]]> http://thenewnixon.org/2010/05/14/wwnd-3/feed/ 1 http://thenewnixon.org/2010/05/08/oil-spills-and-federal-leadership/ http://thenewnixon.org/2010/05/08/oil-spills-and-federal-leadership/#comments Sat, 08 May 2010 19:59:05 +0000 Frank Gannon http://thenewnixon.org/?p=23985 Walter Hickel’s death comes at a time when the nation is focused on the causes and consequences of offshore oil spills.  As the newly-minted Secretary of the Interior —literally newly-minted, having only been confirmed six days earlier— Wally Hickel had to deal with one of the worst such disasters.

On the afternoon of 29 January 1969, a Union Oil platform six miles off the Santa Barbara coast suffered a blowout.  Over the next eleven days, workers struggled to cap the rupture while hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil spread into an 800 square mile slick that killed wildlife and tarred beaches along 35 miles of pristine coast.

The Hickel Senate confirmation hearings at been bitterly controversial; they set new levels of political acrimony that, finally, even embarrassed some of the interlocutors.  When the vote was finally taken after RN’s inauguration —making Hickel the last confirmed Cabinet member— the new President called and suggested that the new Secretary relax for a weekend at Camp David.

In a wide-ranging and fascinating conversation in 2003 with Charles Wilkinson and Patricia Limerick —co-founders of the Center of the American West— Wally Hickel recalled those events:

So I was confirmed and the president called and said, “Wally, go to Camp David. You’ve been through a terrible thing.” So I went up to Camp David, I left my chief of staff in Washington. I was up there one day and he called me. He said, “Mr. Secretary, they’ve had a terrible oil spill down in Santa Barbara.” He said, “It’s really bad.” And I said, “Well, get me a plane, let’s get out there.” And I hadn’t even been in my office yet. I got down there and we flew out to California and the Coast Guard met me and God, the people. It was rough.

They flew me out to see that. There’s pictures of that. I saw this tremendous flood of oil. And the people were saying, who was in office, and they were saying, “Take that Union Oil thing. Do this. Do that.” I was at the Biltmore Hotel in Santa Barbara that night. It was 1:30 in the morning. Fred Hartley was there, Union Oil. I didn’t know what authority he had. It didn’t make any difference. I said, “Fred, I’m going to shut you down.” And he said, “Mr. Secretary, you don’t have the authority to shut me down.” That stopped me for about a second and a half. I walked over and looked him right in the eye and said, “Fred, I just gave myself the authority.”

I walked out of there. I got on the phone and called the attorney general’s office and got the answering service. It was very early in the morning there in Washington, about 5:30 or so. I said, “You find me a way that I can shut them down, I just did that.”

I got on a plane and went back to Washington and got back there about ten o’clock the next morning. The Attorney General called me and said, “Mr. Secretary, we think we have something that will really please you. We found a regulation that was put in in 1834 that says that the Secretary of Interior is responsible that our natural resources not be wasted.” I held on that and won the case.

The problem with that was I got the regulations sent to me the first day down there in their office and the previous administration had given them [Union Oil] the right to drill offshore, and I didn’t mind that. But the regulations they used were the same as on land. So in reality, Union Oil didn’t break any regulations.

So I go back out to Santa Barbara and it was really wild. We had a meeting in a convention hall; there were two to three hundred people. They were saying, “Get Union Oil. Do this.” I said, “Wait a minute. They didn’t break any laws. We didn’t have the right regulations.” And they calmed down. I said, “That is not Union’s oil. It belongs to us. It’s the commons.”

I closed them down and we had hearings later. But those hearings were tough. I had no animosity. I sat there. God must have caused that spill in Santa Barbara because it brought the commons in to me.

Alaska was the commons. I had had that battle since 1951 when I took it to Washington. It started the environmentalist thinking. It started that thinking and it became a busy two years. But that was part of the hearing. Long story, but I don’t know how to make it shorter.

“The conservationists cheered me when we fought against pollution or when we preserved park lands; they attacked me when we advanced the Alaska Pipeline and the North America energy grid. My friends and associates in business were equally perplexed. I was not their guy. I was not anyone’s guy.”

The Supreme Court announced this morning that visitors will no longer access the building by ascending the 44 marble steps steps and passing under the words “Equal Justice Under Law” to enter the great central hall through the massive bronze doors depicting the history of the development of justice and law in the western world from ancient Greece to 19th Century America.

A Court press release stated: “The new entrance, which will serve as the primary means for public entry, was designed in light of findings and recommendations from two independent security studies conducted in 2001 and 2009.  The entrance provides a secure, reinforced area to screen for weapons, explosives, and chemical and biological hazards.”

Justice Breyer issued a Statement —in which Justice Ginsburg concurred— regretting the surrender of symbolism to security.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

MONDAY, May 3, 2010

Present: Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Kennedy, Justice Thomas, Justice Ginsburg, and Justice Sotomayor.

Statement Concerning the Supreme Court’s Front Entrance Memorandum of Justice Breyer, with whom Justice Ginsburg joins.

I write with regret to note the closing of the Court’s front entrance. The Supreme Court building is currently undergoing extensive construction, and the Court has decided that, after this construction is completed, visitors to the Court—including the parties whose cases we decide, the attorneys who argue those cases, and the members of the public who come to listen and to observe their government in action— will have to enter through a side door. While I recognize the reasons for this change, on balance I do not believe they justify it. I think the change is unfortunate, and I write in the hope that the public will one day in the future be able to enter the Court’s Great Hall after passing under the famous words “Equal Justice Under Law.”

Cass Gilbert faced a difficult problem when he was commissioned to design the Court’s present home. The Court was to be built on a small, irregularly-shaped plot of land adjacent to both the Capitol and the Library of Congress, two powerful and prominent architectural competitors. How was Gilbert to create a distinctive, yet fitting, home for the Court in these circumstances?

Gilbert’s solution was to design an entrance that, in the words of architect and lawyer Paul Byard, “the processional progress toward justice reenacted daily in [the Court’s] premises.” Starting at the Court’s western plaza, Gilbert’s plan leads visitors along a carefully choreographed, climbing path that ultimately ends at the courtroom itself.  The Court’s forty-four marble steps, the James Earle Fraser sculptures Contemplation of Justice and Authority of Law, the Western portico with its eight pairs of columns standing high above the removed wings of the building, the Great Hall—each of these elements does its part to encourage contemplation of the Court’s central purpose, the administration of justice to all who seek it.

But the significance of the Court’s front entrance extends beyond its design and function. Writers and artists regularly use the steps to represent the ideal that anyone in this country may obtain meaningful justice through application to this Court. And the steps appear in countless photographs commemorating famous arguments or other moments of historical importance. In short, time has proven the success of Gilbert’s vision: To many members of the public, this Court’s main entrance and front steps are not only a means to, but also a metaphor for, access to the Court itself.

