The Day Spiro Agnew Resigned

---

---

In the fall of 1973, my family was living in Nashville while my father was on a four–month sabbatical.

We spent the previous summer in Austria. While we were there, we tried to keep up with what was happening in the Watergate hearings through the international editions of TIME and Newsweek, but the reports were not as complete as Americans were getting here at home — and, of course, there was no way for us to monitor the Watergate hearings that were taking place that summer.

I knew that President Nixon was under mounting public pressure over his involvement in activities related to the Watergate break–in, but I had no idea where it would go. And there must have been news reports about Nixon's vice president, Spiro Agnew, and the problems he was having with those who were investigating his activities as governor of Maryland — even if most of the activity was conducted in secrecy.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein wrote in "The Final Days" that "[b]y August, the details of the Agnew investigation were all over the newspapers," and the following month "plea–bargaining with the vice president's attorneys" had begun.

With everything else that was going on in my life at that time, I suppose I was oblivious to what was happening with Agnew.

Maybe most Americans were, too. Maybe the plea negotiations were conducted in relative secrecy as well. Anyway, I have no memory of anything being said about Agnew's legal problems. (Of course, I was quite young at the time.)

It came as a surprise to me when, 40 years ago today, on an unseasonably warm October afternoon, I walked into the apartment in which my family was living after school had dismissed for the day and found my mother watching news reports on TV. Mind you, this was in the years before cable's explosive popularity, before cable news networks came along. A news report in the middle of an ordinary Wednesday afternoon could only mean that something serious had happened.

And it had. Agnew had resigned.

---

---

He wasn't the first vice president to resign. And, clearly, it wasn't as spontaneous as I naively thought it was at the time.

Agnew submitted his letter of resignation to Nixon, officially saying only that "I hereby resign the Office of Vice President of the United States, effective immediately."

In a more personal letter to the president that was submitted at the same time, Agnew observed that "the accusations against me cannot be resolved without a long, divisive and debilitating struggle in the Congress and in the courts." He had concluded, he wrote, that it was in America's "best interests" for him to resign.

He never addressed the question of whether he was guilty, either in his communication with Nixon or in his actual court appearance, in which he pled nolo contendre — no contest.

In his reply, Nixon didn't address that side of it, either.

Nixon, who also would resign about 10 months later, said he knew Agnew's decision to resign "has been as difficult as any facing a man in public life could be," and it left Nixon "with a great sense of personal loss," but he said he respected the decision.

Nixon commended Agnew for his "courage and candor ... strong patriotism and ... profound dedication to the welfare of the nation," and he thanked him for his service as vice president.

And then, under the provisions of the 25th Amendment — and with everything else that was vying for his attention — Nixon had to choose Agnew's replacement. This was something no other president had ever had to do, and no one knew how long it might take.

Turned out it didn't take too long.

He Went Quietly, More Or Less

---

---

In my lifetime, it often has seemed that the primary role of a vice president has been to make the president look more presidential by comparison.

Maybe there was a time when the vice president had more dignity, but that surely was before Spiro Agnew came along.

Agnew, who died on this day in 1996, first came to the attention of Republican leaders when he was elected governor of Maryland in 1966. In hindsight, his victory in a traditionally Democratic state can be dismissed as something of a fluke — his opponent was a perennial candidate running on a platform that opposed integration who survived an eight–candidate primary.

Consequently, many Democrats who were against segregation crossed party lines to vote for the more moderate–appearing Agnew.

Whatever the reasons for the victory were, Agnew had credentials that Nixon found appealing when he needed a running mate in 1968.

He was a Republican governor of a traditionally Democratic state that was considered by many to be a Southern border state — at a time when Nixon wanted to implement his "Southern strategy" and exploit the racial divide that was gradually ending the Democrats' century of regional dominance.

---

---

I've heard many stories about how Agnew came to be on the 1968 ticket — and I have found Theodore H. White's account in "The Making of the President 1968" to be the most plausible.

Nixon, White wrote, met during the convention with a cross section of Republican leaders — some conservative, some centrist, some liberal — to discuss prospects for the second slot on the ticket. Each side had its favorites — and absolutely would not consider the others' favorites — so he settled on Agnew (one of the "political eunuchs," in White's words).

