Two columns, from very different standpoints, related to the 50th anniversary of President Nixon resigning from office. To read each full column, follow the link embedded in each headline.
Speechwriter Khachigian shows a redeemed Nixon, the man (Aug. 7):
When word got out 50 years ago this Thursday that President Richard Nixon would that night be announcing his decision to resign, speechwriter Ken Khachigian furiously hung up the phone on Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein. Khachigian, who later became a favorite speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan and a legendary California political consultant, had argued until the very end that Nixon should keep fighting.
In a book released last month about his experiences with Nixon and Reagan, Khachigian essentially continues fighting for the former’s reputation. Khachigian remained a confidant of Nixon for years after his presidency, and he recounts vignettes that provide for Nixon some humanizing redemption. (The memoir, Behind Closed Doors: In the Room with Reagan and Nixon, spends even more time on Khachigian’s interactions with Reagan, who comes across as grandly likeable as ever, but that’s for another column.)
For those of us who are no fans of Nixon on the grounds of both ethics and policy, Behind Closed Doors erases at least part of the memory of a cynical, brooding figure. Instead, it reintroduces a post-presidential version somewhat like the more engaging, pre-1960 rising pol…
What Watergate meant to this ten-year-old, at the time (Aug. 9): On this, the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon resigning the presidency, forgive some reflections of a personal rather than third-party nature…. look at the resignation, preceded as it was by lots of evidence of Nixonworld’s perfidy of various sorts, through the eyes of the 10-year old that I was at the time….
What emerged, in my 10-year-old mind, was a lasting lesson: Even on one’s own “side,” one should keep ever vigilant for error or corruption. The only way to avoid disaster for one’s own side is to self-police. And, because I naturally believe (as do most people) that my side has the answers best for the nation’s greater good, a disaster for my side is a bad thing for the nation’s greater interests because it means the wrong policies — harmful policies — will be implemented.
Watching Nixon fall was a hard lesson that neither side has a monopoly on virtue or an immunity from vice….
