Being Nixon: A Man Divided (60 page)

But on the subject of Watergate, Nixon finally began to sweat. He accused Frost of taking incriminating quotes from the tapes out of context, which was true enough, but the ex-president came across as defensive and squirrelly. Frost kept after Nixon for an apology to the nation, to go beyond the bland formulation “mistakes were made.” Prodded behind the scenes by some of his own aides to show some remorse, if only to move on, Nixon finally came as close to confessing as he could. He did not concede moral guilt but rather that he had suffered a self-inflicted wound in a political duel. “I brought myself down. I gave them the sword. And they stuck it in. And they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I’d been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.” He was still Machiavelli’s fallen prince, not a sinner redeemed. Even so, he looked and sounded suitably wretched and acknowledged that he had let down the country and that he would carry that burden for the rest of his life.
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About 45 million people watched the first Frost-Nixon interview on May 4, 1977. By the end of the four episodes, more than two-thirds thought Nixon had been guilty of obstruction of justice, but by 38 percent to 28 percent, viewers felt more sympathetic toward the exiled president. Frost later wrote that he was “moved—awed” by Nixon’s tortured, if modified, limited, mea culpa. After the show, he suggested to the fallen statesman that whatever burdens he had been shouldering would be lighter now. “I doubt it,” said Nixon. His enemies would never let up; neither would he.
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Frost-Nixon offered a
brief interruption in the massive undertaking of writing the Nixon life history. For three years, Nixon labored to tell his side of the story. Every morning at about 7
A.M
., he would appear in his office dressed in a suit, white shirt, and somber tie. He would dictate—over a million words—and then trim and edit and argue with his researchers and his chief editorial assistant, Frank Gannon.
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It was a slow, often grueling process.

The researcher charged with handling Watergate was Diane Sawyer. A former “America’s Junior Miss,” Sawyer had gone to Wellesley and quoted Shakespeare and George Eliot in casual conversation. Nixon referred to her as “the smart girl.”
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Gannon recalled that Sawyer would emerge shaken after long sessions with the former president, saying that she felt that Nixon himself did not truly understand what had happened and resisted having to write about it. She tried to educate him and then had to cope with his pained reaction, as he alternately dismissed the scandal as trivial, inveighed against the unfairness of double standards, and angrily fought back—before dealing, grudgingly but dutifully, with the uncomfortable facts. Gannon himself had been delegated by Nixon to read the Watergate segments to the family. Tricia, he recalled, looked strained but understanding. Pat’s lips were pursed and her veins stuck out from her neck. Julie sobbed quietly.
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Gannon was impressed by the depth of loyalty in the Nixon family—and by their almost Victorian reticence and discretion. He recalled: “During the final days of Watergate, it was amazing how little the Nixon family talked about the difficult and embarrassing subjects. At dinner they would talk about mundane things, but then they sent each other notes on pillows or under doors of bedrooms. It was like the Tolstoy house—no one was speaking but everyone was popping little notes.”
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RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
, which became an instant bestseller after its publication in May 1978, is a thoroughgoing thousand-page argument for the former president’s place in history. The autobiography is often tendentious and shaves the facts here and there, but it is also surprisingly personal and revealing, intentionally or not. Reviews ranged from harshly negative to grudgingly respectful. “Informative, explicit, even suspense-ridden,” wrote
The New York Times
.
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By then, Nixon was beginning to sally forth, testing the climate for yet another New Nixon. In 1976, he visited the safest ground of all: the People’s Republic of China, where he was flown to Beijing on a special Chinese airliner and toasted at a banquet in the Great Hall of the People. On July 1, 1978, he sampled another friendly precinct, the Republican blue-collar town of Hyden, Kentucky, where the crowd greeted him with “Nixon Now More than Ever” signs, and he dedicated the Richard M. Nixon Recreational Facility with a tub-thumping patriotic speech. Improbably, afterward he signed a book for the old Democratic prankster, Dick Tuck, who had been sent by
New York
magazine to cover the event. More at home among audiences abroad, he ventured in November 1978 to Britain to debate at the Oxford Union and to dine in a lavish suite at the Dorchester Hotel with former Labour prime minister Harold Wilson. Nixon and Wilson discovered a mutual affinity for Gilbert and Sullivan and sang, while beating time on the table and alternating couplets from memory, all four verses of “When I Was a Lad” from
H.M.S. Pinafore
. Leaving the dinner at 1:30
A.M.
, Nixon remarked to Jonathan Aitken, “Harold sure knows how to make a party go.”
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Gradually, he made peace with most of his former aides. He encountered Kissinger at the funeral of Hubert Humphrey in January 1978. “You as mean as ever, Henry?” Nixon teased. “Yes,” answered Kissinger, “but I don’t have as much opportunity as before.”
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Ehrlichman remained estranged from his old boss, but Nixon reconciled with Haldeman and periodically stayed in touch with Mitchell. On Labor Day weekend of 1979, he gave a birthday party for his old
friend, who had recently been released from prison. He had to be prodded a bit by Colonel Brennan—“He’s been loyal to you, you be loyal to him”—but he gave a gracious toast: “John Mitchell has friends. And he stands by them.”
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Nixon missed the
arena. He did not want to become a slothful retiree playing too much golf. Both Tricia and Julie had children and lived on the East Coast. Feeling isolated at Casa Pacifica, Pat was frank with Julie: “We’re just dying here slowly.”
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In February 1980, the Nixons moved back to New York City. Rejected by the stuffy boards of two cooperative apartments, he bought a brownstone—as it happened, the same one where Judge Learned Hand, patron saint of Elliot Richardson and Archibald Cox, had dwelled for a half-century. Kennedy amanuensis Theodore White lived across the street, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. across the back garden. David Rockefeller was a neighbor.

