Nixon Born: Architect of Detente and Watergate

Richard Nixon applied to Harvard and was accepted. His family couldn't afford it. He went to Whittier College instead, then Duke Law School on scholarship, graduating third in his class. Born on January 9, 1913, in Yorba Linda, California, he grew up in modest circumstances that bred a resentment of Eastern elites that never left him. He served in the Navy during World War II, won a Congressional seat in 1946 by accusing his opponent of being soft on communism, and rose through Republican ranks with a combative style that made him enemies and allies in roughly equal numbers. He lost the presidency to Kennedy in 1960 by 112,000 votes and lost the California governorship in 1962, telling the press "you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore." Six years later he was president. His first term was genuinely consequential. He opened China, established diplomatic relations with Beijing after 25 years of hostility, and fundamentally altered the Cold War balance of power. He created the Environmental Protection Agency, signed the Clean Air Act, ended the military draft, and desegregated Southern schools more aggressively than any president since Eisenhower. He also expanded the Vietnam War into Cambodia, ordered the secret bombing of Laos, and authorized domestic surveillance programs against political opponents. Then his operatives broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, and Nixon approved the cover-up. The cover-up unraveled over two years. He resigned on August 9, 1974, the only president to do so. Gerald Ford pardoned him a month later. He spent the next 20 years rebuilding his reputation as a foreign policy elder statesman. He died on April 22, 1994.