Richard Nixon worked very hard but never seemed to enjoy it, often seemed uncomfortable around people, had an inferiority complex and was cynical and anti-Semitic, former executive editor of the Washington Post Ben Bradlee said in a speech mixing anecdotal analysis and humor for a filled Cook Auditorium yesterday.
Bradlee, executive editor of The Washington Post from 1968 to 1991 and the newspaper's main decision-maker when it uncovered the Watergate scandal, told several anecdotes about the president whom he jokingly thanked for being "solely responsible for my presence here today."
"Choosing me to analyze Nixon is a little like choosing Judge Starr to analyze Clinton," Bradlee said, as he gave the final speech of the Power and the Presidency series, which has spanned the past two terms and seen speakers such as historian Doris Kearns Goodwin and Clinton biographer David Maraniss come to the College.
This term's Montgomery Fellow said he did not know Nixon personally but recounted a few of his interactions with the president.
Bradlee said he first covered Nixon during the 1960 presidential campaign, although he had been assigned to focus on John F. Kennedy at the time.
He said Kennedy was at ease with reporters and unafraid of having a "bookworm" image. Nixon, in contrast, was "an uncomfortable man" when around people and tried to have a more "folksy" image.
Bradlee, who covered the two candidates' historic first televised debate, said, "From inside the studio, I thought Kennedy just plain waxed Nixon," who was sweaty, pale and nervous during the debate.
Bradlee next interacted with Nixon during the 1962 California gubernatorial campaign. He said Nixon was fairly inaccessible, and when Bradlee finally was able to speak with him alone, Nixon gave him more of a 20-minute "filibuster" than an actual interview.
A couple of his interactions with Nixon came as a bit of a surprise to the editor.
Two years before Watergate, Bradlee was in The Post's office on a Saturday morning - a rather informal time of the day at the newspaper - when one of the children who had been brought to the office by an employee answered a call that came through and claimed that the White House was on the line.
"But damned if it wasn't the White House and damned if the operator didn't say, Mr. Bradlee, would you hold for the president," Bradlee said.
Bradlee - joking to the audience that he was taking a "totally unfair shot" at Nixon by mentioning to the audience Nixon's failure at gaining the newspaper editor's favor by discussing their terms in the armed forces since at one point Bradlee was an officer on a destroyer in the South Pacific while Nixon was "pricing tires" for the army - said "someone obviously told [Nixon] he should try to butter up to the editor of The Post."
After holding informal conversations with Bradlee for two Saturdays in a row, Nixon never called again, probably realizing that he was not very good at that sort of interaction, Bradlee said.
Bradlee said Nixon was a person with an inferiority complex who harbored negative feelings toward the press, the East and the Ivy League and who also said particularly insulting things about Jews - but nothing he did was as grave as his crucial role in the Watergate scandal.
"I get so angry when I hear from people, what the hell's the difference between Watergate and Whitewatergate."
"The Whitewater case seems to me to be seedy," he said. "The pillars of the Constitution don't seem to be threatened."
Referring to Nixon's admisson in 1977 that he brought himself down, Bradlee called the former president "a self-destructive man, and in a quieter time, he admitted it."
Bradlee saw Nixon for the last time while vacationing in the 1980s on St. Martin Island, and said he "promised to be a good boy, but I brought a tape recorder just in case I got lucky."
After planning an elaborate scheme with a Rolling Stone magazine editor to happen to run into Nixon on a beach, however, Bradlee had no such luck.
Bradlee told the audience he has a photograph on his wall of Nixon, in a tuxedo, with his eyes tightly shut and pointing down the front of esteemed journalist Katherine Graham's evening gown.
"That may tell you something about me as much as it tells you about Nixon," he said, to the amusement of the audience.