This is why, even though visitors will remain able to leave via the front entrance, I find dispiriting the Court’s decision to refuse to permit the public to enter. I certainly recognize the concerns identified in the two security studies that led to this recent decision (which reaffirmed a decision made several years ago). But potential security threats will exist regardless of which entrance we use. And, in making this decision, it is important not to undervalue the symbolic and historic importance of allowing visitors to enter the Court after walking up Gilbert’s famed front steps.

To my knowledge, and I have spoken to numerous jurists and architects worldwide, no other Supreme Court in the world—including those, such as Israel’s, that face security concerns equal to or greater than ours—has closed its main entrance to the public. And the main entrances to numerous other prominent public buildings in America remain open. I thus remain hopeful that, sometime in the future, technological advances, a Congressional appropriation, or the dissipation of the current security risks will enable us to restore the Supreme Court’s main entrance as a symbol of dignified openness and meaningful access to equal justice under law.

In one of the panels of the Supreme Court’s bronze doors, Chief Justice John Marshall and Associate Justice Joseph Story discuss the 1803 Marbury v. Madison opinion in front of the Capitol.

Pat Buchanan will be the guest tomorrow on C-SPAN’s monthly three hour interview and call in show In Depth.

Back in the day: PJB in his EOB office.  RN recruited the youngster —his first hire for his new presidential campaign— in 1967 from the editorial page of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.  He served on the White House staff until 1975.

RN Birthplace and Reflecting Pool with Visiting Mallard

Library Courtyard

Courtyard Colonnade

The Pat Nixon Rose (1972) in the First Lady’s Rose Garden

22 April 2010

]]> http://thenewnixon.org/2010/04/27/yorba-linda-via-iphone-april-2010/feed/ 2 http://thenewnixon.org/2010/04/22/rn-9-january-1913-22-april-1994/ http://thenewnixon.org/2010/04/22/rn-9-january-1913-22-april-1994/#comments Thu, 22 Apr 2010 07:58:44 +0000 Frank Gannon http://thenewnixon.org/?p=23765

In 1968, Mr. Train, an attorney with a long record of public service and environmental pioneering, was asked by President-Elect Nixon to serve as Chairman of a Task Force on the Environment.  During the early years of the Nixon administration, Mr. Train was Undersecretary of the Interior (1969-70) and Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality (1970-73).

In September 1973, RN appointed him second administrator of the new Environmental Protection Agency (replacing William Ruckelshaus).  He served in that capacity under RN and Gerald Ford until January 1977, when he joined the World Wildlife Fund — first as President of WWF-US and then as the organization’s Chairman, until 1994.

Among his many worldwide honors are the US Medal of Freedom for his work in the field of conservation (1991) and the Heinz Awards Chairman’s Medal (2006).

Mr. Train opened his article with a general survey:

In his State of the Union Address of January 22, 1970, President Nixon declared: “The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, our land and our water? …. Clean air, clean water, open spaces — these should once again be the birthright of every American. If we act now they can be.” Expansive rhetoric to be sure, but the rhetoric was matched by a remarkable record of achievement.

Environmental protection represented without doubt in my mind the single most significant area of domestic policy accomplishment of the Nixon administration. The extraordinary number of legislative, administrative, and institutional initiatives dealing with environmental matters far exceed those in any other area of domestic policy. Moreover, the initiatives in this one field were remarkable not only for their sheer quantity but also for their scope and innovativeness.

The Nixon environmental program dealt with both domestic and international policy, institutional reform, pollution control, tax policy, wildlife protection, land use policy, parks and open space (particularly urban open space), historic preservation, and many other facets of the environmental equation. It was truly a comprehensive effort that stretched from 1969 through 1973, probably peaking in 1972, and later giving way to energy concerns that arose from the several Arab oil embargoes. In large part, the results of the Nixon initiatives remain in place today and form the foundation for the country’s ongoing environmental programs.

While environmental initiatives by President Nixon on the international front tended to be obscured by other more dramatic foreign policy accomplishments, during his administration the United States provided the principal leadership for both bilateral and multilateral international efforts in the field of environmental cooperation.

He concluded by noting that:

Whatever the president’s personal predilections in the area, the Nixon administration not only recognized and responded to the ground swell of public concern over the environment, but it was out front on the issue, the essence of political leadership. Indeed, in some aspects of its environmental initiatives, such as land use policy, the administration was well ahead of its time. In the international arena, the United States under the Nixon administration cajoled and prodded the nations of the world to cooperate in addressing critical environmental It has been a hard act to follow.

The entire article may be obtained here.

The almost 17,000-word document surveyed the the issue beginning with the first Brown decision in 1954.  Clearly, and in very plain language, the President surveyed the history and set out his Administration’s position:

This issue is not partisan. It is not sectional. It is an American issue, of direct and immediate concern to every citizen.

I hope that this statement will reduce the prevailing confusion and will help place public discussion of the issue on a more rational and realistic level in all parts of the Nation. It is time to strip away the hypocrisy, the prejudice, and the ignorance that too long have characterized discussion of this issue.’

He described his underlying approach:

We are dealing fundamentally with inalienable human rights, some of them constitutionally protected. The final arbiter of constitutional questions is the United States Supreme Court.

And he set out his specific objectives:

–To reaffirm my personal belief that the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education was right in both constitutional and human terms.

–To assess our progress in the 16 years since Brown and to point the way to
continuing progress.

–To clarify the present state of the law, as developed by the courts and the Congress, and the administration policies guided by it.

–To discuss some of the difficulties encountered by courts and communities as desegregation has accelerated in recent years, and to suggest approaches that can mitigate such problems as we complete the process of compliance with Brown.

–To place the question of school desegregation in its larger context, as part of America’s historic commitment to the achievement of a free and open society.

RN was obviously aware of the widespread criticism regarding what conventional wisdom had decided was his “Southern strategy” regarding race relations.  He addressed this with some home truths:

We should bear very carefully in mind, therefore, the distinction between educational difficulty as a result of race, and educational difficulty as a result of social or economic levels, of family background, of cultural patterns, or simply of bad schools. Providing better education for the disadvantaged requires a more sophisticated approach than mere racial mathematics.

In this same connection, we should recognize that a smug paternalism has characterized the attitudes of many white Americans toward school questions. There has been an implicit assumption that blacks or others of minority races would be improved by association with whites. The notion that an all-black or predominantly-black school is automatically inferior to one which is all- or predominantly-white—even though not a product of a dual system inescapably carries racist overtones. And, of course, we know of hypocrisy: not a few of those in the North most stridently demanding racial integration of public schools in the South at the same time send their children to private schools to avoid the assumed inferiority of mixed public schools.

It is unquestionably true that most black schools–though by no means all–are in fact inferior to most white schools. This is due in part to past neglect or shortchanging of the black schools; and in part to long-term patterns of racial discrimination which caused a greater proportion of Negroes to be left behind educationally, left out culturally, and trapped in low paying jobs. It is not really because they serve black children that most of these schools are inferior, but rather because they serve poor children who often lack the home environment that encourages learning.

This comprehensive, thoughtful, and vital document deserves attention.  It can be read in full here.  The Nixon administration’s pivotal role in the desegregation of America’s schools will be the subject of the Nixon Legacy Forum in September.

