Richard Milhouse Nixon(English) Richard Milhous Nixon; January 9, Yorba Linda, California - April 22, New York) - 37th President of the United States of America (-), from the Republican Party.

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Richard Milhous Nixon - 37th President of the United States- born January 9, 1913 in Yorba Linda (California), died April 22, 1994 in New York (New York). President of the United States from January 20, 1969 to August 9, 1974.

By signing his resignation letter on August 9, 1974, Richard Nixon became the first President of the United States in history to resign from office early. This unprecedented step seemed to be the only way out of the two-year-old Watergate scam, which, moreover, was perceived as the worst constitutional crisis since the Civil War. Although it ended in personal disgrace in 1974, it has long been considered the “American Dream.” Richard Milhouse Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, Southern California, and rose from simple living conditions to the highest government position. His parents, deeply religious Quakers, owned a small grocery store in a town near Los Angeles.

Childhood and youth were spent in work and frugality and were overshadowed by the death of two brothers, there were four in total. Intelligent, athletic, musically gifted, and extremely ambitious, young Richard Nixon stood out as an excellent student at the local college. In 1934, he received a scholarship to study law at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, where he graduated third in his graduating class three years later. He impressed his comrades, first of all, with his iron discipline. His passion was hours-long debates, and politically he recognized himself as an opponent of the New Deal.

Returning to his homeland, he became an employee of a small law office. This start to his career somewhat disappointed him. In June 1940, the timid young man, after a long courtship, married Thelma Catherine "Pat" Ryan, a teacher his age. They had two daughters, Patricia (1946) and Julia (1948). No matter how distrustful and often cynical he was towards his friends and opponents, a harmonious family life provided support for his political career, unique in American history.

Immediately after America's entry into World War II, the couple moved to Washington, D.C., where Nixon received a position on the nation's price-control agencies, which soon seemed to him the embodiment of arbitrary government intervention. Although, as a Quaker, he was exempt from military service, he voluntarily, perhaps with a future political career in mind, joined the navy. From late 1942 to mid-1944, he served as a supply officer in the South Pacific and was beloved by superiors and subordinates alike. The service did not provide the opportunity to show heroism, but he succeeded in playing poker, winning a significant sum of $10,000.

After leaving military service, Nixon, who was considered conservative and politically ambitious, was asked to be the Republican candidate for California's 12th congressional district in the US House of Representatives. He not only accepted the offer without hesitation, but also financed the election campaign partly from his savings, although the Democrat who held this position was considered the favorite. Stoking the fear of communists that Republicans wanted to win congressional elections in 1946 also paid off for Nixon, he admitted, despite the belief that the opposition candidate had slandered his rival as a communist sympathizer. With a lead of 13.3% of the vote, he entered the House of Representatives.

The young deputy was not a fanatical anti-communist, but strongly advocated domestic and foreign policy containment of communism, as well as the Marshall Plan, which was rejected by many conservative Republicans. First of all, he realized that fear of communist infiltration could be perfectly used to his advantage, for which membership in the “House Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities” provided an ideal forum. The sensational investigation of Alger Hiss, a former high-ranking diplomat and president of the Carnegie Endowment who was accused by a renegade communist of being a member of the Communist Party of the USA and spying for the Soviet Union, made Nixon famous throughout the world in the fall of 1948. country. Despite the fact that Hiss was later styled as a martyr, we should not forget that he was not only accused of perjury, for which he was sentenced to 5 years in prison in 1950, but also, possibly, of treason beyond the jurisdiction of many years.

Nixon continued the tactic of denouncing his opponents as hidden communists in 1950 in the pre-election fight for a seat in the Senate, when he tactlessly called his rival Helen Douglas “Pink Lady.” She repaid him with the nickname “The Artful Detective” that remained behind him, but this could not prevent his huge victory and, apparently, unbridled rise. In 1952, both Republican presidential hopefuls, Robert Taft and Dwight Eisenhower, tried to recruit Nixon, who actively sided with the popular war hero, as their running mate. Due to revelations about allegedly illegal campaign donations, his candidacy was almost a fiasco if he had not, in his own way, gone on the attack and mobilized his supporters in a legendary television address, instilling in them the touching story that he allegedly They want to take away the cocker spaniel Checkers, a gift from his political friend, from his daughters. The episode illuminated Nixon's fighting spirit and his dexterity in handling the new medium of television, but it also sharpened his tendentiously paranoid aversion to critical journalists.

However, Nixon did not give up everything, but tried to create a new base by nominating his candidacy for the post of governor of California. His decisive defeat in 1962 against Democratic Governor Edmund Brown seemed to seal the end of his political career. At his “last press conference,” he scolded journalists and announced his retirement from politics. The family moved to New York, where Nixon joined a famous law firm.

Whether this renunciation was serious is doubtful. In general, the early 60s were a bad time for Republicans. Later, in the congressional elections, he again entered the election fight as a contender for the White House. Meanwhile, the political climate in the United States has changed radically. The escalation of the Vietnam War and the wave of racist and politically motivated violence instilled deep uncertainty in American society. As the radicalizing protest movement attacked America as an imperialist and racist apparatus of oppression, masses of voters reacted with increasing fear to the decline of patriotism and tradition. To this “silent majority,” Nixon offered himself as the man who could restore law and order and unite the nation, a bold promise given that few politicians had so polarized Americans.

