Richard M. Nixon
37th POTUS, 36th VPOTUS, Rep. and Senator from California
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
Biographical Sketch
UPBRINGING:
Nixon was born on January 9, 1913, to a family of poor lemon farmers in Yorba Linda, California. His family had very little in ways of financial flexibility, and lived paycheck to paycheck. Nixon's upbringing wasn't made any easier by the fact that he lost two of his four brothers when he was young.
In 1922, when he was nine years old, his family's farm failed, causing them to move out of Yorba Linda and to Whittier, California, an area with a large Quaker population. The family then moved to open a convenience store and gas station which the entire family contributed to, and was practically their only source of stable income.
Nixon would eventually enroll at the town's college, and would eventually win a scholarship to go to Duke University in 1934, where he entered into their Law School.
He was elected leader of the Law Review and Student Bar Association, and graduated in 1937.
He'd eventually join the Navy in 1942 after meeting his wife, "Pat", and working for the government for a time. He joined despite the fact that he had multiple chances to get a deferment or avoid joining, such as the fact that he was born a Quaker. He served in Iowa for a time before serving in the South Pacific until the end of the war.
INFLUENCES
Hannah Milhous Nixon (mother): A fairly devout Quaker and an active parent in his life, Nixon said of his mother;
"Nobody will ever write a book, probably, about my mother. Well, I guess all of you would say this about your mother -- my mother was a saint. And I think of her, two boys dying of tuberculosis, nursing four others in order that she could take care of my older brother for 3 years in Arizona, and seeing each of them die, and when they died, it was like one of her own. Yes, she will have no books written about her. But she was a saint." Her compassion and actions to preserve the Nixon family during its hardest times left a lasting impression on Nixon.
Aside from that, Nixon was much a product of his environment, less-so the people around him.
The death of his brothers, as mentioned above, greatly influenced him. His older brother, Harold, whom had become an anchor in the family alongside his mother while his father was mostly away working for the family. The continually difficult conditions he was subjected to as a child that carried through until his admittance to Whittier College shaped his presence, with Nixon later remarking "[w]e were poor, but the glory of it was we didn't know it."
Motivation
Nixon didn't have any specific motivations for his entrance into politics; indeed, his only motivation to enter politics. Indeed, he was approached by Republicans in California to run in a frustratingly Democratic district as a consensus candidate, hopefully bringing enough votes to flip the district red. Nixon was selected by a "committee of 100" prominent Republicans in the area, one of which knew Nixon. He rather excitedly accepted the proposition, transitioning from being a commercial lawyer to being a politician rather quickly.
His continuing progress up the political ladder, from Congressman to Senator, can be attributed to some extent to Nixon's wanting more power. Part of this power-want can be attributed to his wishing to fix society's problems.
Conclusion
The hardships suffered by Nixon and those around shaped him to become more motivated to seek out solutions, and made him more resilient to help solve those problems in the first place. His motivations to seek out solutions and remain resolute in the face of hardship would be some of the traits that eventually helped him reach the White House.
"The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker...
-- Richard Nixon, January 20, 1969, during his inaugural address.
Time Period Synthesis
PERCEPTION: Nixon would continue to be perceived as a crook. Had the events of Watergate occurred in the 21st century, there would have been a plethora of evidence -- much more than had existed in the 70s when Watergate originally occurred. With the digital age, it's more likely that a fair amount of correspondence would have been preserved, which would have prevented Nixon from fixing his reputation, like he did in the 70s and 80s after his resignation from the Presidency. In much the way that much of our history glosses over Nixon's later accomplishments to simply say "he was a crook" -- in a certain sense, he was. But it shouldn't be understated that he did some good and some bad, but was neither a devil nor a angel.
SUCCESS: Nixon was a master politician, and his success would have only been amplified by social media and viral market. His mastering of the television and radio as means of advertising boosted his early political career. Additionally, his reputation for dirty campaigning would very well fit in during our modern era, primarily due to the fact that our most recent election involved two unlikable figures -- another less-than-likable figure wouldn't change that situation all too much. Nixon could very well be better perceived that many politicians in our current system.
IMPACT: Nixon's impact on the modern era would have likely been more muted, as Nixon was, in multiple contexts, a "consensus candidate" -- such a concept is practically lost in the modern era. The political middle is increasingly vanishing, and Nixon (in some aspects of his administration) would be unable to straddle the line between left and right to any certain extent. Whatever Nixon would be able to accomplish would be incredibly vulnerable to Congressional roadblocking, reversals by ensuing administration and the lack of the ability of modern administrations to get much done. Nixon's only real area of influence would have been foreign policy -- specifically, using his time period's examples of Vietnam, China, etc.
SKILLS: Using Nixon's skills, I would like to attempt to reform US Foreign Policy -- likely in a way that shifts it away from endless war making and warmongering in the Middle East. The US should be seeking relationships with every nation of the world that seeks to increase the prosperity of itself and the nations it interacts with, and Nixon's skills and staff in the Foreign Policy realm would have aided him to this end.
Political Cartoon
Explanation
Historiography -- What did Richard Nixon Learn?
Zinn examines Nixon's post-presidency justifications for the Vietnam intervention by pointing to the fact that the country is now a Communist dictatorship. Zinn takes this in the opposite direction by positing that if we had stayed, continued to bomb, kill, destroy and maim the country into multiple parts, would it have ever become the democracy loving nation we wanted it to be so that it would be a bulwark against communism?
The perspective Zinn takes is that Nixon learned nothing from previous presidencies, nothing from his own, and nothing from history, and simply is spouting nonsense that will cause succeeding administrations to get bogged down in combat and ruin the countries they fight in, for whatever noble purposes they might get dragged in because of.
This is established through logical and emotional argument, by describing rather point by point the more insane parts of the logic that guided the US in its intervention in Vietnam by also establishing the mass loss of life and dignity to those who were involved in the conflict, and the outright fact that even with all of that sacrifice the conflict still resulted in a Communist victory.