Visiting "Tricky Dick": While we were in California over the holidays, we found ourselves one afternoon with nothing to do, so we decided to visit the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, which I had never seen. The museum is very well done, and I highly recommend it. Though of course it focuses on Nixon's life (and the political controversies are all described from Nixon's sole point of view), the displays are a fascinating slice of American life as it was during Nixon's career (1946-1974).

Nixon was a true product of my home region. Though Hoover and Reagan also hailed from California, Nixon was the only President actually born there, and also the only one to have represented California in Congress. Like Laura's grandmother, he was born in a modest farmhouse in Orange County, long before suburbia invaded and people started watching The O.C. (by the way, no one from Orange County ever actually says "the O.C."). Nixon attended a small local college and earned a scholarship that enabled him to attend law school. Following WWII (in which he served in the Navy, even though he was exempt from the draft due to his family's Quaker faith), he was elected to Congress in 1946 and began his meteoric rise in national politics. He served only 4 years in the House before being elected to the Senate, then became Eisenhower's Vice President just 2 years after that.

There was much worthwhile about Nixon's life, and though his faults were many, it is unfair that they completely overshadow his talents and achievements in the public imagination. He was bright and articulate, and his ability to focus the public's eye made him one of the youngest Vice Presidents (39) in history. While he was VP, he showed his ability in getting the better of the impromptu "Kitchen Debate" with Soviet leader Khrushchev. His epic debates with Kennedy in 1960 did much to usher in the modern era of politics. And of course he accomplished quite a lot in international relations, especially in making peace with China, though (like LBJ before him) he was not able to extricate himself from the Vietnam War. I'm not going to talk much about his domestic policies, because I don't necessarily agree with them, but I will note that his anti-Communist crusades (which first catapulted him to prominence as a junior congressman, particularly his dogged pursuit of alleged spy Alger Hiss) were not the hysterical witch-hunts that Joseph McCarthy began five years later. Nixon (according to his library, at least) disapproved of McCarthy's tactics from the start, and besides that, Soviet files released in the 1990's have indicated that Hiss was most likely guilty.

Understandably, the museum focuses a lot on Nixon's international accomplishments, though it does not shy away from his domestic controversies. One of my favorite displays is the Statue Room, which contains life-sized statues of several world leaders (picked by Nixon himself) as if they were all in a room together chatting. There is, of course, a lengthy display giving Nixon's side of the Watergate affair. He tries to explain away some things, and tries to shift blame to persecution from Democrats, but I don't think I buy very much of it. It's sad, really, that someone with such ability was also prone to such spectacular moral lapses.  

Posted by Matt on 1/10/2004 02:35:00 AM