In the primaries, Nixon easily defeated his rivals Nelson Rockefeller and Ronald Reagan. After the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the Democrats at the convention, accompanied by prolonged confusion, nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who identified with the Johnson administration. In the pre-election struggle, Nixon relied on the topic of internal security and argued against Johnson's social program along with the Vietnam War as a source of inflation and government deficits. He avoided the sensitive question of ending the war with a bold assertion that he had a secret plan for an “even peace” that he did not yet want to make public. For the first time, Nixon used the racial issue, using the “Southern Strategy” to achieve the votes of the white population of the southern states, opposed to continued racial integration. The big destabilizing factor, however, was the American Independent Party, led by George Wallace, the ex-governor of Alabama, whose racism and chauvinism was viewed positively by many small people in the North. In fact, Nixon defeated Humphrey in November 1968 by 0.7% for a majority of 43.4%, i.e. with such a small margin as he lost 8 years ago. Since Nixon was able to win the majority of the states, he was elected by a clear majority as the 37th President of the United States.

The presidency's first year was illuminated by the lunar landing of Apollo astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin on July 21, 1969, which bolstered the nation's battered self-confidence. But the new president's pressing problem was the Vietnam War, which was costing the lives of 500 American soldiers a month, absorbing huge sums of money, dividing the nation and damaging US credibility. The core of the “Nixon Doctrine” formed in July 1969 on further US military activity in Asia was “Vietnamization,” i.e., the replacement of American troops with South Vietnamese troops, which, with the most modern weapons, should have been able to prevent communist triumph. The withdrawal of 550,000 American troops began in June 1969 and was completed in March 1973. Since there was no longer any hope of military victory, Secretary of Security Henry A. Kissinger entered into secret negotiations with representatives of the North Vietnamese government in 1970. To force concessions from Hanoi, Nixon relied on simultaneous military strikes, such as the initially secret bombing of Viet Cong strongholds in Cambodia and the subsequent invasion of ground troops. The militarily useless expansion of the war led to mass protests in the United States, as a result of which in May 1970, 4 students at Kent State University (Ohio) were shot and killed by National Guardsmen. In the face of growing military pressure on the reliable South Vietnamese army, Nixon ultimately saw no other solution than to force Hanoi to the negotiating table. The bombing of North Vietnam began again in April 1972, and when a temporary compromise in October collapsed against the South Vietnamese government, it escalated by Christmas into the largest air offensive of the war. Although many historians attest to the success of Nixon's strategy, as the bombing war forced North Vietnam to yield, the agreement with Vietnam signed on January 27, 1973 in Paris was hardly the "honorable peace" that was expected. The withdrawal of American troops and the return of prisoners of war brought an end to America's longest war, but the presence of 100,000 North American troops in the South could be seen as an acknowledgment that the fall of South Vietnam was only a matter of time. Despite the American promise of assistance, the South Vietnamese government, which Nixon had forced to accept the agreement with an ultimatum, felt betrayed by the United States. That the fall of South Vietnam in 1974-1975, as Kissinger later claimed, could have been prevented without the paralysis caused by Watergate, is highly doubtful given the reluctance of the American public and Congress to return to the military option.

Nevertheless, Nixon's foreign policy successes are undeniable. That the former communist hunter tried to mend relations with both communist powers, and in 1972 was the first American president to visit China and the Soviet Union, was undeniably the most important U.S. foreign policy turn since the start of the Cold War. baffled his critics and many of his political friends. The impression evoked by Henry Kissinger in his memoirs that he was, in fact, the foreign policy architect of the Nixon administration is clearly exaggerated. Nixon himself constantly emphasized his leading role in making all important decisions. At the same time, there was complete agreement between the president and his security adviser, and later the secretary of foreign affairs, regarding the foundations and goals of American foreign policy. Both considered themselves national-interest-oriented “real politicians” for whom ideological or moral considerations were of secondary importance. Both would most like to see international policy in the hands of careful leaders, as far as possible without the intrusive interference of public opinion or parliamentary control. In Vietnam-era America, this concept, despite all its diplomatic successes, no longer corresponded to the spirit of the times and increasingly encountered resistance. Thus, Congress increasingly insisted on its constitutional rights and in 1973, over Nixon's veto, passed a law that ordered the president to report every use of force within 48 hours and - if Congress had not declared war during this time - as much as possible. after 60 days, cease hostilities.

The premise of Nixon's realpolitik was, first of all, an understanding of the need for reconciliation with the Soviet Union, and the “China card” was cleverly brought into play. The external results of this policy were the Treaty on the Limitation of Strategic Arms and Missile Defense Systems (SALT-1 and ABM) concluded in 1972, which slowed down the arms race, as well as the expansion of trade relations. Although for Washington, American-Soviet bilateralism was at the center of détente and the Nixon administration followed the socially liberal Ostpolitik in Bonn with some distrust, the president did not put a spoke in its wheels, so as not to provoke anti-American tendencies in Germany. As the four-power Berlin agreement of 1971 made clear, the very delicate situation of the divided city ensured that no German government could pursue an Ostpolitik in defiance of the United States.

