Richard Nixon Looks Back on His Final Hours in the White House

Nixon’s analysis of our options for lasting strength and peace as the Cold War winds down was brilliant, if cold-hearted and realistic. It was the missing link in comprehending some of Gorbachev’s real options. Thankfully, Nixon did not dredge up the inflammatory language of the Cold War that has forced the U.S. into inflexible strategies with peace as a peripheral consideration.

Yet, like the memory of the thief who picked Nixon’s pocket in the Times Square celebration after World War II, the memory of a single phrase from his analysis nags at me. Nixon talked of Gorbachev’s popularity being greater than that of our President in Europe and “among Americans with graduate degrees”--a nice back-handed slap that gives us non-graduate-degree Americans someone to hate.

You can always count on that from Dick Nixon. In the midst of his most brilliant evaluation of foreign realities, he will insert his gross insecurity and petty contempt like knives into his own country, which is crying for leadership that will unify its people. To this day, he doesn’t understand that his biggest crime against this country was that he took the presidency--one of the few unifying institutions we had left in America--and squandered the investment of trust we had placed in it.

Maybe that’s why we need Nixon’s voice on our Opinion pages, so we can lay aside our naivete and play tough-minded geopolitical hardball. But here in America, we’re still waiting for someone who can heal our wounds.

JONI HALPERN

San Diego