America will have him to kick around for generations to come; there are still more than 3,000 hours of White House tapes to be released, the next batch in October. No other postwar president is likely to cast such a long shadow into the new century. There will be the JFK of myth, LBJ’s triumphs and tragedies and the Reagan enigma, but as the years go on we will always return to the parable of Richard Nixon. A man of endless contradictions, he built his career on Red-baiting, then embraced Mao’s China; he sharpened racial “wedges,” then enacted affirmative action. Finally, at the hour of his greatest glory–1972, the year of a massive re-election–he lost it all, undone by lies that transformed chicanery into a constitutional crisis.
How will the future view Nixon? His fans now call him a “war president,” arguing that Nixon and his men thought they were protecting the country from subversives. The real divide, however, may be between those who take the Age of Nixon seriously and those who view public life through a post-Lewinsky prism. In the ’90s history is repeated as farce, and presidents are impeached for covering up sex. This week the Age of Clinton wins as the movie “Dick,” a comedy that plops two teen blondes in the middle of Watergate, opens nationwide.
But the world was very different 25 years ago. These photographs, taken by Fred J. Maroon, an independent photographer granted special White House access, give us a fresh tour of a confounding president and his curious court. When Nixon boarded Marine One and took off from the South Lawn that long-ago August, Pat murmured, “It’s so sad. It’s so sad.” The nation hears those echoes still.
