The Arrogance of Power

by Anthony Summers

  “Don’t you dare call me Dick. I am the president of the United States. When you speak to me you call me Mr. President.” So commanded Nixon, early in the presidency, at a meeting with Florida banker Hoke Maroon, a man he had known for years. “He was as obsessed with the office as any president has ever been,” his old friend Bob Finch ruefully recalled. “He gloried in it, night and day.”

  The outward signs were quickly obvious. Before the Nixons moved into the White House, the message they had conveyed to the public was that it did not need refurbishing. That opinion soon changed, however, and a massive remodeling program, costing millions, was begun.

  Military planes were dispatched to Italy to bring back green watered silk for just one medium-size room. An ornate four-poster bed for Nixon cost six thousand dollars, its draperies ten thousand. The next presidential couple to occupy the White House, the Fords, thought it unbelievable, “something Marie Antoinette would have slept in,” and promptly had it removed.

  Whereas Lyndon Johnson had maintained three Boeing passenger jets, Nixon had three Boeings, eleven Lockheed Jetstars, and sixteen helicopters at his exclusive disposal. The existing Air Force One was refurbished at a cost of $800,000, with the emphasis on the First Family’s accommodation. Later, when a new plane was delivered—with a layout the Nixons did not like—another $750,000 went toward the alterations.

  The fleet was not used solely for government business. Nixon’s extended family, including in-laws, availed themselves of the planes. When a troubled official reported that senior aides were taking Air Force One on transcontinental flights to and from vacations, Nixon signed off on them. An Air Force Jetstar was once used to ferry a package from Florida to Camp David for senior aides, at a cost of five thousand dollars in fuel alone. Its contents: ten pounds of crabs from Joe’s Stone Crabs in Miami Beach.

  The White House and the Camp David retreat were not sufficient for Nixon. He bought houses on Key Biscayne—the complex to be known as the Florida White House—and at San Clemente, the fourteen-room house and estate in California styled the Western White House. Nixon himself purchased the properties, with a massive financial assist from Rebozo and aerosol tycoon Abplanalp. The government, however, was to spend more than ten million dollars—more than forty-four million dollars at today’s values—to install special features not only at Nixon’s out-of-town homes but also at houses he frequented, like Abplanalp’s in the Bahamas.

  A helicopter pad at Key Biscayne cost $418,000, and communications equipment there $307,000. “The bottom line for military expenditures at Key Biscayne came close to two million dollars,” recalled Military Office head Bill Gulley. “Then we did it all again at San Clemente.” Camp David was also revamped. A swimming pool next to the presidential “cabin” was built at an expense of $500,000, because the chosen site stood atop an underground nuclear shelter.

  Nixon had nine offices for his personal use: the Oval Office, a hideaway in the Executive Office Building, a room in his private quarters, two at Camp David, one at the Key Biscayne house, another at Abplanalp’s Caribbean home, and two at San Clemente. All required sophisticated communications systems, installed at public expense. A former Budget Bureau official would calculate that, by four years into the presidency, Nixon’s household expenses had added up to a hundred million dollars.

  Nixon spent more than one in three nights away from the White House in the first eighteen months of his term. While the days of absence included foreign trips, there were also forty-two trips to Camp David, fourteen to Key Biscayne, and nine to San Clemente. The California stays tended to last two or three weeks.

  Before assuming office, Nixon had repeatedly pressed Ehrlichman to “capitalize upon the work habits of the President-elect—long hours of work, delayed dinners, eighteen-hour days, late reading, no naps. . . .” That was not the routine Nixon’s assistant Alexander Butterfield observed, however. He was struck by the fact that his boss “had so much leisure time. There were many days with no appointments at all. Every now and then he would work like a Trojan. . . . But generally he allowed plenty of time to sit and kick things around. . . . And every afternoon Nixon took a nap. . . .”

  For the women in the family, pride in Republican cloth coats was a sentiment long since abandoned. Pat Nixon arrived at the White House with a new Persian lamb coat to supplement her mink, and both daughters had acquired expensive coats of real fur. Julie had married President Eisenhower’s grandson David a month before the inauguration, a ceremony at which she bent custom a little by kissing her father first rather than her new husband.