Pat Nixon was born ninety-eight years ago today, on 16 March 1912.

My mother was born near midnight on March 16^th, 1912, in a miner’s shack high in the mountains of eastern Nevada.  Although it was almost spring the nights in the copper boom town of Ely were frosty, and one of her brothers, Bill Ryan, remembers being awakened by cold air seeping into the cabin.  When he got out of bed, two-and-a-half-year-old Bill saw his father standing at the front door with a stranger.  The man pocketed five dollars and then he was gone.  Bill was round-eyed with questions.  “You have a little sister now,” his father, Will Ryan, explained.  “That money was to pay the doctor.”

At her mother’ s insistence the baby was called Thelma Catherine.  But thoroughly Irish Will Ryan, whose parents came from County Mayo, circumvented the Thelma.  His daughter was always “Babe” to him.  He decided too that they would observe her birthday on March 17^th, the birthday of Ireland’s patron saint.  When Bill once asked why his sister’s birthday was celebrated a day late, his father answered, “Well, she was there in the morning, my St. Patrick’s Babe in the morning.”

From:  Pat Nixon: The Untold Story by Julie Nixon Eisenhower

RN, in RN, describes how he prevailed on Duke Ellington to play something on the piano at the conclusion of the star-studded 70th birthday celebration the Nixons hosted for him in the East Room in April 1969:

The room was hushed as he sat quietly for a moment.  Then he said he would improvise a melody.  “I shall pick a name — gentle, graceful — something like Patricia,” he said.

And when he started to play it was lyrical, delicate, and beautiful — like Pat.

A quilt square of the Pat Nixon Rose, bred in 1972 by Marie-Louise Meilland.

]]> http://thenewnixon.org/2010/03/16/3-16-10/feed/ 1 http://thenewnixon.org/2010/03/12/3-12-70/ http://thenewnixon.org/2010/03/12/3-12-70/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:57:35 +0000 Frank Gannon http://thenewnixon.org/?p=23407

In 1968 RN appointed Roy Ash Chairman of the President’s Council on Executive Organization.  The Ash Council’s 1969 Report recommended the creation of a Domestic Council and an Office of Management and Budget.  Ash became OMB’s Director in 1972.

Forty years ago today, after fourteen months of study and refinement, RN unveiled his Reorganization Plan 2 of 1970, including  the Domestic Council and the Office of Management and Budget.

The Nixon Administration’s innovations regarding executive office management and efficiency and government reorganization have been among its most enduring legacies.  As the Nixon Foundation and the Nixon Presidential Library examine the administration’s domestic legacy each month in the Nixon Legacy Forums, this March 12th Transmittal Message is the Ur-document outlining the organizational and operational structure that would help effect and enable President Nixon’s New American Revolution.

In his Transmittal Message to Congress,  RN described the problem before presenting his solution.

The past 30 years have seen enormous changes in the size, structure and functions of the Federal Government. The budget has grown from less than $10 bib lion to $200 billion. The number of civilian employees has risen from one million to more than two and a half million. Four new Cabinet departments have been created, along with more than a score of independent agencies. Domestic policy issues have become increasingly complex. The interrelationships among Government programs have become more intricate. Yet the organization of the President’s policy and management arms has not kept pace.

Over three decades, the Executive Office of the President has mushroomed but not by conscious design. In many areas it does not provide the kind of staff assistance and support the President needs in order to deal with the problems of Government in the 1970’s. We confront the 1970’s with a staff organization geared in large measure to the tasks of the 1940’s and 1950’s.

The lessons learned from Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1969 Urban Affairs Council, and the Cabinet Committee on the Environment and the Council for Rural Affairs,  were applied to the structuring of the more comprehensive Domestic Council:

Among the specific policy functions in which I intend the Domestic Council to take the lead are these:

• Assessing national needs, collecting information and developing forecasts, for the purpose of defining national goals and objectives.
• Identifying alternative ways of achieving these objectives, and recommending consistent, integrated sets of policy choices.
• Providing rapid response to Presidential needs for policy advice on pressing domestic issues.
• Coordinating the establishment of national priorities for the allocation of available resources.

RN and  Domestic Council Executive Director John Ehrlichman at the Western White House in San Clemente in February 1973.

The creation of the Office of Management and Budget represented the wrenching of the old Bureau of the Budget into the seventh decade of the twentieth century:

However, creation of the Office of Management and Budget represents far more than a mere change of name for the Bureau of the Budget. It represents a basic change in concept and emphasis, reflecting the broader management needs of the Office of the President.

The new Office will still perform the key function of assisting the President in the preparation of the annual Federal budget and overseeing its execution. It will draw upon the skills and experience of the extraordinarily able and dedicated career staff developed by the Bureau of the Budget. But preparation of the budget as such will no longer be its dominant, overriding concern.

While the budget function remains a vital tool of management, it will be strengthened by the greater emphasis the new office will place on fiscal analysis. The budget function is only one of several important management tools that the President must now have. He must also have a substantially enhanced institutional staff capability in other areas of executive management-particularly in program evaluation and coordination, improvement of Executive Branch organization, information and management systems, and development of executive talent. Under this plan, strengthened capability in these areas will be provided partly through internal reorganization, and it will also require additional staff resources.

The new Office of Management and Budget will place much greater emphasis on the evaluation of program performance: on assessing the extent to which programs are actually achieving their intended results, and delivering the intended services to the intended recipients. This is needed on a continuing basis, not as a one-time effort. Program evaluation will remain a function of the individual agencies as it is today. However, a single agency cannot fairly be expected to judge overall effectiveness in programs that cross agency lines–and the difference between agency and Presidential perspectives requires a capacity in the Executive Office to evaluate program performance whenever appropriate.

“The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker.”

Thirty-seven years ago today, the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam  —popularly known as the Paris Peace Accords— was signed.

After four hard years, RN had achieved the peace with honor he had promised and was determined to achieve.

The tortuous negotiations that had begun under LBJ in 1968 finally ended on a Thursday afternoon in Paris when RN’s Secretary of State William P. Rogers and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Ambassador to South Vietnam and head of the US delegation, signed  the Paris Peace Accords.

The Vietnamese signatories were South Vietnamese Foreign Minister Tran Van Lam, North VIetnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Duy Trinh, and Vietcong Foreign Minister Nguyen Thi Binh.

Secretary of State William P. Rogers signs the Paris Peace Accords.  The text of the Peace Accords can be read here.

When the news arrived, RN informed PN:

And, as he said he would, at 10 PM that night, he spoke to the nation from the Oval Office.  He began by describing the terms of the settlement, and reminding all parties that they must be observed and honored:

This will mean that the terms of the agreement must be scrupulously adhered to. We shall do everything the agreement requires of us, and we shall expect the other parties to do everything it requires of them. We shall also expect other interested nations to help insure that the agreement is carried out and peace is maintained.

RN thanked the American people for their support:

And finally, to all of you who are listening, the American people: Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible. I know that you would not have wanted that peace jeopardized…..

