"Nixon was no more a Saint than he was a Great President. He was more like Sammy Glick than Winston Churchill. He was a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal who bombed more people to death in Laos and Cambodia than the U.S. Army lost in all of World War II, and he denied it to the day of his death. When students at Kent State University, in Ohio, protested the bombing, he connived to have them attacked and slain by troops from the National Guard."
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "He was a Crook," Rolling Stone, June 16, 1994
I never hated Richard Nixon.
Maybe I should have, given what he was and what he did. I remember feeling sorry for Nixon during the Watergate hearings. I remember my father, who had voted for him, expressing regret and disappointment in his commander-in-chief. I mimicked those feelings, deciding Nixon was sad, not hateful.
I remember being entertained by Hunter Thompson's vitriolic screeds against Nixon, but even as a teenager I suspected there was a performative component to Thompson's gonzo spew, that if one pierced the newsprint curtain advertising wild-eyed rage one might find a cool and thoughtful operator. I thought Thompson understood Nixon was good for his business and that Nixon was good at drawing from him white-hot defamatory invective that made good copy.
Thompson found in Nixon a worthy antagonist, and he likely took no joy in the disgraced president's death. "Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it," he wrote.
I was a kid back then and didn't understand what Washington and Watergate had to do with me. Even living under bombers' wings on a village surrounded by razor wire where many if not most fathers were absent, having gone overseas to prosecute a war many already suspected was illegitimate and unwinnable, I gave no thought to the president so many vilified.
Even watching the Watergate hearings on TV in 1973, I never felt anything like outrage. I was engaged by the proceedings, and a lot of us spent our summer vacations with Howard Baker and Sam Ervin. I came back to school my sophomore year feeling like a lawyer. I could take any side and argue it.
I didn't start to feel anything for Richard Nixon until after he resigned and I realized how difficult it must be to be dishonored, to have lost so much, and yet live in a world where your name had become an epithet: Nixonian. In 1977, I heard Neil Young's song "Campaigner."
Young wrote the song one night after seeing a television clip of Nixon emerging from a hospital after his wife Pat had suffered a stroke. In the verse he limned an executive in exile, a lonely beach-walking figure, and the refrain resolved: "Even Richard Nixon has got soul."
Nixon did have soul, a capacity for awe and delight and a curiosity about the world. It's unclear what thwarted him, what monsters waited behind his eyelids, but he loved his dogs and his piano (though if he is, as some believe, in hell, he is probably allowed his accordion) and his wife and family. I know what he has to answer for, but there is a part of me that has to smile at his earnest bowling habit, Nixon with his shirt sleeves rolled up, his tie jammed in his placket, going on to Henry Kissinger about the 128 he rolled last night.
As the current administration seems to begin to fly apart, I think about Nixon and his crimes. This current guy is not that.
This current guy hasn't Nixon's imagination or intelligence; this current guy probably didn't even want the job but was carried into office by a series of flukes--voter exhaustion with his prime opponent, the political apathy that many Americans claim as their birthright, and the psy-ops of a foreign government. This current guy just wanted the ego stroke and the brand elevation, the opportunity to grow his media company. For him, the presidency was a consolation prize.
He didn't want it. He doesn't respect it. But it's not something you can stash in a warehouse. It something that requires a good 20 hours of his week.
It's hard to assign the blame to him. He's just doing what he's always done, what he's always gotten away with. Someone has always bailed him out, and there have always been people willing to put up with his boorishness. He's always had sycophants. He's never had to do difficult things. There are terrors in his life he feels the need to paper over with gold foil.
And I don't hate him, though I understand why people do. He hasn't hurt me yet, because I'm white and not without some wherewithal. If I looked at it a little differently, I might even say he's good for business.
Sometimes I feel a little sorry for him because it must be hard to be him, and even though he obviously lives in a bubble his underlings inflate to keep the worst news from penetrating, he must sense the footsteps that are coming for him and that he's running out of the best people willing to take a bullet for him. He must realize that the grownups will be home soon, and he's going to be held to account for all the broken glass and burning sofas.
He must be the saddest man on the planet, because he has to suspect that the rest of his life is likely to be miserable.
But then I realize: I really don't care. Do you?
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Editorial on 08/26/2018