The foreign policy dynamics of the Nixon administration weakened as the second term began. Resistance to détente grew in Congress, and Soviet General Secretary Brezhnev's visit to the United States in June 1973 failed to bring any significant progress in arms control. First of all, the Watergate crisis increasingly constrained the president's foreign policy capacity. The war in the Middle East in October 1973 struck the administration completely unexpectedly and in the midst of violent domestic political unrest. However, it is still controversial whether the delay in aid to Israel was a consequence of the violation of the truce by the Israelis, and whether the subsequent bellicose threatening gestures of the superpowers were the result of Nixon's inaction or, rather, Kissinger's arbitrariness. Nevertheless, this “pendulum diplomacy” finally led to a truce, so that in June 1974, Nixon was greeted as a peace broker during his visit to Egypt. However, the United States was unable to avoid the explosion in oil prices caused by the Arab embargo and the subsequent global economic downturn. No matter how much Richard Nixon emphasized his role on the world political stage and no matter how much he was valued as a negotiating partner on an international scale, the collapse of his domestic political power did not give him any more chances in foreign policy. When he went to his last summit in Moscow at the end of June 1974 with the vain hope of returning with a second SALT agreement, critics were already mocking the idea that he wanted to seek asylum. It was little consolation that the Soviets portrayed the Watergate affair as a conspiracy against détente.

Before he took office, Nixon constantly argued that the United States needed a president, in fact, only for foreign policy. Anyone who therefore hoped for a policy in the spirit of an anti-government creed was rather disappointed. True, under the banner of “new federalism” powers and financial resources were returned to individual states, but there could be no talk of limiting the federal executive power. On the contrary, the creation of a new budget structure and a domestic policy coordinating council centralized more power in the White House than ever. Instead of eliminating regulations, two new federal labor and environmental agencies were created, and a clean air law was passed. The Welfare State remained largely unaffected; the Nixon administration even introduced a welfare reform plan with a guaranteed minimum income for families, but it stalled in Congress. Nixon's relationship with Congress was marked by tension and hostility, not only because of the Democratic majority in both houses, but also because the president viewed this relationship as nothing more than a bitter power struggle. Early on, while trying to appoint two conservative southerners to the Supreme Court, he suffered an unpleasant defeat in the Senate. For his part, Nixon alienated Congress when, with dubious justification, he froze congressional spending after his veto was overridden. In the fight against inflation, he did not even hesitate to intervene sharply in the peacetime economy, the temporary wage and price freeze that Nixon announced in August 1971, along with an import tax and the lifting of the ban on the dollar exchange rate, to compensate for the first XX century deficit trade balance. Indeed, the business environment picked up again, and for some time inflation was also contained through continued controls.

Trying to ingratiate himself with the conservative white South, Nixon openly opposed busing children to school, which had been mandated by the Supreme Court in 1971, with the goal of racially integrating schools. During his tenure as president, the number of black students attending segregated schools in the South dropped from 68% to 8%. Also, progress in the legal equality of women began at this time more despite than thanks to Nixon’s personal position and initiative. In general, his domestic policies show more continuity than discontinuity with the previous liberal period of reform.

But this statement pales in comparison to a chain of hidden and illegal actions in the president’s entourage, in which the break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters at Washington’s Watergate Hotel in June 1972 was not even the most important link. True, “dirty tricks” such as abuse of the FBI or tax authorities have long been part of the repertoire of discrediting political opponents, but now their scale and the personal involvement of the president have reached a new level. The same Nixon, who freely communicated with the great communist world, was internally obsessed with Manichaean enemy-friend thinking, which allowed any means. Surrounded by loyal vassal-like staffers like White House Chief of Staff Haldeman and Domestic Policy Coordinator Ehrlichman, Nixon's lines between legitimate opposition and subversion became blurred. On his instructions, “enemies lists” were compiled and telephone conversations of unloved journalists were tapped. In 1970, Nixon approved a large-scale plan to undermine the anti-war movement with the help of the FBI and CIA, which was thwarted by the objections of FBI chief Edgar Hoover, less due to legal concerns than due to fear of losing the independence of the federal government. police. This did not stop the White House from creating a special secret unit called “tin-pullers”, which, among other things, had the task of “fixing holes” in relation to the press. When the New York Times began publishing a secret Department of Defense study into the origins of American action in Vietnam, the so-called Pentagon Papers, in June 1971, Nixon was beside himself. Since the Supreme Court approved the publication, the newspaper's informant, Daniel Ellsberg, a former employee of the National Security Council, had to be discredited by all means. The “tinsmiths” entered his psychiatrist’s office, but did not find any suitable material. In the 1972 election campaign, the leaders of the Tinmen, former CIA and FBI agents Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy, initiated a covert campaign to incite controversy and unrest in the democratic camp.

