Off. Would have come in on a crest of patriotic taking over now in a crisis feeling out in the country, so i feel that ago knews troubles which had nothing to do with watergate were a major part and probably the most skillfully crafted Foreign Policy leader. I agree with part of that. I believe if you had taken away watergate and if he had managed to get to a second term of course, there was still vietnam. To put that issue aside and just say that nothing had happened bad in the second term, i think he would have been he wouldnt have been on rushmore but he would have been in the 1920s or high teens. But he took on this unbelievably difficult task taking on this war at a time when the country was as divided as in the civil war. Its no and he still managed to put together a structure for the kind of multipolar world that we live in today, opening china, soviet union, allowing japan and germany to rebuild. I still think that and then given todays polarize politics politics, you have to look at his domestic record as well. But his people, John Ehrlichman and others, did significant work with the Democratic Congress on a number of other issues and so Teddy Kennedy once said that if he had taken Richard Nixons healthcare plan, it would have been the best deal he ever made and he held out for too much at the time. Host clearly one of the turning points, the tapes, its this question from Mark Hastings also on our Facebook Page which i think is a looming question of this whole era, why did he not destroy the tapes . Guest part of the reason was that he was sick with pneumonia when the tapes were announced. He was in the hospital. And his attorneys the went out to visit him at walter reed and they presented the tapes. The political types said burn them and they had an eraser that they could have done it without having a big bonfire on the white house lane. But other advisors said that the law is plain, as soon as you know this is possible evidence in a criminal case even though no prosecutor has asked for them, you have an obligation to preserve them and you could be impeached if you destroy them. He wanted to save them. They were incredibly valuable and they bolstered his Foreign Policy and his history as a leader. Host as you point out in politico, two attorney generals were found guilty, the white house chief of staff, the white house counsel, john dean and John Ehrlichman all spent time in jail. The director of the cia found guilty, the director of the fbi caught destroying evidence and resigned, and the list goes on. Guest and a special prosecutor fired and another one taking over and an attorney general resigning over the firing. So that was the famous saturday 19th massacre in 1973. Its going to be based on this wealth of information thats come out since Steven Ambrose did some work in the 1990s. The final white house tape only came out last august. Nixons testimony before the grand jury came out the year before that. So theres lots of new stuff to factor into the story of Richard Nixon. But its a biography. Its about a man. Very little attention i think is portrayed to the story of this extraordinary man. Host it will focus on his early years as well. As we look at Richard Nixon 40 years after he stepped down from the presidency. Caller i was ten years old when i watched president nixon resign, but im wondering, mr. Farrell, do you believe, having written a biography on this man that his abilities or maybe his im getting insecurities from watching his speech and all the coverage and things that have been written about him do you think that affected how people now look at the presidency and even his presidency 40 years later overall . Host thank you catherine, for the fall. Guest he had a good side and a dark side. And the dark side was very vicious. It was antisemitic, prejudice in some way, at war with his instincts. His resignation led to this agree crisis of conscience in government. All way before Richard Nixon took office. By the end of the 1970s, were in a dismal state in america thinking about things. Jimmy carter tried the gentler approach, i will never lie to you, tell you the truth, and then reagan said its time to forget that and dwell on the good things. So we bounced back relatively fast. But anybody who was there must remember the late 1970s was an awful time for america. The economy was in dismal shape, the military was in dismal shape, were hearing about jfks affairs. And with the exception of maybe bruce springsteen, very little good came out of the 1970s. Host the speech that he delivered from the east room to cabinet officials at 9 35 and then at 10 00 oclock eastern time he boarded army one and at noon air force one became a president ial plane and gerald ford became the president. Guest the highlight of the morning is what we just watched. That speech was remarkable in so many ways. It was supposed to be a lowkey event. Pat did not want it televised and nixon did. Host why . Guest i think he wanted to make one more argument. People ask why did he debate kennedy when he had nothing to win in 1960. Nixon had this Good Government side to him as well with obligations that had to be met. He had watched one of americas great heros up close for eight years so he thought the American People deserved the debate. But there was this part of him that was a good, you know, a nice kid who wanted to do the right thing. And i think a little bit of that, that morning showed through as well. You know, im the president , this is what the president is required to do as painful as it is, i need to talk to the people, the staff and thank them. I need to do this gracefully. We need to have this event on the south lawn. And part of it was personal. You know, if you go to the president ial