Richard Nixon: Speeches, Writings, Documents, Edited and Introduced by Rick Perlstein Richard Nixon Speeches, Writings, Documents
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Richard Nixon THE JAMES MADISON LIBRARY IN AMERICAN POLITICS The James Madison Library in American Politics of the Princeton University Press is devoted to reviving important American political writings of the recent and distant past. American politics has pro- duced an abundance of important works—proclaiming ideas, de- scribing candidates, explaining the inner workings of government, and analyzing political campaigns. This literature includes partisan and philosophical manifestos, pamphlets of practical political theory, muckraking expose´s, autobiographies, on-the-scene reportage, and more. The James Madison Library issues fresh editions of both clas- sic and now-neglected titles that helped shape the American political landscape. Up-to-date commentaries in each volume by leading scholars, journalists, and political figures make the books accessible to modern readers. The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry M. Goldwater The New Industrial State by John Kenneth Galbraith Liberty and the News by Walter Lippmann The Politics of Hope and The Bitter Heritage: American Liberalism in the 1960s by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Richard Nixon: Speeches, Writings, Documents, edited and introduced by Rick Perlstein Richard Nixon Speeches, Writings, Documents Edited and introduced by Rick Perlstein PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON AND OXFORD Copyright © 2008 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913–1994. [Selections. 2008] Richard Nixon : speeches, writings, documents /edited and introduced by Rick Perlstein. p. cm. — (The James Madison Library in American politics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-691-13699-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913–1994—Archives. 2. Presidents—United States—Archives. 3. United States—Politics and government—1945–1989—Sources. 4. Speeches, addresses, etc., American. I. Perlstein, Rick, 1969– II. Title. E838.5.N52 2008 973.924092—dc22 2008014928 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Sabon with Helvetica Neue and Didot display Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ press.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of America 10987654321 Contents General Editor’s Introduction ix Introduction xiii Bibliographic Note lxxi I. Youth 1. From RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (1978) 3 2. Two letters (1923 and 1924) 5 3. “Our Privileges under the Constitution” (1929) 7 4. From the Frank Gannon interviews (1983) 14 II. Congress 5. “The Hiss Case—A Lesson for the American People” (January 26, 1950) 19 6. The “Pink Sheet” (1950) 60 7. The “Checkers Speech” (September 23, 1952) 64 III. Vice President 8. “When you go out to shoot rats” (March 13, 1954) 83 9. The “Kitchen Debate” (July 24, 1959) 88 10. Opening Statement, The Great Debate: Kennedy v. Nixon (September 26, 1960) 97 IV. Comeback 11. “Gentlemen, this is my last press conference” (November 6, 1962) 105 12. “The irresponsible tactics of some of the extreme civil rights leaders” (February 12, 1964) 113 13. “Appraisal from Manila” (November 4, 1966) 117 14. “What Has Happened to America?” (Reader’s Digest, October 1967) 121 15. “Asia after Viet Nam” (Foreign Affairs, October 1967) 128 16. “The first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence” (August 8, 1968) 145 V. President 17. “To lower our voices would be a simple thing” (January 20, 1969) 153 18. “The present welfare system has to be judged a colossal failure” (August 8, 1969) 163 19. “The great silent majority of my fellow Americans” (November 3, 1969) 170 vi Contents 20. “The postwar period in international relations has ended” (February 18, 1970) 191 21. Four Vietnam Statements (1970) 200 22. Two political statements (1970) 209 23. “Our best days lie ahead” (August 15, 1971) 217 24. “One China” (February 24, 1972) 223 25. “He can undisappear if we want him to” (June 23, 1972) 232 26. “Her name was Tanya” (August 23, 1972) 238 27. “There can be no whitewash at the White House” (April 30, 1973) 242 28. “I am not a crook” (November 17, 1973) 255 29. “I made clear there was to be no coverup” (April 29, 1974) 259 30. “My mother was a saint” (August 9, 1974) 269 Index 277 Contents vii This page intentionally left blank General Editor’s Introduction The American political tradition is preeminently practical. Ideas, sometimes of genuine philosophi- cal grandeur, have certainly motivated the getting and exercise of power. American political rhetoric, whether delivered in speeches, written in pam- phlets and treatises, or incorporated in state pa- pers, has inspired countless millions, at home and abroad. But the heart of the day-to-day American political system involves less elevated yet essential tasks, including overawing or