Whatever the reasons or circumstances were, Agnew was chosen to run with Nixon — and, as a result, was elected vice president in November of 1968.

During the campaign — and later, in office — he developed a reputation for a combative, judgmental, even cold style.

"Some newspapers are fit only to line the bottom of bird cages," he said on one occasion.

"An intellectual is a man who doesn't know how to park a bike," he said on another.

On yet another, he observed, "[I]f you've seen one city slum you've seen them all."

He was re–elected with Nixon in 1972.

At that time, Agnew was widely seen as the heir apparent for the nomination in 1976 — but then it was revealed that he was being investigated for a veritable stew of criminal acts. In October 1973, he resigned the vice presidency and entered a plea of no contest to a single charge of income tax evasion.

Agnew insisted that the charges against him had been intended to divert public attention from Watergate — he even suggested, in his memoir, that his life was threatened if he did not "go quietly" — and he never spoke to Nixon again.

But, to my knowledge, he never said the charges were not true.

Anyway, when Nixon died in 1994, Nixon's daughters, in an expression of amity, asked the former vice president to attend the funeral, which he did. After Agnew died 15 years ago today, Nixon's daughters attended his funeral.

What I recall about the day that Agnew died was that almost no one had anything nice to say about him. No one, that is, except for Patrick Buchanan, who worked for a time as one of Nixon's speechwriters and was responsible for some of Agnew's more incendiary public remarks.

I guess it took someone who had a way with words (albeit a mean–spirited one) to find something nice to say about Agnew.

It sure wasn't easy during his lifetime.

The End of the Nightmare

---

---

The "long, national nightmare" of Watergate, to which Gerald Ford referred in his first speech as president, ended with Richard Nixon's official resignation on Friday, Aug. 9, 1974.

But the nightmare really came to an end for Nixon on Thursday, Aug. 8, 1974, when he spoke to the nation and announced that he would resign the next day.

I remember our family sitting in our living room watching the TV. My parents were never Nixon supporters. In fact, I have many memories of my father talking back to the TV when Nixon made speeches. But on that evening, my parents sat quietly, listening to every word.

It had been reported on all three networks that Nixon was going to resign, but, somehow, it didn't seem official until he said that he was going to resign. And even then, you kinda wanted to see it happen. That's the way it was with Nixon. He could say the sky was blue and the grass was green, but you wanted to see it for yourself.

Well, that is the way it was with his supporters.

His diehard opponents never seemed to give him the benefit of the doubt on anything.

Harry Truman once observed that Nixon was "one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides."

And, true to form, there were times in his resignation speech when he was self–serving, but probably not as many as I expected. And there were times when he seemed a bit combative, a bit defensive, almost as if he remained prepared to resist the idea of resigning.

Certainly, he lied. He claimed his family had unanimously urged him to remain in office and fight the accusations, but that wasn't entirely true. His sons–in–law may have favored that initially, but, as I wrote yesterday, they had evolved in their thinking by August 1974. On the evening of August 8, though, only Nixon and his immediate family knew that.

Nixon was decisive in his speech to the nation. He had made his choice. He was resigning because it was in the nation's best interest. He made that clear. He was doing this for others. Richard Nixon does not come first, he seemed to be saying.

Nonsense.

Richard Nixon always came first. He was in control of everything, he knew everything that went on in his White House. Nothing was done without his knowledge and approval. He did what he wanted to do; if you got in his way, his enablers got rid of you.

Oliver Stone gave us quite an insight into Nixon's personality in his movie "Nixon."

Speaking to his wife, Nixon says, "This is about me. Why can't you understand that, you of all people? It's not the war — it's Nixon! They want to destroy Nixon! And if I expose myself even the slightest bit they'll tear my insides out."

At the end of his presidency, Richard Nixon was like the Black Knight in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." If you remember his brief appearance in the movie, the Black Knight blocks King Arthur and forces him into a duel. King Arthur proceeds to dismember the Black Knight until, at last, the Black Knight has no more limbs. "All right," he says. "We'll call it a draw!"

