Richard Nixon

Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 - April 22, 1994) was the 37th (1969-1974) president of the United States. He is the only president to have resigned from office. His resignation came in response to the complex of scandals called the Watergate conspiracy.

He attended Whittier College and Duke University Law School; served as a noncombatant officer in the US Navy in World War II; and was elected to Congress in 1946, in a class of freshman war veterans that included his future rival John F. Kennedy, of Massachusetts.

Nixon climbed the ladder swiftly, making his name as an anti-Communist and a rough, no-holds-barred campaigner. He was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1948 where he became a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee) and was instrumental in the exposure of US State Department official Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy.

Nixon was elected to the Senate in 1950, and in 1952 was elected Vice President on Dwight Eisenhower's ticket when he was only 39 years old. One notable event of the campaign was Nixon's innovative use of TV. Nixon was found to have been financed by a slush fund provided by business supporters. He went on TV and defended himself in an emotional speech in which he stated that his wife Pat did not wear mink, but "a good Republican cloth coat" and stated that although he had been given a cocker spaniel named "Checkers", he was not going to give it back because his daughters loved it.

In 1960, he ran for President on his own but lost to John F. Kennedy. A crucial factor in his loss was the first televised presidential debate. Nixon refused television makeup and was feeling sick, having injured his knee on the way to the studio. He expected to win voters with his foreign-policy expertise, but people only saw a sickly man sweating profusely and wearing a gray suit that blended into the scenery while his rival, Kennedy, looked great. Later research showed that those who had listened to the debate on radio thought Nixon had won, but that the television audience gave the win to Kennedy.

In 1962, he lost a race for Governor of California. In his concession speech, Nixon stated that it was his "last press conference" and that "You won't have Nixon to kick around any more". The defeated mood did not last. He moved to New York City and worked as a high-powered lawyer and in 1968 completed a remarkable political comeback by defeating Hubert Humphrey to become the 37th U.S. president.

Nixon's appeal was to the "silent majority" of moderate Americans who disliked the "hippie" counterculture. Nixon also promised "peace with honor" by his "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War. The war ended ignominiously shortly after Nixon's term, but only after four more years of strategic bombing and defeat on the ground, and the withdrawal of US troops, leaving the battle to the South Vietnamese army.

Major initiatives during his presidency:

• Re-establishment of diplomatic relations with China and the Soviet Union as part of Realpolitik, a program of realistic politics. Nixon made famous visits to both nations. Nixon's partnership with Henry Kissinger was an essential part of this success.
• Establishment of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
• Establishment of the Drug Enforcement Administration.
• "Vietnamization": the slow withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam.
• Space Shuttle program started.

Nixon was eventually investigated for the instigation and cover-up of the burglary of the Democratic Party offices at the Watergate hotel. His secret recordings of White House conversations were subpoenaed, and revealed details of his complicity in the cover-up. Nixon, however, was named by the grand jury investigating Watergate as "an unindicted co-conspirator". He lost support from his own party as well as the country in the Saturday Night Massacre in which he fired Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor in the Watergate case. When the US House of Representatives voted impeachment, Nixon had run out of options and resigned rather than be convicted (and lose his pension). His successor, Gerald R. Ford, issued a pre-emptive pardon, ending the investigations.

In his last years, Nixon managed to rehabiliate himself somewhat and gained respect as an elder statesman in the area of foreign affairs and was consulted by both Democratic and Republican successors to the Presidency. Further tape releases, however, removed all doubt as to Nixon's involvement, both in the Watergate cover-up and the illegal campaign finance and intrusive government surveillance that were at the heart of the scandal.

Nixon died on April 22, 1994, at the age of 81 from complications related to a stroke and was buried beside his wife Pat Nixon in the grounds of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California. The Nixon Library contains no Nixon Presidential papers, as they have been retained as criminal evidence.

Major Legislation

Supreme Court Appointments

Inaugural Addresses:

• Inaugural Address
• Previous President: Lyndon Johnson
• Next President: Gerald R. Ford
• Vice Presidents: Spiro Agnew (who was elected with Nixon, but resigned because of his own scandal prior to Nixon's), Gerald R. Ford (appointed to replace Agnew)

• U.S. presidential election, 1952
• U.S. presidential election, 1956
• U.S. presidential election, 1960
• U.S. presidential election, 1968
• U.S. presidential election, 1972