Nixon had slipped inside the gates of the enemy camp. He relished the coup, creating a foreign policy salon that became a coveted invitation among the prominent journalists and establishment figures who had once scorned him. News anchors, famous authors and pundits, esteemed scholars, publishing tycoons—all felt a little thrill to be greeted at the door by the soft handshake of the 37th president, to hear him reminisce about globe-trotting triumphs and show off his political acumen. “You’d ask yourself, am I really sitting next to Richard Nixon?” recalled a
Time
columnist who was invited twice.
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Nixon, who still worked the phones and could rattle off the names of precinct leaders in obscure congressional districts, loved making electoral predictions, most of which came true.

His dinner parties, usually “stag affairs” (Mrs. Nixon was always absent) every two weeks or so, had a decidedly Chinese motif. He would lead tours of his residence, showing off silks bestowed on him by Chairman Mao. Manolo and Fina had retired and been replaced by a Chinese couple, and the food was often Chinese, though the wines were vintage French.
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Nixon liked to invite journalistic up-and-comers,
particularly from
Time
magazine, on whose cover Nixon had appeared more than sixty times, more than any other figure in history. Michael Kramer, a young political columnist at
Time
, asked Nixon if he could use the phone in Nixon’s study. With a journalist’s nosy curiosity, he looked at the papers lying on the ex-president’s desk: the ever-prepared Nixon had written out, word for word, his small talk as well as his substantive remarks for the evening.
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A regular at these performances was
Time
columnist Hugh Sidey. Generous and genial, Sidey, feeling guilty about having indulged in the Watergate orgy, now pronounced Nixon to be a “strategic genius” in the pages of
Time
. In an oral history, Sidey later recounted his evenings at Nixon’s:

He always has a Chinese dinner in memory of his great moment at the Great Wall. Then after dinner we drank that dreadful Mao Tai. If you’ve been to China you know it tastes like kerosene. Nixon drinks it, one right after another, and he really does get a little bombed. But let me tell you, he is absolutely amazing. In my judgment, he has a better grasp of world power than any man on the scene, except Kissinger.
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The old media establishment softened. In 1984, Don Hewitt of CBS bought ninety minutes of Nixon interviewed on tape by Frank Gannon and aired particularly revealing segments on magazine shows, including the hugely popular
60 Minutes
. In April 1986, Nixon gave one of his no-notes, tour-of-the-horizon speeches to the American Newspaper Publishers Association. The audience was impressed and hooted when he gave his usual one-liner about what he had learned from Watergate: “Just destroy all the tapes.” In the audience was Katharine Graham, the owner of
The Washington Post
. The two old adversaries were photographed sharing a laugh, and Mrs. Graham delivered an order disguised as a suggestion to the editors at
Newsweek
, which she also owned: “Put Nixon on the cover.” A six-page spread was laid out plus another three-page interview with the
“Sage of Saddle River.” (Nixon had moved from New York City to a spacious estate in New Jersey, fifty minutes from downtown, where his four grandchildren could play.)
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At the last moment, the editors tried to bump him off the cover for a news story, but Nixon, relishing the chance to play hardball, threatened to cancel the interview. The cover story ran with the memorable headline: “He’s Back: The Rehabilitation of Richard Nixon.”
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Nixon
was
back, at least on the op-ed pages of the major papers and the TV network interview shows, where he was treated more respectfully than he ever had been as a politician or president. There were, of course, a few awkward or uncomfortable moments. In the spring of 1982, Diane Sawyer, now the coanchor of the
CBS Morning News
, asked him on air if he thought about Watergate when he was “just sitting alone.” “Never,” Nixon growled. “No….I’m not going to spend my time just looking back and wringing my hands about something I can’t do anything about.” Nixon understood that his former aide had to show off her independence; still, he felt betrayed and inwardly hurt, according to Jonathan Aitken, the British member of Parliament who had become close to Nixon.
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Such cracks in the facade were rare. Nixon’s extraordinary ability to pick himself up and get moving, to
not
brood, even as he harbored old slights, sustained him. He would not be exiled; he would not sulk on Elba overlooking the sea. With his love of the big play, the surprise attack, he simply chose to move in among his afflicters and play their game. The ex-president wasn’t just putting up a brave front for television. He did not talk about Watergate with his family, either. “He looked forward, not back,” recalled his son-in-law Ed Cox.
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And yet, the inner Nixon, the boy who found it hard to be loved or to show his love, was never hidden very far away. From time to time, Leonard Garment, Nixon’s law partner during the wilderness
years in New York and the White House lawyer who most urgently counseled him not to burn the tapes, called on Nixon at his office in Manhattan at 26 Federal Plaza. “Nixon liked to shmooze with me about politics,” Garment recalled.

He was always hospitable, announcing his views with, well, Nixonian authority. One of these meetings (I think the agenda was the Middle East) went on for two hours. Nixon was terrific, not only full of powerful insights but unusually warm and funny. When we finished and walked out the door, I made my goodbye very personal—something like “You know, I really miss you.” This was a mistake. Nixon literally shuddered. He walked away from me and took a position behind his desk, head down, his face working painfully as I took my embarrassed leave. It was a trip-wire revelation of Nixon’s memories of unrequited friendships, of disappointment, abandonment, personal loss, and, of course, death.
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Nixon remained the loner in the crowd, seeking in the faces of others some mirror of his worth. He returned a few times to Bohemian Grove, the annual summer camp of the establishment in the California Redwoods. Darrell Trent, a former White House aide, found the former president sitting alone in the amphitheater, listening to the orchestra practice. Nixon told Trent that he had been up that morning at 7
A.M
. going between the various camps in the Grove. “Really freaked them out,” said Nixon. He was in a playful mood. “Watch this,” he said. He got up and went to sit in the orchestra. Before long he was mugging with a saxophone.

One evening, Nixon ran into Brook Byers, a founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Nixon asked Byers what he had been doing in school back in 1970. “Protesting Cambodia,” answered Byers. Nixon looked at him and asked, with a kind of naked sincerity, “Do you hate me?”
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