To this day, the specific motive for the break-in at the Watergate Hotel remains unclear. The listening microphones installed initially did not work, and when trying to replace them, on June 17, 1972, five burglars were surprised by a security guard and then arrested. The police identified the head of James McCord, a former CIA agent and chief of security of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), and a little later the FBI identified the instigators of Hunt and Liddy. That the president ordered this action, which his press liaison classified as a “third-rate hack,” or even knew about it, is unlikely. Even more outlandish are theories that portray him as the victim of unauthorized employees or enemy conspirators. Nixon and Haldeman immediately agreed to hush up the burglars' connection to CREEP and assigned John Dean, an ambitious young assistant, to send hush money to the accused and keep the FBI from investigating. under the pretext of “national security”.

Dean's efforts were initially successful. Watergate was no longer an issue, and Richard Nixon was re-elected on November 7, 1972, overwhelmingly defeating his Democratic challenger, George McGovern, a member of the party's left who had never stood a serious chance.

The fact that the scam was finally made public largely depended on two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who, with their persistent searches, drew public attention to the numerous illegal actions of the “president’s men” in the election fight. In the trial against the Watergate burglars, Judge Sirica threatened long prison terms if they did not tell the whole truth. Their leader admitted that he received money for silence and a promise of a quick pardon. Out of a keen instinct for power, the president dissociated himself from his directly exposed followers and fired Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean and Attorney General Kleindienst, whose successor, on behalf of Nixon, appointed Harvard lawyer Archibald Cox as emergency investigator.

The attempt to present himself as a clean man collided, however, with televised hearings of the Senate Emergency Committee, which had been meeting since May 1973, during which Dean accused Nixon of instigating and complicity in the cover-up of the case. Since Dean’s word stood against the president’s word, he could have gotten out of this scam more or less safely if his bureau chief, Alexander Butterfield, had not confessed to the representatives on Friday, June 13, 1973 (a truly unlucky day for Nixon!) Senate Committee is that all conversations in the “oval office” were recorded using hidden listening devices. Thus, there were recordings of conversations between Nixon and his staff that could answer the crucial question: “What did the President know and when did he know it?”

Over the release of these tape recordings, a bitter battle broke out between emergency investigator Cox and the White House, which invoked special “executive privilege.” On October 20, 1973, a scandal erupted when the Attorney General and his deputy refused to fire Cox, as Nixon had demanded, and resigned; only the third person in the ministry complied and announced his resignation. The act of desperation called the “Saturday Night Beating” caused a storm of public outrage, and Nixon had no choice but to appoint a new emergency investigator, who was no less inconvenient than the hated Cox.

The supposed "executive privilege" was ineffective against the constitutional impeachment charge against the President of "treason, bribery, or other crimes and misdemeanors" that the House Judiciary Committee had been discussing since October 30, 1973. In April 1974, the White House decided to take the offensive and published a copy containing 1,200 pages, but distorted. More than the many inconsistencies with Nixon's early statements, Americans were shocked by the vulgar tone of communication and the prison-like mentality in the White House.

The end came in July-August 1974: On July 24, the Supreme Court ordered the release of all required tapes to the House Judiciary Committee, which between July 27 and July 30 adopted three articles of impeachment charging the President, among other things, with abuse of office, perjury and disrespect for the constitutional rights of Congress. Under massive pressure, Nixon released on August 5 a recording of a conversation with then-chief of staff Haldeman dated June 23, 1972, from which it clearly followed that the president himself had ordered the cover-up action. This established where the “smoke was coming from,” although Nixon insisted that the conversation only incriminated him externally. But even for the president's last supporters, the cup overflowed. The Republican leadership hinted that the majority would possibly be in favor of removal from office. On August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon announced in a televised address that he would resign effective the next day, not admitting guilt and citing the fact that he had lost his political base. The transfer of the position to Vice President Gerald Ford on August 9 ended the impeachment, but not the issue of criminal legal consequences. Ford, a month later, issued a general apology for all the crimes Nixon may have committed as president and spared his predecessor the indignity of a trial.

However absurd the sign of victory with which Nixon bid farewell to his last supporters as he left the White House may seem, it heralded a struggle for rehabilitation that had been waged for 20 years with characteristic tenacity and, in the end, not without success. He himself later spoke of the decision “life or death” as one who gives up after defeat dies spiritually and soon physically. First of all, it was a fight with the pen. After his resignation, Nixon wrote at least 9 books, starting with his memoirs published in 1978 and ending with the book “Beyond the World,” completed shortly before his death. Two themes run through these well-written and successful books: Nixon's view of world politics and his justification for his tenure as President and his role in the Watergate scam, which he always wanted to see as a conspiracy of his enemies using the usual "dirty electioneering" tactics. trick" to dislodge it. The fact that he disputed personal involvement in actions punishable by law and admitted only political mistakes was impossible without significant distortions of the facts, and therefore was never accepted by either the public or historians.