  The junior Nixons had long since assigned each other joke initials, parodies of what the trio viewed as their hilarious billing in the press. Julie, who was to graduate from Smith College, was N.C.P.D.—for “No Cream Puff Deb.” David was T.C.C. for “Teen Carbon Copy”—of his famous grandfather. Tricia was F.P., for “Fairy Princess.”

  In the White House, Tricia soon acquired the reputation of being a spoiled princess. Then twenty-three, she spent entire days shut up in her Louis XV bedroom, surrounded by a collection of Dresden and Meissen figurines. Her favorite featured two little girls on a seesaw with a spotted dog, a gift from her father that he called “Tricia and Julie with Checkers.”

  Tricia did not endear herself to Nixon’s staff. Ehrlichman thought her a “tough and troubled cookie.” She once reported an Air Force One steward for allegedly staring at her legs. An usher who had been told to bring pillows to the garden for Tricia and a friend was then expected to lift the friend’s outstretched legs to create a hassock. Secret Service agents, who dubbed Tricia Goody Two-shoes, objected to being instructed to water her plants while she was away on a trip. They carried out the mission, one agent claimed, by urinating on them.

  When Britain’s Prince Charles came visiting, Nixon tried to pair Tricia off with him, to no avail. Tricia was to marry Edward Cox, an Ivy League law student descended from one of the framers of the Declaration of Independence. Their wedding in the Rose Garden, in the third year of the presidency, would be staged as a television spectacular reportedly seen by sixty million viewers. CBS’s Dan Rather thought it “the closest thing Americans have, or want, to a royal occasion.”1

  Early in his travels as president, Nixon was greeted in Brussels by royal guards in operatically grand uniforms. In India he was escorted by outriders in British Empire–vintage scarlet coats. One of these trips reportedly inspired the outfitting of the White House police in similarly outlandish uniforms. The new outfits, high-necked white tunics with gold epaulets, first appeared on public view a year after the inauguration. They were topped by tall military caps with blue and gold visors, reportedly paid for by Nixon himself.

  After early critics noted how plump the uniforms made their wearers look, the policemen were ordered to diet. Then, following a national chorus of ridicule, the regalia was withdrawn altogether. The tunics were eventually sold off to high school bands in Iowa, and the caps reappeared at an Alice Cooper rock concert.

  “The President,” Haldeman said by way of explaining the uniforms, had “wanted something more formal.” Peter Flanigan, Nixon’s political adviser, thought the livery an attempt to emulate the “grandeur” his boss admired in Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle himself fell from power, then died soon after Nixon took office. By that time Nixon had established his own self-important style.

  Four days after the inauguration the president dictated the following memo to Pat, referring to himself in the third person, rather as the queen of England affects the royal “we” on formal occasions,

  To: Mrs. Nixon

  From: The President

  In talking with the GSA [General Services Administration] with regard to RN’s room, what would be most desirable is an end table like the one on the right side of the bed which will accommodate two dictaphones as well as a telephone. RN has to use one dictaphone for current matters and another for memoranda for the file which he will not want transcribed at this time. In addition, he needs
a bigger table on which he can work at night. The table which is presently in the room does not allow enough room for him to get his knees under it.

  Nixon sought to preserve everything that related to his tenure, however trivial. “He saves everything,” Rose Woods would one day tell investigators, “place cards, menus. Even one Halloween we were at Camp David and he and Mrs. Nixon invited me to dinner and a steward put a colored mask on each of the three plates—I know Mrs. Nixon put hers in the wastebasket, and I did mine. But his came down to be filed. . . .”

  “Things got more and more regal,” recalled Traphes Bryant, the presidential kennel keeper. “Nixon decreed that even workers like me had to get all prettied up for official functions. The White House had suits tailored for any electrician or carpenter who might be around during a party or official function. Several times I had to go to a Georgetown haberdasher to be measured for my black suit, which was almost like a tuxedo. . . .”

