European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - May 1, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse Vice president Nixon guides sex president Truman through their old Senate stomping grounds in 59. To j the Nixon and Eisenhower at the Republican convention at Chicago in july 1952. Up vice president Spiro Agnew with Nixon before the president s flight to Midway Island in june 1969. British prime minister Harold Wilson welcomes the president to 10 Downing. In february 1969. A a Nixon on a High note in his presidency while campaigning in Texas for re election in 1972. Visiting Queen Elizabeth and behind Prince Philip Princess Anne and Prince Charles in 1969,with Nixon by Frank Rich the new York times like More than a few americans of my generation i Learned to despise Richard Nixon around the same time i Learned to recite the pledge of allegiance. Yet now nearly 40 years later an America without Richard Nixon seems inconceivable and unimaginable an emptier place. When the stroke hit it was possible not Only to Root for him to live but to feel genuine loss at the Prospect of his death which came april 22. Not because he can be likened to his hero Theodore Roosevelt or even his unenthusiastic ticket mate Dwight Eisenhower. Far from it Nixon was the historical Black Hole into which the higher dreams of the assassinated Kennedy Brothers and Martin Luther King or. As a cultural archetype who inspired and inflamed the american imagination for half a Century Richard Nixon was a giant right up there with Billy the kid citizen Kane and moby Dick. No wonder he drove major writers like Norman Mailer Philip Roth and Robert Coover to imaginative feats. Reading Gore Vidal on Nixon is Akin to Reading Shaw on Shakespeare. A in Nixon we arc Able to observe our faults larger than life a Vidal wrote in 1983. A the turned being a big loser into a perfect Triumph by managing to lose the presidency in a Way bigger and More original than anyone else had Ever lost it the faults that defined the Nixon character in elude hypocrisy paranoia cynicism spite ulness and self pity. 1 open Bartlett a to the Nixon entry and you will not find Many patriotic epigrams but lines like a you wont have Nixon to kick around anymore Quot and a Well in a not a Crook Quot and a when the president does it that Means that it is not a tour through satire s new political dictionary reveals the extraordinary Nixon legacy to american with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at Bonn in March a month before Nixon a death. Politics from the Dawn of spin doctoring to the apocalypse of dirty tricks. His name is Cross referenced with such entries As firestorm inoperative Bug chronic campaigner cover up creep enemies list play in Peoria plumber saturday night massacre slush fund r smoking gun stonewalling used car Salesman a nobody drowned at watergate Quot and a twisting slowly slowly in the . Every Nixon hater has his own defining Flash Point of rage. My parents passed Down like treasured heirlooms their recollections of his red baiting Congo is Sinai Campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas his pathetic checkers speech his sanctimonious attack on Harry Truman s Salty language this from the master of the expletive deleted. For my generation 1970 May have been the Peak. When four anti War protesters were shot and killed by Ohio guardsmen at Kent state University the had promised in the �?T68 Campaign to a bring us together and get us promptly out of Vietnam responded not with sorrow or regret but inhuman vindictiveness a when dissent turns to violence it invites tragedy.�?�. And there was still watergate to come. When Nixon left the White House in disgrace in 1974, he said a those who hate you done twin unless you hate them. And then you destroy but his hatred of his enemies was precisely what led to the self destruction of watergate. Did a final new Nixon emerge in retirement Mellower and Wiser than the disgraced politician let history decide. What is certain is that Many of his foes finally surrendered their own hatred a if not to forgive then at least to respect his remarkable persistence and towering size. For an american who came of age with him in the second half of the 20th Century making peace with Richard Nixon proved in the end an essential part of growing up. May 1,1994 sunday Page 6