Even without his impossible admission of guilt, Nixon eventually managed to return to public life. When he died, on April 22, 1994, respect for his foreign policy achievements and extraordinary willpower outweighed everything else. Watergate was not forgotten, but it was clearly forgiven. The deceased was not only given a mandatory state funeral; The fact that the current President Clinton, who in the 60s participated in demonstrations against Nixon and the Vietnam War, himself gave the funeral speech, seemed almost a second pardon and reconciliation of generations.

Although Richard Nixon was a significant public figure for almost half a century, he will not go down in history as a great president, as Kissinger assured him of this after his resignation.

Nixon's tenure as president combined the exaggerations of the "imperial presidency" with the obsessions of a self-scorned careerist hell-bent on winning at any cost. Complaining that he will never be forgiven for Watergate comes across as self-pitying in the face of the fact that he never questioned the media, the liberal establishment, the generation of the 1960s, or spoke about them in his book. Nixon was not overthrown by his opponents, he was overthrown because the brilliant political analyst in him could not control the paranoid, vindictive man of power.

The Institute of Presidents under Richard Nixon was undoubtedly in the worst crisis of confidence in its history, which his successor was only partially able to overcome. Watergate has become an example of a typical political scandal that is mentioned at every opportunity. The myth of the most powerful man in the world showed its downside, and the need to limit and control this power became obvious. The reign of conservatism in America, which began with the election of Nixon in 1968, was briefly interrupted by Ford's non-election to a second term. In the Republican Party after Nixon and Ford, religious fundamentalists and laissez-faire ideologists took over. Even such a critic of Nixon as his biographer Stephen Ambrose, looking back into the past, sees the actual tragedy of his resignation in the missed chances of continuing a moderate social-state orientation and pragmatic internationalism.

Manfred Berg's article "The Institute of the Presidency in Crisis" was used in preparing the material.

Nixon gains an anti-communist reputation and national fame. Following the 1952 presidential election, won by Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon assumed the post of vice president. After eight years in this chair, in 1960 he ran for president, but lost to John Kennedy by a minimal margin. In 1962, he also unsuccessfully ran for governor of California. In 1968, Nixon ran for president again and this time won.

Biography

Richard Nixon had 4 brothers: Harold (1909-1933), Donald (1914-1987), Arthur (1918-1925), and Ed (b. 1930). Four of the 5 sons were named after British and English kings, Richard was named after Richard the Lionheart.

Nixon's early life was marked by hardship, and he later quoted Eisenhower to describe his childhood: "We were poor, but the good thing was that we didn't know it." Ranching failed for the Nixon family, and in 1922 they moved to Whittier, California, an area inhabited by Quakers, where the father of the family opened a grocery store and gas station. Richard's younger brother Arthur died in 1925 after a short illness, and his older brother Harold, whom Richard always admired, died in 1933 from tuberculosis.

Nixon initially attended high school in Fullerton, but he was later transferred to another school in Whittier, where he graduated second in the class of 1930. After graduating from high school, he was offered tuition at Harvard, but his family did not have enough money for him to travel and live there, so he stayed home and attended Whittier College.

Law practice

After graduating from Whittier College, Nixon graduated from Duke University Law School in 1937. Although Nixon wanted a job with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he returned to California to practice law in La Habra Heights and was admitted to the bar in 1937. He began practicing law in the office of Wingert and Beli, where he worked to resolve commercial disputes for local oil companies and other corporate matters.

Nixon found the practice of law uninteresting, but worked for experience that would be very useful in his future political career. In 1938, he opened his Wingert and Beley branch in La Habra, California, and became a full partner in the firm the following year.

Marriage

War

Subsequently, having already left the post of President of the United States, speaking about his political career preceding the presidency, Nixon tried to present himself as a victim of competitors who used government departments to fight him, in particular, according to him, this happened during the presidency of John F. Kennedy, for example. , when he ran for governor of California, the Internal Revenue Service, among others, was used to discredit him Nixon's secret testimony was made public in the United States - The testimony that the ex-president gave to a jury in 1975 was made public for the first time in the United States - LB.ua.

President of the U.S.A

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Cultural allusions

• Opera "Nixon in China" (1987), composer John Adams
• In the Futurama cartoon series, the character Head of Richard Nixon became the President of Earth. The headless clone of Spiro Agnew became vice president.
• In the 1975 detective novel A Family Affair by American writer Rex Stout, the plot of the novel intertwines the Watergate Scandal and President Richard Nixon.
• In the game Call of Duty: Black Ops, the zombie mode on the map “Five” will be played by a 3rd player.

Movies about Nixon

• : “All the President’s Men”, dir. Alan Pakula.
• : “Washington: Behind Closed Doors”, dir. Gary Nelson, as Richard Monckton (Nixon) - Jason Robards.
• : “Where the Bison Roams”, dir. Art Linson.
• : “Template: Not translated 3”, dir. Robert Altman, as Nixon - Philip Baker Hall.
• : “Nixon”, dir. Oliver Stone as Nixon -

Richard Millhouse Nixon is an American politician and statesman, 36th Vice President of the United States (1953-1961), 37th President of the United States (1969-1974). Richard was born on January 9, 1913 in the Californian city of Yorba Linda in the family of a small merchant, Scotsman Francis Nixon and his wife, housewife Hannah Millhouse Nixon. The family had five sons - Harold, Richard, Donald, Arthur, Ed, who were named after the kings of Britain. Richard, the second among the brothers, was named after Richard the Lionheart.