The important thing was not to talk about peace, but to get peace–and to get the right kind of peace. This we have done.

Now that we have achieved an honorable agreement, let us be proud that America did not settle for a peace that would have betrayed our allies, that would have abandoned our prisoners of war, or that would have ended the war for us but would have continued the war for the 50 million people of Indochina. Let us be proud of the 2 1/2 million young Americans who served in Vietnam, who served with honor and distinction in one of the most selfless enterprises in the history of nations. And let us be proud of those who sacrificed, who gave their lives so that the people of South Vietnam might live in freedom and so that the world might live in peace.

At what must have been an intense moment of personal satisfaction, RN’s final words and thoughts were for his predecessor —Lyndon Johnson— who had died only days before.  Although he did not mention it in his speech, RN had made sure that LBJ was fully briefed about the progress of the talks, and that he died knowing peace was, truly, at hand.

Just yesterday, a great American, who once occupied this office, died. In his life, President Johnson endured the vilification of those who sought to portray him as a man of war. But there was nothing he cared about more deeply than achieving a lasting peace in the world.

I remember the last time I talked with him. It was just the day after New Year’s. He spoke then of his concern with bringing peace, with making it the right kind of peace, and I was grateful that he once again expressed his support for my efforts to gain such a peace. No one would have welcomed this peace more than he.

Pursuant to the terms of the Paris Peace Accords, in February 1973, the POWs returned home.

Address to the Nation Announcing Conclusion of an Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam

You can listen to the President’s speech here.

Good evening:

I have asked for this radio and television time tonight for the purpose of announcing that we today have concluded an agreement to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia.

The following statement is being issued at this moment in Washington and Hanoi:

At 12:30 Paris time today, January 23, 1973, the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam was initialed by Dr. Henry Kissinger on behalf of the United States, and Special Adviser Le Duc Tho on behalf of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

The agreement will be formally signed by the parties participating in the Paris Conference on Vietnam on January 27, 1973, at the International Conference Center in Paris.

The cease-fire will take effect at 2400 Greenwich Mean Time, January 27, 1973. The United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam express the hope that this agreement will insure stable peace in Vietnam and contribute to the preservation of lasting peace in Indochina and Southeast Asia.

That concludes the formal statement. Throughout the years of negotiations, we have insisted on peace with honor. In my addresses to the Nation from this room of January 25 and May 8 [1972], I set forth the goals that we considered essential for peace with honor.

In the settlement that has now been agreed to, all the conditions that I laid down then have been met:

A cease-fire, internationally supervised, will begin at 7 p.m., this Saturday, January 27, Washington time.

Within 60 days from this Saturday, all Americans held prisoners of war throughout Indochina will be released. There will be the fullest possible accounting for all of those who are missing in action.

During the same 60-day period, all American forces will be withdrawn from South Vietnam.

The people of South Vietnam have been guaranteed the right to determine their own future, without outside interference.

By joint agreement, the full text of the agreement and the protocol to carry it out will be issued tomorrow.

Throughout these negotiations we have been in the closest consultation with President Thieu and other representatives of the Republic of Vietnam. This settlement meets the goals and has the full support of President Thieu and the Government of the Republic of Vietnam, as well as that of our other allies who are affected.

The United States will continue to recognize the Government of the Republic of Vietnam as the sole legitimate government of South Vietnam.

We shall continue to aid South Vietnam within the terms of the agreement, and we shall support efforts by the people of South Vietnam to settle their problems peacefully among themselves.

We must recognize that ending the war is only the first step toward building the peace. All parties must now see to it that this is a peace that lasts, and also a peace that heals–and a peace that not only ends the war in Southeast Asia but contributes to the prospects of peace in the whole world.

This will mean that the terms of the agreement must be scrupulously adhered to. We shall do everything the agreement requires of us, and we shall expect the other parties to do everything it requires of them. We shall also expect other interested nations to help insure that the agreement is carried out and peace is maintained.

As this long and very difficult war ends, I would like to address a few special words to each of those who have been parties in the conflict.

First, to the people and Government of South Vietnam: By your courage, by your sacrifice, you have won the precious right to determine your own future, and you have developed the strength to defend that right. We look forward to working with you in the future–friends in peace as we have been allies in war.

To the leaders of North Vietnam: As we have ended the war through negotiations, let us now build a peace of reconciliation. For our part, we are prepared to make a major effort to help achieve that goal. But just as reciprocity was needed to end the war, so too will it be needed to build and strengthen the peace.

To the other major powers that have been involved even indirectly: Now is the time for mutual restraint so that the peace we have achieved can last.

And finally, to all of you who are listening, the American people: Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible. I know that you would not have wanted that peace jeopardized. With our secret negotiations at the sensitive stage they were in during this recent period, for me to have discussed publicly our efforts to secure peace would not only have violated our understanding with North Vietnam, it would have seriously harmed and possibly destroyed the chances for peace. Therefore, I know that you now can understand why, during these past several weeks, I have not made any public statements about those efforts.

The important thing was not to talk about peace, but to get peace–and to get the right kind of peace. This we have done.

Now that we have achieved an honorable agreement, let us be proud that America did not settle for a peace that would have betrayed our allies, that would have abandoned our prisoners of war, or that would have ended the war for us but would have continued the war for the 50 million people of Indochina. Let us be proud of the 2 1/2 million young Americans who served in Vietnam, who served with honor and distinction in one of the most selfless enterprises in the history of nations. And let us be proud of those who sacrificed, who gave their lives so that the people of South Vietnam might live in freedom and so that the world might live in peace.

In particular, I would like to say a word to some of the bravest people I have ever met–the wives, the children, the families of our prisoners of war and the missing in action. When others called on us to settle on any terms, you had the courage to stand for the right kind of peace so that those who died and those who suffered would not have died and suffered in vain, and so that where this generation knew war, the next generation would know peace. Nothing means more to me at this moment than the fact that your long vigil is coming to an end.

Just yesterday, a great American, who once occupied this office, died. In his life, President Johnson endured the vilification of those who sought to portray him as a man of war. But there was nothing he cared about more deeply than achieving a lasting peace in the world.

I remember the last time I talked with him. It was just the day after New Year’s. He spoke then of his concern with bringing peace, with making it the right kind of peace, and I was grateful that he once again expressed his support for my efforts to gain such a peace. No one would have welcomed this peace more than he.

And I know he would join me in asking —for those who died and for those who live— let us consecrate this moment by resolving together to make the peace we have achieved a peace that will last. Thank you and good evening.

]]> http://thenewnixon.org/2010/01/27/1-27-73/feed/ 1 http://thenewnixon.org/2010/01/22/remembering-rose-woods/ http://thenewnixon.org/2010/01/22/remembering-rose-woods/#comments Sat, 23 Jan 2010 06:17:14 +0000 Frank Gannon http://thenewnixon.org/?p=22843 Rose Mary Woods died five years ago today, on 22 January 2005.

