Neither Acheson in his sardonic solicitude for the man who now had the burdens of office, nor Humphrey in his generosity of spirit, was saying that what had gone before was swell. They were following some inner political protocol that required of them respect for the office of the presidency, no matter who held it or how it was conducted, and-yes-some kind of fraternal empathy for anyone who faced not just the glories but the horrors and the risks of being president. You saw that same phenomenon in action in the lineup of former presidents at Nixon’s graveside.
Judging from the commentary on call-in TV and radio last week, there are people who find this disgusting and alarming. Some seem to see it as just further evidence of the hypocrisy of a Washington that takes nothing seriously, including political dispute. Others fear that it will end up making over history, in particular Richard Nixon’s, in a prettied-up, untrue image. But speaking as an unreconstructed and unreconstructable lifetime critic of Richard Nixon, I have to say I don’t understand the agitation. In the first place, we are, in this country, notorious equal-opportunity employers: we say terrible things about all of our elected leaders and then see them out weepily with full military honors-before taking up the argument where we left off.
In addition, there surely are decencies to be followed when someone dies. I have been to my share of funerals in this life, and I cannot say as a rule that the eulogies for the departed ever seem to me especially accurate or complete portraits, never mind fastidious ones. I mean, they are certainly not the descriptions you would give the police if these persons were missing and you intended for the police to find them. But aren’t we all hoping ourselves for such rosy eulogies when the day comes?
To choose the moment when someone is being lowered into the grave to dwell on what was worst about him would be inconsiderate of grieving family and friends, sacrilegious on its face and probably also bad luck. Even in the Westerns when the cattle rustler dies, the other guys generally remove their hats. That maybe they won’t in real life must be a politician’s dread. Someone told me that one of Lyndon Johnson’s favorite jokes was the one about the preacher who held the funeral service for the most unpopular man in town. When he had finished the service he asked if any of the assembled mourners wished to say something about the man. Silence. He asked again. Silence. And again. Finally one fellow in the back did get up. “Speak, Luke,” said the preacher. Luke said, “His brother was worse.”
We generally find it easier than that to speak only good of the dead, to emphasize accomplishment or what we agree with and leave the rest for another day. But a caution: this should not mean exploiting the temporary political hush and deference that a death creates to rewrite history and inflate the size and meaning of what did occur in life. And some of that took place in the past week. So, too, did something else: a kind of aggrieved retroactive justification, with some mourners of Nixon seeking to portray him as a singularly maltreated official, whose flaws and misconduct were at worst commonplace official foibles and at best nonexistent, invented by malicious foes.
One part of this is true. Rush Limbaugh was on TV the other day enumerating many of the most dreadful episodes on other presidents’ records that those going after Nixon hardly ever mentioned, if at all. I couldn’t quarrel. I have often thought myself that if Richard Nixon, not John Kennedy, had been known to have had a prolonged affair in the White House with the girlfriend of a well-known gangster, no less, that fact would have been included by some between commas after every mention of his name forever after. But it is not a valid point to suggest that Nixon was either (1) uniquely hassled by press and public or (2) penalized for what was really only minor misconduct.
On the first count, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman were all mercilessly excoriated by political enemies and journalistic critics in their time and even well after. Truman leaving office with honor was in fact probably more contemptuously spoken of (by Republicans who later claimed him as a role model) than Nixon was when he left office one step ahead of impeachment. Dwight Eisenhower was ridiculed as dumb and incompetent. Schoolchildren in some jurisdictions cheered the news of John Kennedy’s assassination. Lyndon Johnson was the most condemned of presidents: Democrats for years after his terms were afraid to speak his name at conventions (they sped through it). He was accused in respectable journals of having masterminded Kennedy’s death. Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush were variously patronized, detested and ridiculed by voluble political critics for their whole time in office.
On the second count, it is just not true to say that the collection of abuses of authority-not just this one or that one-that go by the generic name of Watergate were trivial. It may have been liberals that “got” Nixon for this, but I do believe that it was conservative values as well that were violated in all the government-inspired highhandedness, the corruption of law-enforcement agencies, the intrusions into every realm of private life including even the burglary of a psychiatrist’s office for a look at an antagonist’s medical files. People who were disturbed by all this don’t need to harp on it at Richard Nixon’s wake; and they don’t need to pretend it didn’t happen in order to show a little decent restraint and civility at the moment of his death.