Hannah grew up attending the Quaker community, a branch of Protestantism. The woman converted her husband and children to her faith. In 1922, the Nixons moved to Whittier, where Richard went to school. Despite constantly working in his father's grocery store, which was located near the gas station owned by the Nixons, Richard managed to become the second best student in school and graduate in 1930 with excellent grades. The boy was offered education at Harvard, but due to financial difficulties, Richard entered Whittier College.

In the new place, the family suffered its first losses: in 1925, the Nixons’ youngest son, Arthur, who was only 7 years old at that time, died, and in 1933, at the age of 24, Harold died of tuberculosis. In 1934, Nixon entered law school at Duke University in Durham. As a student, Richard dreamed of a career in the FBI, but returned to California, where he got a job in the law office of Wingert and Beli. Since 1937 he was a member of the bar. Nixon was assigned to disputes between local oil companies and commercial firms.

A year later, the aspiring lawyer was entrusted with heading the office’s branch in La Habra Heights; in 1939, Nixon managed to buy out part of the company’s shares. Richard viewed advocacy as a necessary life experience. In 1942, Nixon enlisted in the US Navy, where he began serving with the rank of lieutenant. The officer's duties included ensuring the security of US air bases in the Pacific Ocean. Nixon was discharged in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant commander.

Policy

In 1946, Richard, at the invitation of Herman Perry, one of the leaders of Bank of America, took part in the elections of the US House of Representatives from the 12th district of California. During the election campaign, the young lawyer managed to bypass the previous representative J. Voorhees. Nixon held this post for two terms. In the late 1940s, Nixon worked in the intelligence department of the Commission to Identify Hidden Communists, where he organized and solved the case of the Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers, who collaborated with high-ranking official Alger Hiss.

In 1950, Richard Nixon won a seat as a senator from California and moved to Washington. Three years later, the Republican representative became deputy prime minister of the Eisenhower cabinet. Nixon regularly accompanied the president to meetings with Congress and the Cabinet of Ministers, and often appeared in public, voicing decisions of the president and the government. Three times from 1955 to 1957, during Eisenhower's illness, he assumed the duties of head of state.

In 1960, Nixon competed in the next election, but lost to his opponent by a small margin. In 1962, in connection with his resignation from the White House, Richard temporarily returned to the bar in California. Having lost the election for governor of his native state, he considered that his political career was over. In the same year, Nixon’s autobiography “Six Crises” appeared, dedicated to his work in the US government apparatus.

In 1963 he moved to New York, where he opened a branch of a law firm. A year later, Nixon was invited to the campaign headquarters of presidential candidate B. Goldwater. In 1968, Nixon announced his own nomination for the presidential election and on August 7 defeated opponents G. Humphrey, J. Romney, N. Rockefeller and.

The president

Richard Nixon's domestic policy was based on conservatism. The President opposed social programs to help the poor, farms, and prevented the liberalization of the Supreme Court. During the Nixon administration, the legendary landing of American astronauts on the moon took place.

In foreign policy, all matters were managed by National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, whom Nixon tasked with getting the United States out of the Vietnam War. The withdrawal of American troops from the territory of South Vietnam, which began in July 1969, lasted 3 years and ended in early 1973 with the signing of the Paris Peace Agreement.

In 1970, to maintain his superpower status, Nixon sent troops to Cambodia, where the new Lon Nol government began fighting the communists. The continuation of the war in Indochina provoked a new surge of demonstrations in America. Under Nixon, political rapprochement with the Soviet Union and the Republic of China began. In 1972, Richard was re-elected to the post of head of state and in February of the same year he left for the PRC, and in May he and his wife visited the USSR, where they signed the SALT-1 treaty.

Already in 1972, 4 months before the election, five people were detained installing a wiretapping system in the headquarters of Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern. The office was located in the Watergate building. A magnetic tape recording conversations of politicians, as well as photos of secret documents, were confiscated from the detainees. The scandal played a fatal role for the president's political biography.

Over the course of two years, the investigation indirectly proved Richard Nixon's involvement in the case, which was confirmed by numerous false testimonies, threats and bribery of witnesses. As a result, on August 9, 1974, under threat of impeachment, Nixon resigned. The next head of state, Gerald Ford, pardoned Nixon, although no verdict was passed.

Personal life

In early 1938, Richard Nixon met schoolteacher Thelma Pat Ryan at one of the classes at the Whittier Community Players theater studio. The young man courted the girl for a long time before she agreed to become his wife. In June 1940, Richard and Thelma married. The wife gave Nixon two daughters - Tricia (1946) and Julie (1948).

In 1968, Julie married President Eisenhower's grandson David. Tricia married the grandson of famed New York judge Edward R. Finch, Harvard-educated lawyer Edward Finch Cox in 1971. Thelma Nixon died on June 22, 1993 from lung cancer.

