Tin Soldiers

I doubt many in my reading audience will recall from where I got my title, but its relevant to today's topic. 30 years ago yesterday Richard Nixon resigned as president of the United States. Quite a different time. No matter what you think of Nixon as a person, his first term would be considered a great success by any measure. His second term, however, was a huge disaster. A simple break in and it all went to hell. No one has ever really determined whether Mr. Nixon authorized or even knew about the break in originally, but he definitely took point on trying to cover it up. In the end, the tapes Mr. Nixon had created to help preserve his legacy ended up destroying him.

Mr. Nixon's legacy was salvaged a bit during the late 80's and 90's as he clawed his way back to respectability. After he died, I saw a political cartoon which showed an angel helping Mr. Nixon up. He was sitting on one end of a scale, on a block that said "Opening China." The other block said "Watergate" but it was being outweighed by the first block. The real legacy, of course, was the distrustful nature we still have of government and the media's desire to root out anything for a political scandal. Gone are the look the other way gifts that were afforded to prior presidents such as Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Harding. That style was already on the way out with the nastiness that started coming out during Mr. Johnson's administration over Vietnam, but Watergate accelerated the thing to a screeching pitch.

As a person who is very fond of alternative history, I've wondered what would have happened had Watergate either not happened, or if Mr. Nixon had come out immediately, apologized to the people for mistakes made by people in his government and been able to move on. Vietnam occupied a great portion of the public's mind. It's possible that with his new relationship with China, Mr. Nixon might have been able to broker a better peace accord that the one laid out in 1973/74 which lead to the fall of South Vietnam in 1975. I think South Vietnam would have eventually collapsed due to its own corruption, but that might have been staved off until 1976 or later. Its hard to say. We can't even say how many more troops Mr. Nixon might have felt were necessary to keep in Vietnam if he wasn't trying to win back the public by bringing them home.

If Mr. Nixon had successfully retired in 1976, I doubt we ever would have heard much of Mr. Jimmy Carter. He would have grabbed the nomination but Mr. Ford would have probably have enough forward momentum (to say nothing of no Nixon anger working against him) to get elected in the following election. Bob Dole was his running mate then and I don't see any reason why it wouldn't have been that again, unless the Reagan camp made enough of a push to Mr. Ford that having Mr. Reagan would secure California for him. Mr. Dole's Kansas was probably already securely in the Republican column. So we could have seen a Ford-Reagan administration or a Ford-Dole administration with Mr. Reagan securing a juicy cabinet post for his assistance in delivering California. From there, we can't really say what else would have happened. I imagine Mr. Ted Kennedy would have made his push in 1980, but perhaps been beaten out by another prominent Democrat of the time. After 12 years of Republican rule, the people might have been itching for a change and there is no evidence that the economic problems of the late 70's would have been staved off by a Republican ticket. But then again, perhaps Mr. Ford's advisors would have forced him to take a very aggressive line against Iran during the hostage crisis. If Mr. Ford were successful in delivering the Iranian hostages prior to the election and in an aggressive manner, he might have nicked it out against his Democratic nominee. Still, I think we could safely say that Mr. Reagan probably would never have had the chance to become president unless Mr. Ford lost the 1980 election and then beat out Mr. Dole and Mr. Bush for the 1984 nomination. Its very difficult to project what would have happened at this point, but it makes for fun speculation.

So we remember Mr. Nixon and the legacy he left us. But in that remembrance, we think as to what he squandered and how events might have been different had a little third rate burglary been swept under the rug.