That was Nixon. He had been backed into a corner, convicted by tapes of his own voice speaking the words that incriminated him. There was no way he could win a vote in the House, nor could he win a trial in the Senate. But when he left, he was going to make sure that we knew he was making a sacrifice.

In fact, he had copped a plea bargain, and he was going to skip town the next day in full view of everyone.

But the American public was ready to pay whatever price had to be paid to be rid of Richard Nixon. If that meant massaging his ego a little to get him out of there, so be it.

When Americans went to bed that night, they wanted to be sure someone else would be president the next day.

Twisting Slowly in the Wind

---

---

Among other things, Watergate had a profound influence on American vocabulary.

A good example was John Ehrlichman's suggestion to allow acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray to "twist slowly, slowly in the wind."

It was one of those phrases that seemed appropriate for many people on many occasions during the Watergate scandal.

Perhaps no date was a better illustration of that than Aug. 7, 1974. If Richard Nixon had already decided, on that date, to resign the presidency, he appears to be the only one who knew his intentions — until he revealed his decision to his family at dinner.

But, until that time, no one really seemed to know what would happen, and speculation was rampant.

• Maybe the most notorious speculation on that day was Alexander Haig's suspicion that Nixon might kill himself.
  
  The morose Nixon contributed heavily to that suspicion, as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein recalled in The Final Days.

---

"Over the past months, there had been certain references to death and suicide. At first, they were oblique and often expressed in Nixon's impatient manner; the President was thinking out loud, probably. This week, Nixon had finally approached the subject head on.

'You fellows, in your business,' the President began, meaning the Army, which he always seemed to consider Haig's real business, 'you have a way of handling problems like this. Somebody leaves a pistol in the drawer.' Haig waited.

'I don't have a pistol,' the President said sadly, as if it were one more deprivation in a long history of underprivilege. As if he were half asking to be given one. It was the same tone he used when he talked about his parents not having had any money."

The Final Days

---

Haig did take the precaution of ordering Nixon's doctors to decline to authorize any prescriptions for the president and insisted that all pills already in his possession be taken away.

But Nixon's attorney, Fred Buzhardt, assured Haig that Nixon was not the sort of man who would commit suicide. At Nixon's insistence, Buzhardt had listened to recordings of daily reflections Nixon had made, sort of an oral diary. "The tapes provided a dark, almost Dostoevskian journey into Nixon's fears, obsessions, hostilities, passions and inadequacies," Woodward and Bernstein wrote.

And, from those recordings, Buzhardt had concluded that Nixon would not kill himself.


• Haig was dealing with a delicate balancing act. He felt confident that Nixon would reach the conclusion on his own that resignation was the wisest course he could take — sooner rather than later if handled correctly.
  
  And he was Nixon's buffer against a couple of interest groups that day.
  
  One was the GOP's Congressional leadership, Rep. John Rhodes and Sens. Hugh Scott and Barry Goldwater. They were lobbying for resignation, and a meeting with Nixon was arranged for that afternoon. Nixon, the men were told, wanted a frank assessment of how he stood in the House and Senate. And the outlook was grim.
  
  Haig tried to reassure them that Nixon was likely to resign. But he felt Nixon could respond defensively and decide to fight it out. "[H]e has almost been persuaded several times," Woodward and Bernstein recalled Haig telling Scott. "If you demand his resignation, he'll probably harden up again. Would you just tell him the situation? He knows it. But he needs to hear it from you. He needs to know there are no alternatives. Nothing else."
  
  Also that day, Haig was trying to fend off H.R. Haldeman, who was lobbying for an "overall pardon" for the men who had done Nixon's bidding during Watergate.
  
  Haig saw it as blackmail to which Nixon would be vulnerable, and he did what he could to keep the issue from the president.


• The greatest obstacle was probably Nixon's family. Nixon's sons–in–law had reached a level of acceptance, but Nixon's wife and daughters seemed to be more inclined to fighting it out.

---

"[White House public relations aide] Bruce Herschensohn ... was talking to Julie, reinforcing her opinion that her father should never resign. Herschensohn wanted the President to go down in history as a fighter, and he was telling her that winning or losing in the Senate was not the important thing — that standing up for the office would assure the President his proper role in history."