“Those who didn’t know her might think her life was all about a gap on a tape.  How wrong they would be.”  Rose Mary Woods at her desk in her office in the West Wing in 1974.  She was born in Sebring, Ohio, on the day before Christmas in 1917 and died five years ago today in 2005.

Back in the days before everyone was an assistant, when being a secretary was a serious and important vocation, Rose Woods was the epitome —the ne plus ultra— of the executive secretary.  Her resume may have highlighted  her phenomenal typing and dictation speeds, but that was only the technical basis for the pivotal role she came to play in RN’s life and career.  The keenness of her intelligence was matched by the acuity of her insight — into people and events and issues.  And the fierceness of her loyalty was matched by an innate integrity that was anchored by the depth of her Catholic faith.

Rose was an intensely private person — and the life of every party.  She had a lively sense of personal style and a sly sense of humor.  And there is no question that she would have knocked out all the competition if she had appeared on So You Think You Can Dance.

Rose Mary Woods with Senator Nixon in 1952 and in the late 1960s.

Rose first met RN in 1947 when she was working for the Herter Committee of congressmen that went to Europe to examine post-war conditions; their recommendations played a large part in shaping the Marshall Plan.  Tasked with preparing all the members’ expenses, she was impressed by the young newcomer from California’s 12th District because he was the only one who submitted meticulously kept records with all the relevant receipts and documents already attached.  The impression she made on him was equally strong, and when he was elected to the Senate in 1950, he asked her to join his staff as his private secretary.  Thus began an association and a friendship that lasted for the next five decades.

RN’s early staffs — in the House and Senate and then in the Vice President’s office — were blessed with talented and dedicated secretaries.  Dottie Cox Donnelley started with him in the House in ‘47.  On the Senate staff, Rose was joined, in May ‘51, by Marje Acker, who became her secretary, and, in July, by Loie Gaunt.  Others followed, including P J Everts, Gladys Hook, Betty McVey McCarthy, Rita and Jane Dannenhauer, and Doris Jones Forward.  Today Loie Gaunt is the Assistant Secretary Treasurer of the Nixon Foundation’s Board.  She and Marje Acker are long-time members of the Foundation’s President’s Council.  Loie and Marje, along with the Dannenhauer sisters and Doris Forward have plans to attend the Library’s 20th Anniversary celebrations in July.

At Rose’s Memorial Service, held at the Nixon Library, one of the eulogists was her friend and secretary, Marje Acker.  (Imagine how good you have to be to be the secretary to one of the world’s great secretaries.)

REMEMBERING ROSE

by Marje Acker

Marje Acker and Rose Mary Woods in Rose’s West Wing office.

The most important day of my life turned out to be May 1, 1951.

Two and a half months earlier, I had left my home in Portland, Oregon to take a GS-3 clerk-typist job at the State Department.  When I heard about a secretarial opening on the staff of the junior Senator from California, I summoned all my courage, applied for the job, and was hired.

My first morning on the job, I was shown to my desk right across the aisle from Richard Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods.

I will never forget her welcoming smile and her high-heeled, ankle-strap shoes.  Almost immediately we developed a strong, enduring friendship.  Soon I was lucky enough to become her secretary, a post I held during all my years on Richard Nixon’s staff.

Rose was a bright, politically savvy, red-headed Irish Catholic from Ohio, with a wonderful sense of humor, great empathy for people, and impeccable integrity.  In reading articles about her recent death, those who didn’t know her might think her life was all about a gap on a tape.  How wrong they would be.

To colleagues, friends and family, she was the very best friend you could ever have.  She always had time to listen and offer advice if you had a problem.  She made you feel you were the most important person in the world to her.

She was a role model and mentor for all of us.

We had such a close working relationship — we both were fast typists, could work under pressure, thrive on little sleep, read each other’s shorthand, confide in and trust each other, laugh and cry together.

The hours were long as we raced against the clock to get speeches finished on time, respond to tons of correspondence, make innumerable lists for events, gifts, and thank-you letters, field and place phone calls, and manage schedules.  And yet as I look back on my association with Rose, I’m amazed we were able to fit in just as many good times and laughs.

In 1957, shortly before Phil Acker and I married, he had to go to Washington on San Diego city business.  I asked him to be sure to meet Rose and take her to dinner, which he did.  Phil knew that I valued Rose’s opinion so much that he later speculated —not entirely without foundation— that if Rose had not approved of him, I might not have married him.

So Rose was much more than a secretary to Richard Nixon.  She also was a dear friend of the family and was cited in articles as “the fifth Nixon.”  After the 1968 election, she was the first person the President named to his White House staff.

Rose was also close to her own family.  I don’t think a week passed that she didn’t find time to call her parents…..

The epitome of thoughtfulness, Rose also made sure the Boss had his bases covered.

When the Nixons and the staff were in Key Biscayne one year, the President and the First Lady invited us for dinner just prior to returning to Washington.  Afterward, Rose took the President aside and told him it was my birthday.

Soon after Air Force One was aloft, I was told the President wanted to see me in his cabin.  Waiting with him was Pat and the whole staff, complete with a birthday cake.  I never did figure out how they had found a cake late on a Sunday evening at a moment’s notice!

Inspired by Rose, we had such fun planning a 25^th wedding anniversary party for Bette and Don Hughes, as well as surprise parties for the promotions of General Hughes, one of RN’s military aides, and the President’s doctor, General Walter Tkach.

I can remember just one time we were able to surprise her — a party to mark her 20^th anniversary as the President’s secretary.  During the weeks of planning we had to talk in code lest she find out.  That day we all wore big campaign buttons saying “Rose Woods for President” — a job she might well have been able to handle.

Of course there were sad times as well.

On election night in 1962, when RN ran for California governor, all of us, including Rose, were up all night.  I will never forget the Boss coming into the staff room the next morning and individually thanking each of us for our help and saying how sorry he was he had let us down.

During the dark, ugly days of Watergate, Rose and I tried to find little things to relieve the pressure.  We had signs on our desk reading Illegetimi non carborundum — “don’t let the bastards get you down!”

So many memories..…in California on a beautiful summer day, driving in her convertible with the top down to Malibu for a couple of hours walking on the beach…..our walks to the Tidal Basin on a spring day in Washington to see the pansy garden…..walking around Camp David between speech drafts…..being together for campaigns, elections, and inaugurations, was well as the dedication of the Nixon Library and the funerals of Mrs. Nixon and the President.

Rose Mary Woods will always be cherished and loved and remembered by her family and the innumerable friends and colleagues who had the privilege of knowing her.

Rose Mary Woods with Vice President Nixon in the Senate Lobby in 1953, and with PN aboard the campaign plane during the 1968 presidential campaign.   (1953 photo by Arthur Schatz, 1968 photo by Hank Walker, both for LIFE magazine.)

RN had used 1969 to organize and consolidate, and his 1970 SOTU —which is my favorite among the several notable speeches he gave as POTUS— concisely conveys the sense of confidence, energy, enthusiasm, innovation, and equanimity that characterized his first term, and particularly its approach to domestic issues.  The speech was beautifully written, and the delivery combined equal parts of buoyancy and gravitas as RN simply but eloquently sketched his vision of a new America for a new decade — and challenged Americans to join him in making that vision real.

