch und auf einem viel tieferen Niveau. Das wird seine Karriere formen.
But the other thing that shapes his career is, again, that antagonism between Eisenhower and the Cold War conservative movement, because it functionally tars Nixon as what the right called a MeToo-Republican. Somebody who was just going to go along with the New Deal and with liberal ideas and wasn't actually going to be a staunch defender of the conservative philosophy.
And so that puts him at odds pretty early on with the right. And that is a relationship he is going to have to then pay lots of attention to for the next 15 years.
Sure. He is an internationalist. He is a globalist by today's definition. Very much so. He believes in our role and our place because he was a big Marshall Plan guy. He voted for it, just like everybody else did in those days. He saw the responsibility of the United States post-World War II as being, you know, straightening things out.
And we were going to have to thrust ourselves onto that world stage to do it.
He saw US international power, whether it was soft power, whether it was money, whether it was the military, as absolutely essential to fighting communism. And so he is going to be insistent that the US is fully involved on the world stage. And that, too, will be a big part of his presidency.
But you said the key point, fighting communism. It wasn't a good, you know, he wouldn't want to sidle up with people until he does. That's what's going to be weird about it. He's going to sit down and have tea with Mao and it's going to be weird in 1972. But anyway, backing up. So he runs against Kennedy in 1960. This is a good moment to discuss his psychology. Haha. How it has evolved.
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Chapter 5: How did Nixon use the Checkers speech to save his political career?
And that idea that something was taken from him, that somebody else is responsible for his failures, is going to be a strong through line over the next few years of his life.
Well, it's only reinforced by the fact that he runs for the governorship of his own state and loses there, you know, to another sort of cabal, the Browns, all of that world. And that's when he makes his famous declaration, you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.
Er sagt, nach diesem Kalifornien-Verlust, November 11, 1962, ich erinnere mich an meine Eltern, die darüber gesprochen haben. Das ist, als die Leute gesagt haben, dieser Kerl ist einfach bitter. Er hat eine ganze dunkle Qualität zu seiner Persönlichkeit, die ein bisschen seltsam ist.
Es war ein seltsamer Moment. Er hatte die Nacht vorher verloren. Natürlich war es schmerzhaft für jemanden, der Vizepräsident der Vereinigten Staaten war. Aber er hat nicht wirklich geschlafen und er hat nicht geschlafen. Und so ist er ein bisschen enttäuscht und er geht runter, um mit den Medien zu sprechen. I'll be back with more American History after this short break.
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He enters into the wilderness years of his career, 62 to 67-ish, during which time he travels more. He goes to Europe, Asia, Latin America, Middle East. He's got to be playing chess here. This is a fascinating period I don't know much about because it's just not publicly discussed very often what happened to him between 62 and 67.
A big moment is, of course, Goldwater, you know, and the election or the non-election of Barry Goldwater, which had to have been a school unto itself.
It's a huge moment. And if you want to get a sense of whether Nixon was already aiming for a comeback, the 1964 election is a pretty good moment to look for. Because Goldwater, who's an Arizona senator, is nominated by the Republicans, the furthest right candidate they had ever nominated, backed by this new Cold War conservative movement. And when Goldwater gives his speech,
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Chapter 6: How did Nixon's role as Vice President under Eisenhower influence his politics?
Chapter 7: What does Nixon's rise tell us about the conservative movement in America?
Aber Nixon geht auf den Kampagnen-Trail.
Oh, for Goldwater.
For Goldwater. He goes out there and he starts stumping for him. He does the work that needs to be done by the party. He proves himself to be a loyal Republican. And then even, you know, Goldwater loses in a landslide, but Nixon will continue to go out and he will campaign for
In the 1966 midterms for all of the Republicans across all of the House races and Senate races, he's putting in the work for the party. And the reason he's doing that is because he can imagine a comeback. And he is racking up a lot of IOUs from all of these politicians who he's out there stumping for.
But at that point he would be imagining himself going against Lyndon Johnson, who's kind of another Senate buddy, you know. But he would be doing it in the anti-government stance, which is the part of Goldwater that he adhered to, right?
Yeah, it's something that he leans into by the time you get to the build-up to the 1968 run. He says that he learns from the Goldwater campaign that you can't win with just conservative votes, but you also can't win without them.
Yes.
And he takes that lesson and he folds it into his political approach as he is eyeing, potentially running against Lyndon Johnson.
He is a chess player. I mean, let's get it straight. Richard Nixon is a very smart man. I mean, really smart guy. And so he can see things other people can't. And he's a chess player at this point in American politics because of all the different movements that are happening here. And I just really want to point out the fact that he sees the importance of the center.
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