Known and Unknown - Donald Rumsfeld [58]
The familiar portrait of Richard Milhous Nixon is of a bitter, haunted figure who became the first American president to resign. I worked for a notably different Richard Nixon, conferring with him dozens of times as a member of his cabinet and periodically in smaller meetings. Nixon had serious failings, which became all too evident when his secret tapes were revealed. But I knew him to be a thoughtful, brilliant man—certainly one of the brightest presidents I observed. He was indeed a paradox who managed to reach the apex of power and then came crashing down, which I suppose is why decades later so many Americans still find him fascinating.
By 1968, during my third term in Congress, Richard M. Nixon was on the road to an improbable political comeback. His second presidential bid took place during one of the more tumultuous years in modern American history—a year punctuated by the escalating debate over Vietnam. The Tet Offensive, which had sealed the fate of President Johnson, accelerated the nearly continuous protests outside the gates of the White House. Marchers were routinely chanting things like “Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?!” There were so many protests, in fact, that the President had difficulty leaving the White House. That year saw 16,592 Americans killed in the war—the highest number of any year of that conflict.
Our country was rocked by violence and heartbreak. On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., the man in whom so many Americans had placed their hopes, was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Joyce and I were in Florida with our family when we heard the news and flew back to Washington immediately. His death sparked an ugly backlash. Things were so tense that we had to show identification to National Guardsmen before they would let us cross the bridge from National Airport in Virginia into Washington, D.C. As we drove into the nation’s capital, we saw rioting in the streets, with buildings and cars set on fire. The next school day the city decided to keep the public schools open, leaving us with the indelible image of our twelve-year-old daughter, Valerie, serving as a school safety monitor on one corner of the street while National Guardsmen with guns at the ready stood watch on the others.
That June, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles, just after winning the California Democratic presidential primary. His death, along with King’s, stirred up the still vivid memories of his brother’s assassination. The succession of murders, combined with a war with mounting casualties and the frequent and often violent demonstrations in Washington and around the nation, gave many of us a palpable sense that the country could be spiraling out of control.
Amid anger and protest, Nixon offered himself as a source of reassurance and stability. For voters it was a welcome change from the anguished presidency of Lyndon Johnson. But because he had been defeated in two high-profile elections during the past decade, he had to battle the impression that he was a loser.
When Nixon’s law partner and close associate, John Mitchell, asked me to head up the Nixon campaign in Illinois I declined, telling him I wanted to watch the race for a bit. It seemed to me that Nixon had spent much of his adult life getting ready to do something but not actually doing much besides running for the next office and serving in the standby role as vice president for eight years. As the campaign developed I was increasingly impressed by his steadiness and focus. Eventually, I agreed to be an assistant floor leader for Nixon at the 1968 Republican convention in Miami, and then as a surrogate speaker for him in the presidential election.
On the third day of the convention Mitchell, by then Nixon’s campaign manager, sent me a note asking that I attend a meeting in Nixon’s suite at the Hilton Plaza Hotel to discuss his vice presidential selection. The private gathering, with most of the leading figures of the Republican Party, would start immediately after the balloting for president was concluded. It