NIXON THAT SON OF A BITCH!

            History books tell you names and dates and the like but they don’t always give you a feel for the pulse of the nation.  For that you need to hear from someone who can tell you what it was like to be there.  I’ll give you an example from my own life for starters: you know, Richard Milhous Nixon was not well-liked by many American citizens, especially those whose views veered left of center, from light-headed liberals to rarin’-to-go radicals.  A reader might protest that such “understatement” is in danger of dissolving because it fails so foolishly short regarding order of magnitude. 

 I beg that reader’s pardon.  It would be better stated that there were a large number of Americans who came to hate, detest, and loathe Richard Milhous Nixon with unbridled passion.  They seldom said “Nixon” but always “Nixon that son-of-a-bitch!”  If one were raised in a devoutly left-wing household, as I was, these six words—name and epithet together--merged seamlessly into a single phrase.  This disrespect began not long after Nixon emerged on the scene as a red-baiting anti-communist politician under McCarthyism.

I used to be surprised people would dare talk about the California congressman, and later President Eisenhower’s Vice-President, in such a “disrespectful” way but the old husky Leftist codgers peopling my boyhood haunts had no qualms about it.  I guess they knew better; had taken the measure of his character quite precisely; knew he was rotten through and through.  He was considered a duplicitous, cheap, opportunistic lying “son of a bitch” by lefties long before he became president.  Now and then someone in the room might get worked up enough to cuss him out with a flavorful new phrase such as “that goddamn moron!” but invariably they all circled back to everyone’s favorite appellation “Nixon, that son of a bitch!”

To my ears, I heard “Nixon” (pause for comma) “that son-of-a-bitch” as two distinct parts, not one.  Of course, most leftists cursed Nixon this way only in the privacy of their own homes and only in the company of trusted comrades; after Nixon’s first appearance in the limelight of McCarthyism, this disrespect had not yet spread much beyond non-conformist left-wingers in the privacy of their own homes.  Nixon, indeed, had many supporters and it was believed they knew how to take revenge; one had to exercise extreme caution.  While it may be hard to believe in retrospect, at one time there were many Republicans who thought he was God’s gift to America or some such and toddled about swooning and swearing he was better than any preceding president! 

Indeed, among some over-the-top Republican image shapers there was once even a trial balloon released claiming Richard Milhous Nixon was fulfilling his destiny to become the greatest American president of all time—alas! this was shortly before the Watergate Scandal shredded that trial balloon into smithereens and the most ignoble oblivion.  Reluctantly, the lamentably stupid idea of beatifying Nixon for presidential sainthood was abandoned with only a few half-hearted attempts at resuscitation.  Watergate buried even those efforts.  “It was over” because the man with the beady eyes had managed to ruin himself.  But going back twenty years, as Senator Joe McCarthy was busy setting the political table with smears and half-truths, Nixon was “new”.  He was once the bright bushy-tailed darling of the Far Right; he was their man and all that entailed: he would be pliable and do the bidding of the wealthy, the powerful, the corrupt.  The American public did not know of such matters but the insiders seemed to know instinctively that he could be leashed to do their bidding. 

Personally, I often thought he showed signs of mental instability; there was a kind of insecure paranoia about his eyes that frequently troubled me but apparently no one else saw it—or if they did they kept quiet.  After all, you think twice before casting aspersions upon such a duplicitous and troubled man, particularly after he became president--knowing he had an enemies’ list and could persecute his critics right smartly.  It didn’t help calm me realizing he could even start a nuclear war should he flip out entirely!  Trust Nixon?  Whatever ground was gained by his carefully crafted PR efforts was lost in a pundit’s single line: “Would you buy a used car from this man?”  People heard that, took one look at his face and then shook their heads—no, they most definitely would not! 

           

In the deadened fifties, Nixon and his cronies went merrily about their business, from favoring McCarthyism’s lies to the quiet taking of gifts from foreign governments.  Once exposed—and perhaps learning for the first time that such private pocketing was forbidden by the Constitution—Nixon went on the air to apologize.  He tried to cushion his fall from grace with a gamble-it-all televised moment—farcical even then—when he punch-lined the national audience by insisting he would not give up his dog Checkers.  