  “Problems with signals,” Haldeman noted in his diary after a morning meeting with Nixon. “Dinner last night. . . served just champagne when should have had cocktails, 12 in black tie.” White tie and tails, long out of fashion, were at first de rigueur at Nixon White House occasions.2 At dinners the small round tables favored by the Kennedys and the Johnsons were replaced by long banquet-style tables with seating that indicated to all present just who was and was not “above the salt.” For cabinet meetings Nixon replaced Johnson’s reclining chair with a high-backed chair, higher—for that was the point—than those his colleagues used.

  The pomp and circumstance of a typical Nixon airport arrival gave Life’s Hugh Sidey pause: “Acres of automobiles parked on the landing field. Men, women, and children in luxurious coats and sweaters . . . wives of the dignitaries elegant in furs, jewels sparkling in the sun. Agnew . . . flawlessly tailored, combed, manicured, polished. There was about him the smell of power, position and possessions. . . . There were ruffles and flourishes from the army’s special heraldic trumpets, followed by ‘Hail to the Chief.’ A journalist next to me turned away. ‘My God,’ he muttered, as Nixon appeared at the airplane door, ‘it’s like the arrival of the King.’ ”

  The Nixons seemed almost oddly attracted to royals, even exiled ones. “White tie, decorations to be worn” invitations were sent out for a dinner for the duke and duchess of Windsor, who had hosted Nixon while he was out of office. When the duke sent apologies—he did not have his decorations with him—bemedaled guests were asked to shed their badges and ribbons at the door.

  On a flight to Europe with the First Family the writer Jessamyn West, Nixon’s cousin, recalled a telling interview with Pat. “I wanted to hear about her early struggles,” West remembered. “She replied: ‘How can you present me as being other than perfect?’ She was giving me statistics about how many crowned heads they had served in the White House. . . .”

  Investigations would eventually reveal that Pat and her daughters accepted lavish gifts of jewelry from Middle Eastern royalty. Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal gave Pat a shoulder-length pair of earrings set with marquise diamonds and cabochon rubies, as well as, reportedly, a strand of pearls, worth as much as a hundred thousand dollars at seventies values.

  From Saudi Deputy Prime Minister Prince Fahd, Faisal’s half brother, Pat received a matching diamond and emerald ensemble—necklace, bracelet, ring, and brooch—worth $52,400. Defense Minister Prince Sultan, another half brother, presented a diamond bracelet to Pat and brooches—in diamonds, rubies, and sapphires—to Julie and Tricia.

  Upon her marriage, according to her cousin Donald, Tricia was given a diamond and emerald brooch by the shah of Iran. The emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, sent a silver vase. Donald told the author he thought such gifts were “the way various people Uncle Dick had helped throughout the world thanked him. . . .”3

  The official roster of Britain’s nobility, Burke’s Peerage, pronounced Nixon one of thirteen U.S. presidents able to claim royal ancestry. The grocer’s son from Whittier was supposedly a direct descendant of King Edward III (d. 1377) and thus distantly related to Queen Elizabeth II and Sir Winston Churchill. While thousands of people can claim similar bloodlines, one should perhaps not assume this was totally irrelevant to Nixon.

  “I often felt that inwardly the president secretly wanted to be considered an English lord,” said his close associate Herb Klein, “someone who, like Jack Kennedy, would be praised for upgrading the social dignity of the White House. . . . he longed for this elite social distinction.”

  Nixon himself denied such notions. “The Imperial President,” he wrote, “was a straw man created by defensive congressmen and by disillusioned liberals. . . .” One such critic was future Speaker Tip O’Neill. “After he became President,” O’Neill recalled, “Nixon seemed to change. He no longer played cards with our group, and I doubt he played with anybody. Unlike Truman, Kennedy and Johnson, Nixon didn’t pal around much with his old friends . . . he became aloof and imperial.”

  Even some Republican stalwarts had similar thoughts. “I could not detect a touch of humility in his demeanor or in his facial expression,” Federal Reserve chairman Arthur Burns said of the inauguration. “That troubled me very much. That, combined with his attitude when he took me through the White House and talked about its splendor. . . .” “I don’t know what’s happened to Dick,” grumbled Tom Dewey, “He just doesn’t listen anymore.”