Although the Congress had failed to act on any of his legislative proposals to date, the speech to “my colleagues in the Congress” was marked by the tone of respect, conciliation, and cooperation that characterized the beginning of his administration.

To address a joint session of the Congress in this great chamber in which I was once privileged to serve is an honor for which I am deeply grateful.

After the bitter divisiveness of the 1960s, the new President held out the possibility of turning a corner together:

The State of the Union address is traditionally an occasion for a lengthy and detailed account by the President of what he has accomplished in the past, what he wants the Congress to do in the future, and, in an election year, to lay the basis for the political issues which might be decisive in the fall.

Occasionally there comes a time when profound and far-reaching events command a break with tradition. This is such a time.

I say this not only because 1970 marks the beginning of a new decade in which America will celebrate its 200th birthday. I say it because new knowledge and hard experience argue persuasively that both our programs and our institutions in America need to be reformed.

The moment has arrived to harness the vast energies and abundance of this land to the creation of a new American experience, an experience richer and deeper and more truly a reflection of the goodness and grace of the human spirit.

The ’70s will be a time of new beginnings, a time of exploring both on the earth and in the heavens, a time of discovery. But the time has also come for emphasis on developing better ways of managing what we have and of completing what man’s genius has begun but left unfinished.

Our land, this land that is ours together, is a great and a good land. It is also an unfinished land, and the challenge of perfecting it is the summons of the ’70s.

RN said that the first and most important national priority was peace and an end to the war in Vietnam.  At this point, the new President was still confident that his determination to negotiate an equitable settlement would end the war this year.  His undiminished optimism is reflected in his words; he had not yet accepted that the enemy wasn’t interested in negotiating anything; that their non-negotiable terms involved a unilateral US withdrawal combined with an overthrow of the Thieu government.

He outlined the basic points of the Nixon Doctrine he had announced at Guam in July ’69 — that America would continue to provide military aid and supplies to our allies, but that they would be expected to provide the manpower for their own defense that it expected its allies to assume responsibility for providing the manpower for their own defense— and said that foreign policy would be the subject of a separate paper.

Moving on to the domestic front —the State of the Union— RN discussed the economic imbalances that had been created by several years of unrestrained spending.  The solution for such problems was clear: restrain spending and balance budgets.

But in this speech, RN was thinking far more broadly and boldly.

I now turn to a subject which, next to our desire for peace, may well become the major concern of the American people in the decade of the seventies.

In the next 10 years we shall increase our wealth by 50 percent. The profound question is: Does this mean we will be 50 percent richer in a real sense, 50 percent better off, 50 percent happier?

Or does it mean that in the year 1980 the President standing in this place will look back on a decade in which 70 percent of our people lived in metropolitan areas choked by traffic, suffocated by smog, poisoned by water, deafened by noise, and terrorized by crime?

These are not the great questions that concern world leaders at summit conferences. But people do not live at the summit. They live in the foothills of everyday experience, and it is time for all of us to concern ourselves with the way real people live in real life.

The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water?

Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this country. It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans, because they more than we will reap the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later.

Clean air, clean water, open spaces—these should once again be the birthright of every American. If we act now, they can be.

We still think of air as free. But clean air is not free, and neither is clean water. The price tag on pollution control is high. Through our years of past carelessness we incurred a debt to nature, and now that debt is being called.

The program I shall propose to Congress will be the most comprehensive and costly program in this field in America’s history.

It is not a program for just one year. A year’s plan in this field is no plan at all. This is a time to look ahead not a year, but five years or 10 years—whatever time is required to do the job.

Thus RN put his mark on the emerging issue of the environment — and challenged the Congress (the same Congress he had already gently chastised for inaction at different points during the speech) to join him on a decade-long commitment to reclaiming America’s natural heritage.

The program I shall propose to Congress will be the most comprehensive and costly program in this field in America’s history.

It is not a program for just one year. A year’s plan in this field is no plan at all. This is a time to look ahead not a year, but 5 years or 10 years–whatever time is required to do the job.

I shall propose to this Congress a $10 billion nationwide clean waters program to put modern municipal waste treatment plants in every place in America where they are needed to make our waters clean again, and do it now. We have the industrial capacity, if we begin now, to build them all within 5 years. This program will get them built within 5 years.

As our cities and suburbs relentlessly expand, those priceless open spaces needed for recreation areas accessible to their people are swallowed up–often forever. Unless we preserve these spaces while they are still available, we will have none to preserve. Therefore, I shall propose new financing methods for purchasing open space and parklands now, before they are lost to us.

The automobile is our worst polluter of the air. Adequate control requires further advances in engine design and fuel composition. We shall intensify our research, set increasingly strict standards, and strengthen enforcement procedures-and we shall do it now.

We can no longer afford to consider air and water common property, free to be abused by anyone without regard to the consequences. Instead, we should begin now to treat them as scarce resources, which we are no more free to contaminate than we are free to throw garbage into our neighbor’s yard.

This requires comprehensive new regulations. It also requires that, to the extent possible, the price of goods should be made to include the costs of producing and disposing of them without damage to the environment.

Now, I realize that the argument is often made that there is a fundamental contradiction between economic growth and the quality of life, so that to have one we must forsake the other.

The answer is not to abandon growth, but to redirect it. For example, we should turn toward ending congestion and eliminating smog the same reservoir of inventive genius that created them in the first place.

Continued vigorous economic growth provides us with the means to enrich life itself and to enhance our planet as a place hospitable to man.

The speech’s peroration and conclusion deserve quotation in full:

Two hundred years ago this was a new nation of 3 million people, weak militarily, poor economically. But America meant something to the world then which could not be measured in dollars, something far more important than military might.

Listen to President Thomas Jefferson in 1802: We act not “for ourselves alone, but for the whole human race.”

We had a spiritual quality then which caught the imagination of millions of people in the world.

Today, when we are the richest and strongest nation in the world, let it not be recorded that we lack the moral and spiritual idealism which made us the hope of the world at the time of our birth.

The demands of us in 1976 are even greater than in 1776.

It is no longer enough to live and let live. Now we must live and help live.

We need a fresh climate in America, one in which a person can breathe freely and breathe in freedom.

Our recognition of the truth that wealth and happiness are not the same thing requires us to measure success or failure by new criteria.

Even more than the programs I have described today, what this Nation needs is an example from its elected leaders in providing the spiritual and moral leadership which no programs for material progress can satisfy.

Above all, let us inspire young Americans with a sense of excitement, a sense of destiny, a sense of involvement, in meeting the challenges we face in this great period of our history. Only then are they going to have any sense of satisfaction in their lives.

The greatest privilege an individual can have is to serve in a cause bigger than himself. We have such a cause.

How we seize the opportunities I have described today will determine not only our future, but the future of peace and freedom in this world in the last third of the century.

May God give us the wisdom, the strength and, above all, the idealism to be worthy of that challenge, so that America can fulfill its destiny of being the world’s best hope for liberty, for opportunity, for progress and peace for all peoples.