Death and memory

After his resignation, Richard Nixon began writing literary works and memoirs. The ex-president was prohibited from conducting legal and political activities. Richard spent his final years living in a gated community in Park Ridge, New Jersey, where he died of a cerebral hemorrhage on April 22, 1994.

Richard Nixon often became the hero of Hollywood films. In 1995, the director directed the political drama Nixon, in which he played the main role of the president. In the comedies “Elvis Meets Nixon” and “The President's Girlfriends,” the head of state was played by Bob Gunton and Dan Hedaya.

In early 1974, an incident occurred on Delta Airlines that was regarded as an assassination attempt on President Nixon. A terrorist entered the plane and demanded that the pilots proceed to Washington. The FBI arrived on time and began a shootout with the criminal, who eventually shot himself. In 2004, the detective thriller “Kill the President” was released. The Assassination of Richard Nixon" directed by Niels Müller, dedicated to the events of early 1974. Now the latest film dedicated to the 37th President of the United States is the 2016 comedy “Elvis and Nixon.”

Achievements

• Member of the House of Representatives from California's 12th Congressional District - 1947
• California State Senator - 1950
• 36th Vice President of the United States - 1953
• 37th President of the USA - 1969

Nixon Richard
Born: January 9, 1913.
Died: April 22, 1994 (81 years old).

Biography

Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913, Yorba Linda, California - April 22, 1994, New York) - 37th President of the United States of America (1969-1974), 36th Vice President of the United States ( 1953-1961). The first and currently only US president to resign before the end of his term.

Born in California. Having become a lawyer, he returned to his native state in 1937 to practice law. In 1942, having received an offer to work for the federal government, he and his wife moved to Washington. During World War II he served in the US Navy. In 1946 he was elected to the US House of Representatives from California, and in 1950 to the Senate. During the Algiers Hissa Affair, Nixon gains an anti-communist reputation and national fame. After the presidential election in 1952, which was won by Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon served as vice president. After eight years in this chair, in 1960 he ran for president, but lost to John Kennedy by a minimal margin. In 1962, he also unsuccessfully ran for governor of California. In 1968, Nixon ran for president again and this time won.

Richard Nixon was born on January 9, 1913 to Francis Nixon and Hannah Milhouse Nixon in California. His mother was a Quaker, and his upbringing was shaped by the conservative influences of the time. His father Francis became a Quaker after marrying his mother. Francis Nixon is ethnically Scottish. Sept Nixon is part of Clan Armstrong.

Richard Nixon had four brothers: Harold (1909-1933), Donald (1914-1987), Arthur (1918-1925), and Ed (b. 1930). Four of the five boys were named after British and English kings, Richard was named after Richard the Lionheart.

Early life Nixon were marked by hardship, and he later quoted Eisenhower to describe his childhood: "We were poor, but the good thing was that we didn't know it." Ranching failed for the Nixon family, and in 1922 they moved to Whittier, California, an area inhabited by Quakers, where the father of the family opened a grocery store and gas station. Richard's younger brother Arthur died in 1925 after a short illness, and his older brother Harold, whom Richard had always admired, died of tuberculosis in 1933.

Nixon initially attended high school in Fullerton, but he was later transferred to another school in Whittier, where he graduated second in the class of 1930. After high school, he was offered a chance to attend Harvard, but his family didn't have enough money for him to travel and live there, so he stayed home and attended Whittier College.

Law practice

After graduating from Whittier College, Nixon graduated from Duke University Law School in 1937. Although Nixon wanted a job with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he returned to California to practice law in La Habra Heights and was admitted to the bar in 1937. He began practicing law in the office of Wingert and Beli, where he worked to resolve commercial disputes for local oil companies and other corporate matters.

Nixon found the practice of law uninteresting, but worked for experience that would be very useful in his future political career. In 1938, he opened his Wingert and Beley branch in La Habra, California, and became a full partner in the firm the following year.

Marriage

In January 1938, Nixon was sent to the Whittier Players Society. There he met high school teacher Thelma Pat Ryan. Nixon pursued her, but Ryan was initially not interested in a relationship. He began making unscheduled visits to her home and taking her to the Quaker school where he was a teacher. After several proposals, Ryan eventually agreed to marry Nixon, and they sealed their relationship in a small ceremony on June 21, 1940. After a honeymoon in Mexico, the Nixons moved to Long Beach and then settled into an apartment in East Whittier. In January 1942 they moved to Washington, DC.

War

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Nixon joined the US Navy. In August 1942 he became a lieutenant in the Navy. He served as an aviation ground control officer in the Pacific. By the end of World War II he had risen to the rank of lieutenant commander. In 1946 he retired from the army.