  He behaved “like Napoleon,” said the entrepreneur Arnholt Smith, who had known Nixon since childhood. “I mean, he was very imperious, gave you a feeling you were almost traveling with God.” Former Republican party chairman Len Hall thought Nixon became “regal, kinglike. . . . He loved power, power to sit in that Oval Office and just issue orders. . . .”

  _____

  Under Nixon, according to an early brief, Nixon cabinet officers were to be considered “Deputy Presidents who run their own departments.” That concept was rapidly forgotten, however. “Nixon never intended the cabinet to be a board of directors,” said Haldeman. “He never took a vote and would have cared less concerning the result; he didn’t make any pretext of seeking consensus.”

  “I remember one occasion during the energy crisis,” Defense Secretary James Schlesinger recalled. “Nixon said to the cabinet at large, ‘I don’t know whether the energy crisis will ever end.’ I leaned over to him and remarked that we were in close negotiations with the Saudis about ending the embargo. He turned to me and whispered, ‘I know that, Jim, but I’m not going to say that in front of these clowns.’ ”

  “We began to get these long soliloquies about how tough it was to be president surrounded by idiots,” said Ehrlichman. “You began to get instructions from him. ‘Get rid of that fellow Allen over at HEW!’ ‘Call Finch today and fire him! He is going around saying we favor busing; we don’t favor busing. Don’t they understand?’ More and more, as we proceeded through the first year, he began taking back all those delegations of absolute authority that had been rather frivolously handed out at transition time. . . .

  “It got so bad that in about the third year we learned of a rump session of the cabinet. They actually held a meeting over at [Housing and Urban Development Secretary] George Romney’s conference room to discuss economic problems, because they couldn’t get any discussions at the cabinet table. . . . It was a minirevolt. . . . Nixon was terribly upset that they would call such a meeting behind his back. . . .”

  “Nixon never trusted anyone in the Executive Branch,” said CIA Director Richard Helms. “Here he had become president of the United States and therefore the chief of the executive branch, and yet he was constantly telling people that the State Department was just a bunch of pin-striped, cocktail-drinking diplomats, that the agency couldn’t come up with a winning action in Vietnam, that the Interior Department was full of ‘pinkos.’ It just went on and on.”

  Nixon once exploded in rage, a tape of a telephone call reveals, because too few aides called to congratulate him on a nationally televised address
about Vietnam. “Screw the Cabinet and the rest!” he told Kissinger. “From now on, they come to me. I’m sick of the whole bunch. The others are a bunch of goddamned cowards. The staff, except for Haldeman and Ehrlichman, screw them. The Cabinet, except for [cabinet secretary] Connally, the hell with them!”

  Nixon was the first president in more than a century to have to work with an opposition Congress, and he did not have the patience for the task. “He simply didn’t want to spend the kind of time that was required to cultivate these folks,” Ehrlichman said. Congressional liaison Bill Timmons would scrawl, “ASK FOR HIS VOTE,” on talking papers when Nixon was about to meet with a member of Congress, but he never did so. “I think he felt it was somehow demeaning for the president to ask a member for his vote,” Timmons said. “It was not in his personality to do it.”

  Nixon’s ploys to circumvent congressional authority ultimately alienated the nation’s elected representatives. He blocked bills, impounded funds when he knew his veto would not work, and eroded the power of the Senate in the field of foreign policy. Kevin Phillips, himself a former Nixon aide, noted that Nixon was moving toward government by an “unprecedented, unreachable elite managerial cadre.” One man in particular, a veteran U.S. senator, was increasingly troubled by the tone of the government. This was Sam Ervin, who was to be Nixon’s nemesis during Watergate. “Divine Right,” Ervin would growl then, “perished in America with the Revolution.”

  Relations with the press were similarly contentious. Six years after his “kick around” speech, Nixon’s scorn and resentment toward the media were undiluted. A senior aide to Spiro Agnew had tellingly expressed the administration’s tone only minutes after the victory announcement. “Why don’t we all get a member of the press and beat them up?” he said. “I’m tired of being nice to them.” After the election, in conversation with Theodore White, Nixon dismissed the media as “that fucking bunch of crew cut boy scouts.”