even betraying a po- litical opponent, cajoling and compromising in order to win legislation (or, sometimes, to defeat legislation), or building a winning coalition out of disparate political constituencies. Ironically, two of the most profound, and profoundly American, documents in American history, the United States Constitution and the Federalist Papers, offered and defended, with great intellectual care, a national polity that insures the primacy of the practical, re- jecting the flight toward abstraction and uncer- tainty in favor of a realization that men are not angels, and that governments must be designed with a pragmatic sense of the danger of human frailty as well as the promise of human achievement. Richard Milhous Nixon, a man of numerous frailties, was in many ways an odd and even unique figure, but his career describes an im- portant arc in the practical politics of modern America. Born to humble circumstances, he rose through careers in law and politics with a combi- nation of iron will and sharply honed resentments. For more than two decades prior to his election to the White House in 1968, Nixon shrewdly navi- gated the shoals of Republican Party politics, shifting from conservative anti-Communist cru- sader to moderately pro–New Deal Eisenhower “modern Republican,” until, after suffering heart- breaking defeats in 1960 and 1962, he emerged as virtually a party unto himself, with pragmatic ties to Republicans across a wide political and ideo- logical spectrum. Liberals thought of him as acceptable enough compared to the Republicans’ hard-right Gold- water wing; the hard Right, although always sus- picious of him, fell into line in response to the en- treaties of former Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, guaranteeing Nixon the nomina- tion and then a narrow victory in the presidential election of 1968. Thereafter, Nixon continued to tack, sometimes with the wind, sometimes against it, a political genius in his own mind, never letting the s.o.b.’s of his inner dramas get him down, al- ways plotting revenge and, when necessary, come- back—even after the Watergate scandal and re- lated revelations offered persuasive evidence that, as president, he had systematically violated his oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the x Sean Wilentz Constitution. By dint of human folly, hubris, and sheer good luck, the Constitution fended off at- tacks by the eminently practical men of Nixon’s Oval Office who had confused Nixon’s own polit- ical supremacy with the nation’s well-being. Rick Perlstein, who has written extensively and with great originality on Nixon and his presi- dency, has here assembled a rich collection of doc- uments that, in effect, form in Nixon’s own words the autobiography he did not write—a volume more revealing in many ways than the several vol- umes of memoir and reflection that Nixon actually did write. Although nobody would call Nixon a preeminent political thinker, his thinking as well as his actions and rhetoric tell a great deal about the development of American politics during the decades after World War II. The denouement of his career in the White House, leading to the first and only departure of any president apart from those who died in office, will forever be one of the classic episodes in U.S. history—one with en- during lessons about the letter and the spirit of the Constitution that formed our imperfect but ameliorable Union. This volume represents something of a depar- ture from the earlier titles in the James Madison Library in American Politics, because it offers not a single discrete work but a collection of selected letters, speeches, and other documents from an important figure—in this case a politician and General Editor’s Introduction xi officeholder. It is less of a manifesto or a set of observations about American politics than the chronicle of a career that reached the highest levels of electoral politics and government. Similar vol- umes will appear in future, alongside other varia- tions on the basic format—part of the library’s mission to capture as many facets of the American political experience as possible. Sean Wilentz xii Sean Wilentz Introduction Rick Perlstein I In the fall of 1967 Richard Nixon, reintroducing himself to the public for his second run for the presidency of the United States, published two magazine articles simultaneously. The first ran in the distinguished quarterly Foreign Affairs, the re- view of the Council of Foreign Relations. “Asia after Viet Nam” was sweeping, scholarly, and high-minded, couched in the chessboard abstrac- tions of strategic studies. The intended audience, in whose language it spoke, was the nation’s elite, and liberal-leaning, opinion-makers. It argued for the diplomatic “long view” toward the nation, China, that he had spoken of only in terms of red- baiting demagoguery in the past: “we simply can- not afford to leave China forever outside the fam- ily of nations,” he wrote.