Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 26, 1994 TAG: 9404270015
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The only president to resign from office - and to do so in disgrace, rather than face impeachment - Nixon will be remembered by many as a leader you either admired or hated, nothing in between.
But historians likely will size him up as a complicated man - in some ways as awkward and insecure as he was calculating and shrewd. And his presidential legacy in history may eventually land somewhere "in between."
Let us make one thing perfectly clear: Apologists and revisionists will never credibly remake Watergate into a mere second-rate burglary, an excuse by his enemies to hound Nixon out of office.
It's important, even at a time when the nation properly mourns a fallen leader and remembers him with no little sympathy, to recall that President Nixon tried to cover up crimes committed by his henchmen and to press public agencies to serve personal vendettas. The failure of his attempts to "stonewall" is probably the greatest institutional legacy of his presidency. The system worked.
"When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal," Nixon said in a 1977 interview. But it doesn't necessarily mean that. In Nixon's case, an executive who abused power and acted as though he was above the law was brought down, and most of his closest aides and associates landed in prison. President Ford pardoned him, but historians should not.
Of course, Nixon also deserves a place in the books for his achievements: the opening to China and Arab nations, detente with the Soviet Union, an array of domestic initiatives that were innovative for his day. He will be remembered, too, for trying to represent what he called "the silent majority," the great many Americans put off by the excesses of the 1960s.
Nixon also will be remembered, on the other hand, for his political flirtations with McCarthyism early in his career and, as president, for needlessly delaying the end of the Vietnam War that he inherited. Historians will note, as well, that he exploited and aggravated the country's social and racial divisions. Nixon's politics were colored by his personal and political vindictiveness and near-paranoia, exemplified by the infamous "enemies list."
All of which points to what is perhaps most notable about the man: that, for all the hatred he aroused, he was his own worst enemy. Nixon's presidency wasn't destroyed so much as it self-destructed. In this regard, he was a tragic figure.
He was so, too, in the sense of being larger than life. Nixon's career and personality - for decades a constant, brooding presence on the national political scene - in mysterious ways reflected the restless, divided American character. Another reason not to hate or ridicule his memory.
Nixon ended his life, ironically, a survivor. His entire career was punctuated by disasters, losses and humiliations from which he somehow came back. In the two decades since the Watergate scandal forced him from the White House, he toiled to regain respectability as a kind of elder statesman, especially on matters of foreign policy. His search for respect was not entirely successful.
But he kept at it. Through the decades, this lonely, tenacious politician liked to say he was "not a quitter." He may have been many things, but he wasn't that.
by CNB