It has become conventional wisdom that RN actually had little interest in the environment, and that his proposals were principally intended to outflank his political opponents on their left.  Whether this is true or not —or whatever elements of truth it may contain— it is an easy copout to hold harmless the  many,  in Congress and the media and the academy, who were more interested in having the environment as a stick with which to beat the President than as a legislative program that could begin to address the problem.  If RN is to be criticized for bluffing, there should be no less criticism for those who failed to call his bluff.

In fact, the Nixon administration’s environmental record —which started from scratch— has lately been acknowledged as impressive and important.  RN established the Environmental Protection Agency and signed the landmark Clean Air Act.  He signed the Coastal Zone Management Act; the Ocean Dumping Act; the Marine Mammal Protection Act; the Federal Insecticide, Fungide, Rodenticide Act; and the Toxic Substances Control Act.   In his 1971 SOTU speech he proposed his Legacy of Parks program.  At the end of 1973 he signed the Endangered Species act; and he supported the Safe Drinking Water Act that was signed by President Ford at the end of 1974.

RN’s first term was one of the most efficient, innovative, and effective periods of presidential leadership — four years when everything seemed possible and many things were accomplished.   The 1970 SOTU is a memory and a microcosm of the spirit that animated the the Nixon administration 1969-1972.  It commands respect.  It deserves attention.

You can see and hear RN deliver this seminal 1970 SOTU message here.

I was born in a house my father built.  My birth on the night of January 9, 1913, coincided with a record-breaking cold snap in our town of Yorba Linda, California.  Yorba Linda was a farming community of 200 people about thirty miles from Los Angeles, surrounded by avocado and citrus groves and barley, alfalfa, and bean fields.

For a child the setting was idyllic.  In the spirng the air was heavy with the rich scent of orange blossoms.  And there was much to excite a child’s imagination: glimpses of the Pacific Ocean to the west, the San Bernadino Mountains to the north, a “haunted house” in the nearby foothills to be viewed with awe and approached with caution — and a railroad line that ran about a mile from our house.

In the daytime I could see the smoke from the steam engines.  Sometimes at night I was awakened by the whistle of a train, and then I dreamed of the far-off places I wanted to visit someday.  My brothers and I played railroad games, taking the parts of engineers and conductors.  I remember the thrill of talking to Everett Barnum, the Santa Fe Railroad engineer who lived in our town.  All through grade school my ambition was to become a railroad engineer.

—–The opening of RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (1978).

PN in Accra: TIME magazine reported that “In West Africa in 1972 she was cheered by huge throngs, exotic tribal kings and bare-breasted dancers.”

Traveling with the unique title “Personal Representative of the President,” PN attended the inauguration of William Tolbert as President of Liberia.  She carried out a full schedule of the kinds of meetings and visits she had pioneered nineteen years before when the newly-elected President Eisenhower sent the Nixons as his representatives on a ten week trip to Asia.

The central purpose of the 1972 Africa trip was to represent the President at the Tolbert inauguration.  As Julie Nixon Eisenhower notes in her biography of her mother —Pat Nixon: The Untold Story— the temperature at the ceremonies had already reached one hundred degrees (PN noticed that the white dress uniform of her military aide —the ubiquitous Jack Brennan— was soaked through) even before the new chief executive began his forty minute inaugural address.

In addition to representing RN at the Tolbert inauguration, PN addressed the National Assembly in Accra, and exchanged toasts with her hosts —Prime Minister Busia  and President Houphouet-Boigny— at state dinners held in her honor there and in Abidjan.

She arrived back in Washington on 9 January in time to celebrate RN’s fifty-ninth birthday.  He led a welcoming delegation of administration officials and congressional leaders to Andrews Air Force base to welcome her home.

RN said:

Mr. Vice President, Congressman Ford, members of the Cabinet, and all of you who have been so very kind to come to the airport here today on this rainy night:

First, I want to thank you for wishing me a happy birthday, and I know that it was hard for you to come. But I think perhaps the best birthday present, and the greatest sacrifice, was made by Mrs. Nixon: She flew 4,000 miles for my birthday party tonight.

Now I am in a bit of an awkward position, because I have to welcome her back officially, and I also have to welcome her back personally. I asked our Chief of Protocol, Ambassador Mosbacher, how I should address her, and so he wrote me a memorandum. He said, “You could call her Mrs. Nixon, or you could call her Madam Ambassador.” But I guess I will just call her “Pat.” Welcome home, Pat. We are glad you are here.

He described the backstory of the trip:

Now, if I could just spend a moment to tell you how this trip came about, and why I think the choice that was made was a good one. My very dear and old friend, President Tolbert of Liberia, wrote me a personal note inviting me to his inauguration. We have very much in common. We both served as Vice Presidents during the same period of time, and he became President of his country, as I have had the honor of becoming President of the United States. And he is the President of the oldest republic in Africa and, of course, the United States is the oldest republic in the American Continent.

So I wanted to go, but I could not because of some of the demands of the schedule here at that time. So I wrote him back a personal note and said that while I could not come, I would try to send a very good substitute. Now, since the trip began, I have been reading the newspapers and, Mr. Vice President, also watching television, and as I watched the television and read the newspapers, of the welcomes that Mrs. Nixon received in Liberia and Ghana and Ivory Coast, I realized that the substitute was doing a much better job than the principal would have done.

And PN replied:

Before my husband grabs the microphone, I do want to thank all of you for coming out to the airport and welcoming me home.

I really had a wonderful journey. The people in the three countries I visited —Liberia, Ghana, and Ivory Coast— could not have been more friendly or more gracious or more hospitable. In fact, their hospitality was boundless and they all sent greetings, the leaders and the people in all walks of life, to you here in the United States.

They are proud of the partnership with the United States, and this partnership is built on equality, mutual respect, and friendship. I hope that it will always remain that way.

That night, in the Lincoln Sitting Room, RN recorded in his diary:

…too many times our trips abroad deal with hard problems and not enough of the far more important personal warmth and symbolism which means so much.  This is true in all of the underdeveloped countries and particularly true in Latin America, Asia, and also, I believe, in parts of Asia…

The amazing thing is that Pat came back looking just as fresh as a daisy despite an enormously difficult, taxing schedule.  She had press conferences in each country, had had conversations with the presidents and then carried it all off with unbelievable skill.  As Julie put it, what came through was love of the people of the countries she visited for her and, on her part, love for them.

On 1 January 1972, the night PN returned from Africa, RN recorded in his diary: “…what came through was love of the people of the countries she visited for her and, on her part, love for them.”

This was not PN’s first time in Africa, or in Liberia and Ghana.  In March 1957, RN became the first vice-president to visit Africa, and PN accompanied him —carrying out her usual grueling independent schedule— on the twenty-one day eight-nation tour.

The trip was centered around the events celebrating Ghana’s independence from Britain — the first nation in black Africa to shed colonial rule.