The Final Days

---

But when Nixon joined his family for dinner, he made it clear that he had made his decision. His daughters began to cry. His wife did not cry. Then the White House photographer was asked in to take some pictures.

It required numerous attempts before the photographer managed to snap a picture of the family that appears to show everyone smiling. But the photographer caught a poignant moment when Nixon and his youngest daughter, Julie, embraced, apparently unaware of the camera.

The two were weeping, Woodward and Bernstein reported in The Final Days, and standing next to them, Nixon's oldest daughter, Tricia, "broke down, her face contorted, arms dangling."


• After dinner, Nixon returned to the Oval Office, then retreated to the Lincoln Sitting Room, where he summoned Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
  
  It was during this meeting, about 24 hours before Nixon would speak to the nation and announce that he would resign the presidency, that Nixon broke down and cried and asked Kissinger to get on his knees and pray with him.
  
  "[Y]ou are not a very orthodox Jew," Woodward and Bernstein quoted Nixon as telling Kissinger, "and I am not an orthodox Quaker, but we need to pray."
  
  After the prayer, Nixon "struck his fist on the carpet, crying, 'What have I done? What has happened?' " And Kissinger did his best to console his president.
  
  Before the night was over, Nixon had one final request of Kissinger. "[P]lease don't ever tell anyone that I cried and that I was not strong."

Governor Palin Steps Down

I've never really been sure how I felt about Sarah Palin.

Granted, I had my doubts about putting a former mayor and a first–term governor a heartbeat away from the presidency (although it wouldn't exactly have been a first for America — that sounds a lot like Calvin Coolidge's political résumé when he ran in 1920).

But I also had my misgivings about making someone who spent much of his adult life working as a community organizer the 44th president of the United States. So when I went to the polls last fall, I voted for Ralph Nader and left the decision (which I had come to regard as a foregone conclusion, anyway) in the hands of others.

And, although I hope for his success, as I have mentioned here before, I feel that Barack Obama is a polarizing president. He evokes strong reactions in both his foes and his supporters.

But he isn't the only one.

The same, it seems to me, is true of Sarah Palin. Last year, everyone I knew had very definite ideas about Sarah Palin — more definite than the ideas I had about her. I thought she made some mistakes. I disagreed with her on some issues. But, when the election was over and members of the McCain–Palin campaign staff seemed intent on blaming her for their defeat, I thought she was being made a scapegoat. I felt the election was irretrievably lost when the economic meltdown occurred — and that was not Palin's fault.

Frankly, it has bothered me this year to see some (not all) Democrats trying to deflect criticism by attacking Palin. I think that kicking someone who is down is unseemly for winners.

That may seem a little inconsistent, since I have written in this blog that I think the Bush administration, which was much maligned in its final months in power, should be investigated. But, that, I think, is a different matter. George W. Bush held the presidency for eight years. Bush's actions and the actions of his subordinates directly contributed to the weak economy we have today and the poor image we have beyond our borders. An investigation is the only way to establish the mistakes that were made and on which levels so they can be prevented from happening again.

Palin, on the other hand, was not elected to federal office. She and John McCain lost by a wide margin. They were put in the unenviable position of having to defend a discredited incumbent from their own party. Guilt by association may not have been the only reason they lost, but it was way up there on the list.

Nevertheless, Palin is, as I said earlier, a polarizing politician, and I cannot think of anything that demonstrates it better than the reaction — from the left and the right — to her decision to resign.

In the last few weeks, as Palin has prepared to step down as governor of Alaska today, there has been much speculation about her plans. Will she write a book? The answer appears to be yes. Will she go on a speaking tour? At the moment, that seems likely but it is less certain. Is she planning to run for president in 2012? That one remains unanswered for now.

And many pundits have said that leaving office in the middle of her term will work against her if she is planning to ask first Republican voters and then voters in general to trust her with the presidency.