The sleight of hand, the misdirection, the nervous laugh, the darting beady eyes—it was clumsy presidential theater approaching the surreal rather than the sublime.  It was as though he believed he had pulled a fast one on the public--as though that feeble attempt to garner a laugh would lull people into believing that accepting a cute little dog (appealing to all dog-lovers) and his reckless acceptance of valuable gifts from foreign governments were one and the same.  The attempt to hide—to substitute subterfuge for honest confession--was ridiculously and coldly transparent . . . but still sufficed--for the moment--to hush over the corrupting echoes of his misdeeds.   

A decade later, in the middle part of his career, he appeared to be the Big Loser of the Sixties—defeated for president by Kennedy’s rising star, followed by an even more ignominious encore loss for Governor of California.  In his bitterness, he claimed he was done with politics forever and the press wouldn’t have him to kick around anymore—showing his mental instability was streaked with a strongly marked inferiority complex—among other suspiciously crooked mental deviations.  He remained a dangerous opponent, however, ready to strike should an opportunity for revenge show itself.  An epidemic of well-timed assassinations of the best-loved leaders of the moral nation—John Kennedy, his brother Robert Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King--conveniently created a power void into which the twice-defeated darling of the Right-wing could easily move, and Nixon came roaring back to life. 

By now the number of people calling him “son-of-a-bitch” on a more or less regular basis had increased rather dramatically; neither the Old nor the New Left could claim a monopoly on that particular phrase any longer!  By then I was enjoying college days at Berkeley, taking part peacefully in marches and demonstrations in and around Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco.  I had a passing familiarity with the Vietnam Day Committee and other anti-war groups; I even passed out leaflets right under famous Sather Gate letting students know of the next rally, teach-in, be-in, march or rally.  It was easy since the campus was a center of anti-war efforts.  Then one day someone asked me to leave the safety of the campus and go into Oakland to distribute leaflets at a large shopping center near Mosswood Park.

I was okay with that and even gladly accepted the assignment, but as I drove to my destination second thoughts crowded my mind.  It was one thing to hand out flyers on campus—everybody was friendly!  If a student didn’t want a flyer they simply walked on by: no insults, no threats, no obscene gestures.  Most students smiled or even started reading the leaflet as soon as it was in their hands.  That was normal on the Berkeley campus but there were many people in the country angry at the student demonstrators and thought we were all worthless spineless gutless traitorous cowards.  What if I ran into people like that at the West MacArthur Shopping Center?

           

I took up my lonely station by the two large entrance doors and waited with my leaflets.  I tried to pretend I wasn’t nervous; I tried to pretend I was unaware of the increase in danger to my person.  The flyer I had was against the war in Vietnam; it included an attack on Richard Milhous Nixon and even had a little incendiary picture of him in the lower left corner.  For many, Nixon’s eyes appeared so shifty that merely showing his image was considered a powerful political message!  Sharing negative thoughts about Nixon was nothing new for me, from incubation in a Leftist household to study and protest on the Berkeley campus.  Now I was no longer in either place and if someone really got angry and yelled or threw a punch, then what?  It was a very vivid possibility--soldiers in uniform frequently passed through those very doors!  I thought about turning tail but gritted my teeth and got the first leaflet ready to go. 

Thankfully, it was then I saw an older man with graying hair and a sun-weathered face approaching.  I immediately realized he would be an excellent candidate with whom to start my leafleting for I felt sure I could outrun him.  I held out my arm to offer him a flyer and he took it; he stopped and studied it a moment.  I was not sure which way his mental processes were a-moving when his eyes suddenly spied the picture of the president and out of his mouth, as loud and clear as a bell, came the most emphatic and unmistakable oath: “Nixon That Son Of A Bitch!” 

I smiled and relaxed, having learned two important lessons.  That phrase was not used only by lefties and I no longer heard it as two distinct parts.  It was one phrase that had become permanently welded together as a unique example of Americana to identify this president.  I rather think, in all future editions of even the most formal presidential biographies, that right after “John Fitzgerald Kennedy” and “Lyndon Baines Johnson”, the next name that should appear is not “Richard Milhous Nixon” but rather his real name given to him by the American people in their timeless wisdom:

           

                                            NIXON THAT SON OF A BITCH!!!