Julie Eisenhower writes about the independence celebrations:

The high point of the trip, the Ghanian independence celebration, was a mixture of British formality and joyous exultation.  The new prime minister, Kwame Nkrumah, wept as he proclaimed alt the stroke of midnight on March 6: “The battle is ended.  Ghana, our belived country, is free forever.”  Coretta and Martin Luther King, Jr., attended the independence celebration at the invitation of Nkrumah.  By inviting King, the rime minister was giving world-wide recognition to the man who had protested segregation by leading the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott.  Thus, five thousand miles away from their own country, America’s Vice President and the civil rights pioneer met for the first time and made arrangements for another visit together once they returned home.

Peter Lisagor, the tough-minded and widely-respected reporter and columnist for the Chicago Daily News, wrote admiringly about PN’s charm —and no less about her stamina— in a piece about the trip:

She says she loves to meet people and she gives every evidence of it.  She has the rare knack of making people feel she has known them for a long time when she first meets them, usually by putting her arms around them casually in a friendly gesture.

The average woman on this routine would yield up to weariness by this time.  But not Pat Nixon.  She’s as dedicated as her husband on the goodwill circuit.  And from all the signs she is as indestructible.

In Ghana in 1957, PN carried out a busy independent schedule (above) in addition to attending official functions with RN (below).

I have become…convinced that the 1970’s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment. It is literally now or never.
—President Nixon’s Signing Statement for the National Environmental Policy Act,             1 January 1970

One of the most important, forward-thinking, and lasting achievements of the Nixon administration has been its environmental legacy.  RN, typically, took a serious, practical, and comprehensive approach to this emerging issue.

That is why he chose to sign the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 on 1 January 1970, at the beginning of a new decade and the start of the second year of his presidency.  The bill was largely the work of Democratic Senator Henry M. (Scoop) Jackson of Washington State; RN embraced it and, before very long, greatly expanded on it.

In fact, he felt so strongly about the environment as a landmark issue that he had wanted to sign the bill at midnight on 31 December — but Bob Haldeman pointed out that an early morning ceremony would make more sense in terms of the reporters’ and staff’s plans for New Year’s Eve.

So the signing was at 10 am on New Year’s Day in the President’s office at the Western White House in San Clemente.

And RN emphasized its importance to him by prefacing the signing with some remarks.  He was at ease —he even joked a bit with the reporters— but there was no mistaking how seriously he took the legislation and the occasion:

As you know, the bill we are signing today is the environmental bill. There is one line in there that I am particularly stimulated by, when I said we had to work on the environment because it is now or never.

If you look ahead 10 years, you project population growth, car growth, and that means, of course, smog growth, water pollution, and the rest.

An area like this will be unfit for living; New York will be, Philadelphia, and, of course, 75 percent of the people will be living in areas like this.

So unless we start moving on it now-there is a lead time–unless we move on it now, believe me, we will not have an opportunity to do it later, because then when people have millions more automobiles, and, of course, the waters and so forth developing in the way that they do without plants for purification, once the damage is done, it is much harder to turn it around. It is going to be hard as it is.

That is why I indicate here that a major goal, when you talk about New Year’s resolutions, I wouldn’t say for the next year but for the next 10 years–and I don’t mean that I intend to run for a third term–for the next 10 years for this country must be to restore the cleanliness of the air, the water, and that, of course, means moving also on the broader problems of population congestion, transport, and the like.

A Signing Statement was also issued on 1 January, and it was equally eloquent and no less urgent.  RN graciously credited the sponsors of the bill, but he also served notice that now his administration intended to do something about the issue — not just to talk about doing something.

It is particularly fitting that my first official act in this new decade is to approve the National Environmental Policy Act.

The past year has seen the creation of a President’s Cabinet committee on environmental quality, and we have devoted many hours to the pressing problems of pollution control, airport location, wilderness preservation, highway construction, and population trends.

By my participation in these efforts I have become further convinced that the 1970’s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment. It is literally now or never.

I, therefore, commend the Congress and particularly the sponsors of this bill, Senators Stevens and Jackson and Representative Dingell, for this clear legislative policy declaration. Under the provisions of this law a three-member council of environmental advisers will be appointed. I anticipate that they will occupy the same close advisory relation to the President that the Council of Economic Advisers does in fiscal and monetary matters. The environmental advisers will be assisted by a compact staff in keeping me thoroughly posted on current problems and advising me on how the Federal Government can act to solve them.

In the near future I will forward to the Senate names of highly qualified individuals to help both the Cabinet and me in the critical decisions that will affect the quality of life in the United States for years to come. I will then take the necessary executive action to reconstitute the Cabinet committee and its staff to avoid duplication of function.

On the latter point, I know that the Congress has before it a proposal to establish yet another staff organization to deal with environmental problems in the Executive Office of the President. I believe this would be a mistake.

No matter how pressing the problem, to over-organize, to over-staff, or to compound the levels of review and advice seldom brings earlier or better results.

We are most interested in results. The act I have signed gives us an adequate organization and a good statement of direction. We are determined that the decade of the seventies will be known as the time when this country regained a productive harmony between man and nature.

Later in January, RN devoted a considerable portion of his State of the Union Message to his proposed environmental legislation.

In February, he submitted to Congress the most comprehensive message on the environment ever proposed by a President of the United States.

In March he upgraded the Environmental Quality Council to the status of a Cabinet Committee on the Environment.

In July he created the EPA.

And —as a fitting bookend to 1970— on 31 December, he signed the Clean Air Act, which has been called one of the most signifiant pieces of environmental legislation ever passed.

All these —and the other environmental landmarks throughout 1970 will be considered chronologically here at TNN throughout 2010.

One of the speakers at the first Nixon Legacy Forum — to be held in the East Room of the Library in Yorba Linda next Friday (8 January, from 1.30-3.30 PM)— will be the Hon. John C Whitaker.   John, who was one of RN’s closest friends and advisers from the early 1960s, was a scientist and engineer by training.  He concentrated on environmental issues and policies as Associate Director of the Domestic Council (1969-1972) and as Undersecretary of the Interior (1973-1975).  He is the author of Striking a Balance: Environment and Natural Resource Policy in the Nixon-Ford Administrations.  At the Legacy Forum he will discuss RN’s environmental record.

The Nixon Legacy Forums are jointly sponsored by the Richard Nixon Foundation and the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, and are free and open to the public.

RN 1970: A photograph by portraitist Merrett Smith.

Compassionate, Bold, Courageous,… Zest for the job (not lonely but

awesome).  Goals — reorganized govt.  Idea magnet….

Open Channels for Dissent…. Progress — Participation

Trustworthy, Open-minded.

Most powerful office. Each day a chance to do something memorable for someone.

Need to be good to do good….

The nation must be better in spirit at the end of the term.  Need for joy, serenity, confidence, inspiration.

Add element of lift to each appearance… Hard work — Imagination –

Compassion — Leadership — Understanding young –

Intellectual expansion…

Cool — Strong — Organized — Temperate — Exciting …

Excitement — Joy in Life — Sharing.  Lift spirit of people –

Pithy, memorable phrases.

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