But leadership really is a funny thing in a democracy, isn't it? When you look at the men who have been president of the United States, the majority of them have been lawyers — but they've come from all walks of life. The man who today is regarded as the patron saint of the Republican Party spent much of his life prior to the presidency performing in movies. The man who was president before that had been a peanut farmer.

Career soldiers have become president on several occasions, but I think all of them rose above the level of enlisted men. My grandfather's favorite president had been a college professor. Both occupations require leadership skills, but they aren't often thought of as ones that will prepare you for the unique demands of the presidency.

But leadership is an intangible. What it comes down to, I guess, is whether enough people feel they can trust a person to handle whatever may come up in the next four years. And it's almost impossible to guess what the next four years may hold.

Well, normally that is the case. But I find it hard to believe that the candidates in last year's presidential election didn't realize that the economy and unemployment would play major roles in the next four years. So 2008 may have been an exception to the rule.

But to get back to my original point — do you suppose that, nine years ago, either Bush or Al Gore thought for one minute that terrorist attacks would dominate the agenda through nearly all of the four–year term they sought? If they ever entertained that notion for a second, it's a surprise to me. I don't recall either man mentioning terrorism in that campaign.

One thing that Bush and Gore had going for them in the 2000 campaign, though, was the fact that they were both officeholders. Gore had been vice president for nearly eight years. Bush had been governor of Texas for nearly six years.

It certainly seems to help a presidential candidate's prospects if he/she is holding an office when asking the voters for their support, but it isn't unheard of for someone to run for president while not holding office. Reagan had been out of office for several years when he was elected president. So had Richard Nixon. So had Carter. And many other out–of–office politicians have sought their parties' nominations over the years.

But if Palin does so, she will be the first one I am aware of who chose to resign her office rather than finish her term.

Maybe, if one is from Alaska and wishes to be nominated for president, it makes sense to shake the shackles that keep you in Alaska and prevent you from doing the things that can build important connections in the Lower 48.

That doesn't concern me as much, though, as her comments today regarding freedom of the press. She spoke highly of the concept of freedom of the press, then she slapped the media, telling reporters that her successor "has a very nice family, too, so leave his kids alone!"

Now, I am not defending the fact that Palin's family has been dragged into the public discourse. But, to be fair, I think her real argument is with David Letterman.

And it made me uncomfortable the way she allied herself with America's troops at the expense of the press. She scolded reporters in her farewell address: "How about, in honor of the American soldier, you quit making things up?"

Maybe it is my background in journalism that makes me feel this way, but I got a Nixonian impression from Palin's last speech as governor, a sort of a "This is my last press conference ..." sensation.

Well, back in '62, Nixon encouraged the press to "think about what you're going to be missing. You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore."

I don't think today was the end of anything for Palin — except her tenure as governor. I don't think we will be missing anything.

But if Palin wants to be president, she needs to learn — as Nixon never really did and his combative vice president, Spiro Agnew, certainly never did — that a cordial relationship with the press is preferable to an adversarial one.

Is Blago Gonna Go?

Illinois officials, including the state's attorney general, are saying today that Gov. Rod Blagojevich is going to make an announcement on Monday, and some are speculating that he will step down — or at least "step aside."

That's how Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan put it on "Meet the Press."

"I don't know if that means he will resign or take another option that is provided under the Illinois constitution," she said, explaining that the governor could "voluntarily recognize that there is a serious impediment to his ability to carry out his duties, and therefore temporarily remove himself."

It doesn't seem to me that a "temporary" solution is what Illinois officials want — never mind what Blagojevich wants.

While they've been trying to sort out that mess in Illinois, apparently the writers at "Saturday Night Live" have already figured it out.

I must admit that I didn't watch the show last night. But it apparently opened with a scathingly funny parody of the Blagojeviches and a "Weekend Update" routine called "Really!" — in which Amy Poehler, in what was apparently her final show, and Seth Meyers took the governor to task on everything.

"You should resign," Meyers said. "Even Illinois politicians are saying you should resign, and when Illinois politicians think you're too corrupt, you're too corrupt."

As Phil Rosenthal observes in the Chicago Tribune, "Now we know how they feel in Wasilla, Alaska."

I guess the next step would be to empathize with Whittier, Calif.