museum where the helicopter is, and if you stand there and watch the tourists you can tour the inside of the helicopter. Three out of four people at the top of the stairs turn around and do this because that moment is burned into our memory. Host well go to jim in massachusetts with john farrell here on American History tv. Go ahead, jim. Caller hi. How are you . Mr. Farrell, very nice to talk to you. I was wondering if nixon had won in 1960 i know this is a hypothetical question but do you think because he wouldnt have had eight years to build up some more resentment or paranoia, whatever you want to call it, would this have happened . I dont think watergate the extent that it was would have happened. What do you think . Guest it was different times. The Republican Party was moderate, Eisenhower Party in 1960. The Democratic Party was much more conservative. There were some demons that came out in the 1950s in nixons behavior and also in the 1960 campaign. He famously tried to run it himself. If he had trusted his aides more, he probably could have done better. But theres probably something to what you have to say. He thought he won the 1960 election. A lot of people did. He felt it was stolen. So that really, people have told me who knew him, pushed him over the edge because the greatest prize he won fair and square had been taken from him and at that point, all bets were off. The kennedies had done it to him, and as he said very famously on one of the tapes, they use any means, and were going to use any means. Host why did he run for governor in 1962 . Guest because he was under pressure from the Republican Party to save california and he was thought to be the only one who could do it. He ran to keep his options open for 1964 although i dont think that he really revollished the idea of rematch. But maybe he was thinking about 1968 after kennedy left. Host i want to go through the key players in this. First of all, judge john sirica. Guest republican parties loved him. He was known as maximum john for throwing the book at street crime departments and other organized crime types. And it was only when he used those same tactics against the white collar guys in the white house that they discovered that the American Civil Liberties union maybe had it right. Host john chief of staff. Guest they resigned because of their involvement in watergate and he had to take them to camp david and ask them to resign. It was a very poignant moment that night that he calls i believe halderman and he starts talking about them as brothers, you can feel the pain in his voice and all i can think of when i hear that tape is this is a guy who lost his dearlybeloved younger brother to a disease and his admired golden boy of the family older brother to a long war with tuberculosis and all i can think of when i hear that tape is that nixon is identifying this loss with the pain of that loss in his past. They were his closest confidants. Host how about John Mitchell and magruder . Guest people like to say we still dont know who ordered the watergate burglary and its because one of them is lying. My personal feeling although its totally unreliable is that mitchell gave a wink to magruder to go ahead. Host rosemary wood. Guest loyal. All the way. Took whatever happened to her. Jo joined the Senate Office all the way through. Host this picture that is so iconic from 1973. Guest took the fall there probably. That was the 18 and a half minute gap when they finally lost the legal battle about the tapes. They began to listen to them, the lawyers, and they found that there was this long gap in the beginning of one of the tapes of nixon talking with halderman and rosemary woods explained the fact that she had been answering the phone while trying to transcribe and reached for the pedal and thats where you see that great reach. The expertise was that the tape had been deliberately erased. Host and richard from minneapolis on the phone. Caller my question is to mr. Farrell, do you think that Richard Nixon would have been in favor of the Free Trade Agreement with china that clinton and the republicans signed in 1988. My personal opinion is he wouldnt have been in favor of so much free trade with china that would take our manufacturing away. Guest thats a good question, and the tapes are best evidence for so much of what were going to talk about. The tapes show that nixon did have worries about the rise of japan and europe and their Competitive Position with United States manufacturing then when he was in office. So he may have had some worries about that with china. However, in all these cases where it was Foreign Policy versus domestic trade, his solution was to open up trade to these Different Countries but then use the power of the government to boost whatever sector was going to be impacted. So one of the reasons that he pushed so hard for the Shuttle Program and the sst, supersonic transport airplane, was because he saw that europe and japan were starting to compete with us in airplane manufacturing and he wanted to counterbalance it by boosting United States lead in other areas in military and space. Host were looking at scenes from Richard Nixon when he travelled to china in 1972. How significant of a Foreign Policy decision was that for this president . Guest i think it was huge. He couldnt have had a claim to greatness if he hasnt played this great game. And one of the sad things about watergate you can look through that and you can see that nixon had this vision of a multipolar world in which china would balance russia and the United States would play the two off each other and the chinese were thinking the same thing. Its a safer world. Going back to the balance of power that kept europe safe from big war. But while