Nixon was a character out of a Greek tragedy. Pursued by a fateful and relentless destiny, it did not matter if he did things well, disaster awaited him in the end. Several times he touched triumph and glory, but fate always played its part. Like those Greek antiheroes, his actions were turning against him.
In his first ascension to the heavens he started from very low, because he belonged to a very modest family of Quakers. Since he was a child he had to work in his parents’ store while studying, but thanks to the fact that he was Intelligent, hard-working and tenacious, he won a scholarship to study at Duke University in North Carolina, one of the most select in the country. With the best grades became a lawyer, what for the poor child meant reaching the “American dream” because lawyers make a lot of money in the United States. But one day he read an advertisement in a newspaper: The Republican Party was seeking candidates to be a representative (deputy) from California in the US Congress.
Richard Nixon felt the call of destiny, which was already weaving its trap. He decided to enter politics and one day become President of the United States. Thanks to the credentials of Duke University, The Republican Party chose Nixon from among those who responded to the ad and, at 33 years old, began the race of his life, taking a seat in the Capitol in Washington. After a first term as a representative, he ran for election to the senate, a much more prestigious position, and was also elected. And then he hit the jackpot: the vice presidency.
After 20 years of Democratic presidencies, the Republican Party turned to a national, apolitical figure to regain the White House, General Eisenhower, the victor of World War II. Following common practice in American politics, the movers and shakers sought a makeshift candidate for the ticket. Eisenhower was quite old, not a politician and had a reputation for being a liberal. He was to be accompanied by a young vice-presidential candidate, a professional and conservative politician, namely Richard Nixon.
At 39, the son of village shopkeepers became vice president, But his luck did not end there. He established very good relations with President Eisenhower, to the point that the families united, because a daughter of Nixon married the president’s grandson. And furthermore, contrary to what is usually the norm, his vice presidency was not decorative, since Eisenhower had complete confidence in him and entrusted him with presidential responsibilities, such as foreign policy.
From that active vice presidency, Nixon began what would be his greatest contribution to American and world politics, détente, the opening of channels of dialogue and negotiation with the great enemy, the communist bloc, to avoid the danger of all-out nuclear war. Vice President Nixon He was the first American president to make an official trip to Moscow, where he found unexpected mass success. People cheered him in the streets, expressing an affection that he would never find in the American people.
In 1960, at the end of Eisenhower’s two terms in office, Richard Nixon became the undisputed candidate of the Republican Party, and the favorite to win the presidential election, given his experience. However, Fate had a trick in store for him.
On September 26, 1960, For the first time in history, a televised debate was held between the two electoral candidates. Nixon had recently left the hospital, where he had been for two weeks following an accident during the campaign. He had a sickly appearance and also refused to have makeup applied. Because he had a very thick beard, it looked like he hadn’t shaved, and his choice of clothing was not flattering either.
A god appeared before him on the television set: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, handsome, tanned, elegant and charismatic, and on top of that, rich and progressive. That night America chose its hero and Nixon had no choice but to assume the role of villain. Aware of the cruelty of his fate, Nixon sweated and sweated in front of the cameras, while checking how hewas losing the elections because of a television program.
At least that’s what the legend says. Richard Nixon, on the other hand, always thought that if he lost – by a narrow margin – it was because The Kennedys had cheated, that the family patriarch, Joseph Kennedy, who made part of his immense fortune in dealings with the mafia, had rigged elections in a couple of small states that would prove decisive. It could be true, although that was never proven, anyway. The legend was much more attractive and prevailed.
Second chance
Fate had first been cruel to Richard Nixon in the 1960 election, but after that it seemed repentant and began to wink at him in complicity: In 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated, as was his brother and heir Bobby Kennedy, who was the favorite to win the 1968 presidential election. In an election in which he did not have a dangerous opponent, Richard Nixon became the 37th President of the United States.
He was a good ruler, especially in the international area, very important for the world’s leading power. To begin with, took the United States out of the Vietnam War, a quagmire into which Kennedy and Johnson had found themselves, and which had become a national drama, with youth rebelling against going to war. Besides, established relations with communist China, the most populous country in the world, which, however, did not exist for the West, because it was not even part of the UN. And it took the first and decisive step in the policy of nuclear disarmament, since signed with the Soviet Union the Strategic Arms Limitation Agreement (long-range atomic missiles).
However, He didn’t feel loved by people, Students reviled him as the devil incarnate, and the progressive press and political opponents nicknamed him «Tricky Dick», Richard the Trickster, because in fact throughout his political career had resorted to all kinds of tricks.
Nixon suffered from all this, he felt defeated by Kennedy even though he had died, and began to develop paranoia. What if he didn’t win re-election in 1972? For an American president not to be re-elected is a humiliation, If this happened Richard Nixon would no longer go down in history as the great president he claimed to be.
These inner drives that push those who suffer from them towards disaster are typical of Greek tragedy. President Nixon, obsessed with his second term, resorted to his Tricky Dick side and created a Committee for the Re-election of the President that raised funds for the campaign, without caring about the legality of its collections, and that practiced dirty war against its opponent.
On the night of June 17, 1972, five months before the election in which Nixon would face McGovern, Police caught five men robbing the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington, at the Watergate Hotel, a name that would go down in history. The leader of the gang was the head of security for the Nixon Re-election Committee.
We are not going to recount the story now. Watergate case, which will go down in history as one of the biggest blunders of a government in a democratic country. But we must emphasize the cruelty of Richard Nixon’s fate, because This illegal act that would cost him the presidency was absolutely unnecessary. When the elections were held a few months later, before the scandal had time to reach him, Nixon would defeat his opponent by 47 million votes to 29, a resounding victory.
There was no need to cheat, it was fate that made Nixon paranoid enough to make the mistake that, two years later, would lead him to process of impeachement, That is to say, the removal of the president by the United States Congress. Aware that he would be dishonorably expelled from the White House, Richard Nixon signed his resignation from the presidency on August 9, 1974, half a century ago.
He thus went down in history as the only president of the United States to have resigned from office. This was not how Richard Nixon dreamed of appearing in the textbooks, but that was how cruel fate had it.
