JANUARY 9 — 1913 Happy Birthday Richard Nixon; 1776 Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense
January 9
1913 — Happy birthday Richard Tricky Dick Nixon! The only U.S. president from California, Richard was born in Yorba Linda in the OC down in SoCal, and attended Fullerton High before college and his law career. Mama Hannah Milhous was a Quaker, Papa Frank owns a gas station/service store. Richard attended Whittier College, where he played football, and got his law degree from Duke U, graduating near the top of his class. In 1940, he married Thelma Catherine Patricia Ryan, just call her Pat.
From Drama and amateur acting class. They were cast in a play together and that’s when the magic started; they had two daughters, Patricia (Tricia) and Julie. Julie would eventually marry Dwight Eisenhower’s grandson David, and live happily ever after with him. During World War II, despite being raised a Quaker, Nixon served as a Navy lieutenant commander in the Pacific. Good thing for Nixon that his bunkmates would show him how to play poker; since he was able to use his winning to finance his first political campaign in 1946.
Upon leaving service, Nixon was elected to Congress from his California district. There, he served on the House of Un-American Activities Committee, and famously took the leading role in an investigation against Algers Hiss, a well respected former State Department official who was accused of spying for the Soviet Union. When Richard “The Boss” Nixon took Hiss to the witness stand, Hiss ratted out his accuser and was sentenced to five years in prison. In 1950, Nixon ran for senate in California against Helen Douglas, a vocal opponent of the HUAC. When Nixon’s campaign staff passed out fliers on pink paper, implying that Douglas’s voting record was far-left, the Independent Review in SoCal nicknamed Richard Nixon for the first time, Tricky Dick. In 1950, he won a seat in the U.S. Senate.
A couple years later, Dwight Eisenhower chose 39 year old Gloomy Gus Nixon to be his running mate for the Presidency. During the campaign, Nixon went under scrutiny when he was accused of accepting money and gifts from special interest groups. He countered this by famously stating that the only gift he’d ever received from a lobbyist was a cocker spaniel puppy for his young daughter named Checkers. The speech was very effective, and the Eisenhower-Nixon team won the election in 1952, and reelection in 1956. Then, in 1960, Richard The Boss Nixon went up against JFK for the presidency. On September 26, 1960, Tricky Dick The Boss squared off against john Kennedy at the studio of CBS’s WBBM for the first televised presidential debate. Nixon did no look like the Boss that day.
He appeared nervous and pale, in sharp contrast to Kennedy who was tan, cool, and of course, handsome. But possibly the biggest takeaway from that debate was the fact that folks who watched it on TV gave the victory to Kennedy, however those who listened to it on the radio gave it to Nixon. Kennedy would win the election by a very small margin. Devastated, Gloomy Gus Nixon went back to California and ran for governor, where he lost that as well. But in 1968, Tricky Dick made a comeback went back to Washington and ran a successful campaign against Democrat Hubert Humphries and Alabama Governor George Wallace, and that my friends is when Searchlight Nixon became The Boss.
During his first term, the 26th amendment was passed which dropped the voting age from 21 to 18, American astronauts walked on the moon for the first time, the Selective Service Act or the draft, was enacted, he visited Beijing and Moscow to reduce tensions with China and the U.S.S.R., limited the production strategic nuclear weapons, and ended America’s involvement in the war in Vietnam. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who would win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971, also worked to reduce tensions between Israel and its enemies in Egypt and Syria. Meanwhile, back at the White House, Nixon ate cottage cheese and pineapples for lunch every day, he once invited race car drivers to display their cars at a reception, he loved the movie Patton, and was on the cover of Time magazine 56 times, definitely 56 more times than I have by the way.
Elvis Presley, the King of Rock, asked Nixon to give him federal status to fight the war on drugs. The Boss held a huge 70th birthday party for Duke Ellington and invited jazz legends Cab Calloway and dizzy Gellispie, among many others. The party went until 2 in the morning. Speaking of parties, Nixon loved playing the piano at them and would have sing-a-longs. Guess what folks, if the President of the United States is asking you to sing while he’s playing the piano, you better do it and don’t screw it up. He and vice president Spiro T. Agnew once closed a party singing God Bless America. He spent $2M fixing up Camp David, and had a bowling alley installed, where he rolled his best game ever, a 204.
Searchlight Nixon was unstoppable. He easily won reelection in 1972 with the biggest margin of Republican voters since the Cold War began. He was on his way to legendary status as far as U.S. Presidents were concerned. He was Time Magazine’s Man of the Year. What could possibly go wrong? And then came Watergate. Tricky Dick had just won the election by one of the widest margins on record. He didn’t have to cheat!
But as it turned out, a break in at offices during the Democratic National Convention led an investigation to the Committee to Re-Elect the President. I am not a crook, declared Richard the Chicken Hearted Nixon, dening any involvement, until wire taps proved otherwise, capturing his direct involvement to cover up the mess and divert the investigation. This scandal would end Nixon’s presidency. Officials everywhere scrammed like rats on a sinking ships and resigned, but not without getting convicted of offenses linked to Watergate. Agnew resigned for unrelated scandals, and was replaced by Gerald Ford.
On August 8th, 1974, Searchlight Nixon resigned on TV. Gloomy Gus would go back to Yorba Linda, and would be pardoned by his replacement, President Ford a couple months later. During his retirement, Nixon wrote books, and disputed a contract between Major League Baseball and its umpires, on April 22, 1994, Richard Nixon died of a stroke at age 81. His legacy is split between a successful statesman and an effective diplomat, and others view him as a disgraced criminal. “If any individual wants to be a leader and isn’t controversial, that means he never stood for anything.” Happy birthday Richard!
1776—Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense. This book helped to turn American complaints about England into the American Revolution. Check out this line from the book: “Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither they have fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home pursues their descendants still.” So very true. The pamphlet sold about a half million copies by 1778.