hes doing that as you read through these transcripts, you see that all this other stuff is going on, hes got secret negotiations on vietnam, hes got secret trips to china, the russians are angry, nixon is bombing North Vietnam right before the russian summit not knowing whether or not the russians are going to cancel the summit. This is all going on at the same time that all the planning for watergate is going on. So its real easy to absolve nixon of not keeping a tighter rein on the boys because so much stuff was going on. And then he made the fatallyflawed decision to not send them to the grand jury and instead cover it up. Caller i trace it back to watergate because of the fact that republicans were mad at democrats and wanted to get even with democrats for bringing down nixon. Ultimately that led to them trying to impeach bill clinton and i see a lot of that hate toward president obama. Guest to only a slight extent. Watergate was the final act of vietnam. All the polarization goes back to that. There are times when i look at my kids and i say, boy, you know, this isnt going to end in this country until the vietnam finally dies away and were not here anymore to poison the waters but i would trace it back to watergate. I think nixon was the last casualty of vietnam. Host were getting tweets as well. This is from brad, always amazed that president nixon won 49 out of 50 states and then 20 months later forced to resign. Guest its amazing. Theres a fellow who writes social history about the 1960s and 1970s and in his book nixonland, noting in 1964, you have Lyndon Johnson with this huge land slide and then eight years later, you have nixon with an identical land slide from the other side and so it was very volatile at the time. Host harry is on the phone from florida. Caller i was wondering if president nixon was forced to resign by the Republican Party for watergate because of what he did in his democratic headquarters. If he, like, was forced to do that. Guest at the very end, it was probably the 7th, the congressional leaders from capitol hill, hugh scott, john rhodes, Barry Goldwater, came to the white house and he said how bad is it and they said we cannot win. That was an easing and a pushing out. By that week in august, almost all of official washington had decided that nixon had to design, that was the best way to go and he was getting pressured from all different sides. Ben bradley told me that one of his great sources in the last act of watergate was Barry Goldwater because he believed he had to go and was talking to the washington post. Host this is from our Facebook Page. He took full responsibility for his actions and thats not something that leaders do today. But did he take full responsibility and did he fully apologize before his death . Guest well, as with many things about Richard Nixon, who was a very shifty character, its hard to answer definitively. He makes the argument that part of the reason that he left was that as a patriot, he couldnt put the country through further turmoil, all his Foreign Policy goals would have been shattered and there were to many important things going on in the country and he had to leave and he recognized that. The other part was that he did not have any Political Support anymore. And the third part he was hoping that if he left, he would not be tried for the crimes of the coverup and, indeed, he was pardoned. Host in fact, you wrote that nixon thought that his Foreign Policy would be part of his Lasting Legacy and that may diminish how people viewed watergate when he stepped down. Guest it was a wonderful conversation between he and kissinger where kissinger will remember you as a great president and he said, well, henry, that depends on who writes the history. So he set out to write nine or ten books to redeem himself, to tell his side of the story. And whats interesting in my research his first book was called crises and theres a memo about that in which hes asked what are you going to do when you retire, write books . And he says, no, never going to write another book in my life. That may have been his greatest penalty for watergate, having to crank out these books. Host good morning to you. Caller good morning. Aloha from hawaii. Host the weather . Caller we got through it. Thank you. My question is how important was the tapes in getting nixon resigning and as well, how competent was his cabinet when he resigned . Host thank you. Guest the short answer is that nixon had a very confident competent cabinet. He brought some truly spectacular talent to washington. The first part of the question is if it had not been the tapes, he would have stayed on. The country was not ready to take this moment us historical act of impeachment just on the word of one white house lawyer who had a selfserving interest in saying my boss told me to do this stuff. Host mark from massachusetts. Caller im grateful for the coverage that youve had all weekend. I just want to make a comment to the author. It was simply that i disagreed with his commentary on president nixons farewell address. I thought it was rather weak and not very the remarks were fairly circuitous. In any case, what i really wanted to say is that when president kennedy was asked about the election of 1960 and Richard Nixon during that election he simply said that he came in the way he went out with no crash. Thank you. Host his remarks on august the 9th. Guest and what i loved about the farewell to the staff was that it shows nixon finally reaching a point of selfawareness. When he talks about, you know, were in the arena but dont hate because if you hate you destroy yourself. That tells me that he got it at the very end after all these years of reflexively lashing back, he recognized the