Career in the US Congress

Back in 1945, Richard received an offer from one of the Republican leaders of the Californian city of Whittier, part of Los Angeles County, located 12 miles (19 km) southeast of Los Angeles proper, vice president Whittier Bank of America branch Herman L. Perry, an old friend of the Nixon family, to take part in the 1946 elections to the House of Representatives. Nixon accepted the offer and declined to renew his Navy contract, discharged on 01/01/1946. In November 1946, Nixon defeated J. Voorhees, who had held this seat for five consecutive terms, becoming a member of the US House of Representatives from the 12th district of California. He was re-elected to a second term in 1948. He was a member of the Commission to Investigate Un-American Activities, in whose work he actively participated.

1950-1953 - US Senator from California.

Vice President and President of the United States

He served as vice president in the Eisenhower administration from 1953 to 1961, playing a prominent public role and often speaking on behalf of the administration. In the 1960 elections, he ran for president as a Republican for the first time, but was defeated by John Kennedy. He described his experiences as vice president of the United States in his memoir, Six Crises, published in 1962.

Subsequently, having already left the post of President of the United States, speaking about his political career preceding the presidency, Nixon tried to present himself as a victim of competitors who used government departments to fight him, in particular, according to him, this happened during the presidency of John Kennedy, for example. , when he ran for governor of California, the Internal Revenue Service, among others, was used to discredit him.

In 1968 and 1972, he was elected to the presidency (the only American politician elected to two terms as vice president and subsequently to two terms as president). During his reign, American astronauts landed on the moon and a number of reforms were implemented that led to the virtual stoppage of the Bretton Woods system. Foreign policy during this period was led by Henry Kissinger. Under Nixon, the United States improved relations with the PRC (after the president's sensational personal visit to China in 1971) and a policy of détente began in relations with the USSR.

In May 1972, Nixon (the first president since F. Roosevelt in 1945) and his wife visited the Soviet Union. During this visit, he signed the SALT I Treaty with Brezhnev. He was also the first president to visit all 50 US states.

During the presidential election, Nixon campaigned under the slogan of ending the Vietnam War with an “honorable peace.” In 1969, the new US administration began a policy of “Vietnamization” aimed at transferring responsibility for control over the country's territories to South Vietnamese troops - in fact, the purpose of this policy was to find opportunities for the withdrawal of US troops from the conflict zone. In July, the systematic withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam began, which lasted more than three years.

In March 1970, a coup took place in neighboring Cambodia, as a result of which the new government of this state, led by Lon Nol, tried to expel the communists from the country. In response, North Vietnamese troops stationed in Cambodia began successful military operations against Cambodian government forces. To help Lon Nol, the United States and South Vietnam were forced to send troops into Cambodia at the end of April. These actions led to another outbreak of anti-war protests in the United States, and two months later the American army left Cambodia by order of Nixon (South Vietnamese troops remained there until the fall).

On January 27, 1973, the Paris Peace Agreement was signed, according to which American troops left Vietnam (by this time all ground combat units had already been withdrawn, and less than 100 thousand Americans remained in the country). Fulfilling the signed agreement, on March 29 of the same year, the United States completed the withdrawal of its troops from South Vietnam.

Nixon is the only US president to terminate his term early and resign. This happened on August 9, 1974, after the scandal known as Watergate and charges that threatened to impeach him. Nixon is usually considered one of the most odious presidents, although emphasizing the contradictory nature of the figure: foreign policy successes, tough and, in general, effective management style.

Cultural allusions

Opera "Nixon in China" (1987), composer John Adams
In the Futurama cartoon series, the character Head of Richard Nixon became the President of Earth. The headless clone of Spiro Agnew became vice president.
In the 1975 detective novel A Family Affair by American writer Rex Stout, the plot of the novel intertwines the Watergate Scandal and President Richard Nixon.
In the game Call of Duty: Black Ops, the zombie mode on the map “Five” will be played by a 3rd player.

Movies about Nixon

1976: “All the President’s Men,” dir. Alan Pakula.
1977: “Washington: Behind Closed Doors”, dir. Gary Nelson as Richard Monckton (Nixon) - Jason Robards.
1980: “Where the Buffalo Roam”, dir. Art Linson.
1984: “Secret Honor (English) Russian”, dir. Robert Altman, as Nixon - Philip Baker Hall.
1995: “Nixon”, dir. Oliver Stone, Anthony Hopkins as Nixon.
1997: “Elvis Meets Nixon”, dir. Allan Arkush (English) Russian, in the role of Nixon - Bob Gunton.
1999: “The President’s Girlfriends (English) Russian”, dir. Andrew Fleming (English)Russian, as Nixon - Dan Hedaya.
2004: “Kill the President. Assassination attempt on Richard Nixon (English)Russian,” dir. Nils Muller.
2008: Frost vs. Nixon, dir. Ron Howard, Frank Langella as Nixon.
2009: “Watchmen”, dir. Zack Snyder, as Nixon - Robert Wisden (English)Russian..
2011: Doctor Who (episodes “Day of the Moon” and “The Impossible Astronaut”), dir. Toby Haynes, screenwriter Steven Moffat, as Nixon - Stuart Milligan (English) Russian..
2013: “The Butler”, dir. Lee Daniels, John Cusack as Nixon.
2014: “X-Men: Days of Future Past”, dir. Bryan Singer, as Nixon - Mark Camacho.