50 years after Richard Nixon resigned under fire, a reflection on presidents exiting the stage under duress
The president was besieged with calls for him to step aside. Even leaders of his own party told him he was out of options, the country had turned against him, and he had only one move left.
He had to go.
It was a shattering moment for the president, who had served his nation for decades, both in Congress and as vice president for eight years, working under a popular president who hadn’t strongly supported his campaign for president. But despite the doubters, he had run and won.
Now, he was being asked — urged, even — to end his political career.
Joe Biden earlier this summer?
No, Richard Nixon 50 years ago.
Nixon resigned as president effective Aug. 9, 1974. It ended his presidency (Nixon is seen above shortly after resigning in a public domain photo posted on wikimedia commons) and brought to a close “our long national nightmare,” as the new president, Gerald Ford, told the nation.
Nixon had risen to the top of American politics after serving in the House of Representatives, as a senator and as vice president under President Dwight Eisenhower.
Nixon ran for the White House in 1960, losing a painfully close race to Sen. John F. Kennedy, the telegenic Democrat from Massachusetts. Nixon then sought the governor’s chair in California, but voters there correctly saw that campaign as a stepping stone for another presidential race, so he was defeated by Gov. Pat Brown, the father of future California Gov. Jerry Brown. Pundits and fellow politicians wrote him off, sure his political life had come crashing down.
Biden endured the same sting of defeat. He first sought the presidency in 1987, gearing up for the 1988 campaign. But he collapsed amidst reports of plagiarism, stealing the speeches of British politician Neil Kinnock, as well as reports of exaggerating his academic record and committing plagiarism in college.
Biden dropped out before a vote was counted. He then suffered a pair of brain aneurysms that nearly killed him and kept him away from the Senate for seven months.
Biden survived — a recurrent theme in his life and career — and developed a reputation as a dependable Democratic voice and vote, winning six terms representing Delaware. He ran for president again in 2008 but made little progress, ending his campaign after finishing in fifth place in the Iowa Caucuses, garnering less than 1% of the vote.
In a surprise, Barack Obama chose him as his running mate. They formed a strong team, the eloquent, cerebral Obama becoming close with the old pro with a history of gaffes and awkward actions. It was a true partnership, with some tensions.
When Biden considered a run for the White House in 2016, Obama did not offer backing, making it clear he preferred former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. She blew an easy election, somehow losing to newcomer Donald Trump, whose sordid history and bullying style should have made him extremely vulnerable.
Biden stewed, thinking he could have won. Nixon felt the same way in 1964, as Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, who famously bragged about his extremism, was routed by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Nixon made a remarkable comeback in 1968, as LBJ dropped out of the race due to the rancorous national debate over the Vietnam War, which he had escalated. Nixon defeated another career politician who longed to be president, South Dakota native Hubert H. Humphrey.
Biden also finally grabbed the brass ring, unseating Trump by 7 million votes in 2020. Biden’s campaign was seemingly dead in the water, but he mounted a strong comeback after winning the South Carolina Democratic Primary and soon swept his opponents from the field. He stood up to Trump, pushed back on his bullying and nonsense, and soundly thrashed him at the polls.
There was legitimate concern about his age. Biden was 78 when he took office, older than every previous president — including Ronald Reagan, who was 77 when he departed, and Trump, who was 74 when he left office.
Biden had hinted he only wanted to serve one term, but that changed as he embraced the job. He has been an effective president, overseeing a revived economy, albeit one pestered by nagging inflation. He also did a solid job in getting the Covid pandemic under control, ending American involvement in Afghanistan — with some critics saying he did so without proper planning.
Still, after three and a half mostly good years, Biden should have been a clear favorite to win a second term. Then came June 27, when he appeared old, frail and inarticulate during a debate with Trump.
There had been whispers he should drop out, but that night, they became shouts. Biden tried his best to ignore the calls for his head and political hide, but he finally bent to the polls and the politicians who urged him to call it a career.
LBJ also wanted another term as president. He won the 1968 New Hampshire Democratic Primary, but Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy ran a strong second. Then, New York Sen. Bobby Kennedy, the heir to the Kennedy family quest for the White House, joined the race.
Johnson loathed Bobby, who treated him dismissively when he was attorney general and the top advisor to his brother. But LBJ was unwilling to fight for the presidency, and he dropped out. RFK was assassinated and Nixon was elected, culminating the year when everything went wrong.
He returned to Texas, where he grew his hair long like the war protestors, drank and smoked heavily despite a long history of heart concerns. LBJ died at just 64 almost four years to the day he left the White House.
Nixon won two terms, defeating Humphrey in 1968 and another South Dakotan, Sen. George McGovern, in 1972. But he was haunted by his close loss to JFK a dozen years earlier, convinced there had been corrupt forces that cost him the White House.
His paranoia overwhelmed the very real and significant accomplishments of his presidency. When the Watergate scandal was slowly revealed to the nation from the summer of 1972 until August 1974, his support dwindled.
In the end, Goldwater, along with Sen. Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, the chamber’s ranking Republican, and Rep. John Rhodes of Arizona, who led House Republicans, walked to the White House to tell Nixon his support had dwindled in Congress. It was time to go, or he would be impeached and convicted.
Nixon retreated to California, where he slowly rebuilt his image as a wise elder statesman. He wrote books, counseled presidents and became a somewhat less despised figure than he was in the closing days of his presidency. After the horrors of Trump, he looks better at the time.
For Biden, there was no dramatic confrontation that led to his withdrawal from the race. It was a series of phone calls, carefully worded statements and news stories with comments, both on the record and anonymous, that convinced him he had lost the support of his party in his quest for a second term. It surely still stings, but it was the best thing he could do for the nation.
Trump has never had such a meeting. He resisted calls to end his campaign in 2016, after the “grab ‘em by the …” recording was released. Somehow, to put enduring bad fortune, he was elected president. It was four years of horrific behavior, missteps and disastrous decisions.
After his defeat in 2020, many Republican leaders hoped his career, and iron hold on the GOP, would end. But like Dracula, he continues to rise from the grave.
I’m not suggesting it’s time for garlic, a cross and a stake — not yet anyway — but It would be good for the nation if Trump, like LBJ, Nixon and Biden, would willingly end his quest for the presidency. That won’t happen this year, but if he is defeated, he assuredly will contest the results and launch a fourth bid for the White House.
There doesn’t seem to be any way to convince him and his mob to end their grasp on the Republican Party. Perhaps a landslide loss in November, followed by continued legal problems in courtrooms across the country, will finally break the spell.
Fifty years from then, what will be said and written about him? It likely won’t be anything he would want to have read to him, that’s for sure.
Fourth-generation South Dakotan Tom Lawrence has written for several newspapers and websites in South Dakota and other states and contributed to The New York Times, NPR, The London Telegraph, The Daily Beast and other media outlets. Republish with permission.
