Nixon, Richard Milhous 1913-94
37th President of the USA

Richard Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California, into a lower-middle class Quaker family of Irish descent, and was educated at Whittier College and Duke University. After five years' practice as a lawyer, he served in the US navy (1942-46), then ran for Congress as a Republican in California in 1946, defeating his Democratic opponent by painting him as a Communist sympathizer, a strategy he would use often in his career.

His fearless outspokenness and tactical brilliance allowed him to rise swiftly in political circles, and he was particularly prominent as a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, working on the Alger Hiss case. After serving in the Senate (1951-53) he was elected Vice-President under Dwight D Eisenhower in 1952 and was re-elected in 1956. In May 1958 he and his wife were subjected to violent anti-American demonstrations in Peru and Venezuela, during a goodwill tour of Latin America, and in 1959 on a visit to Moscow he achieved notoriety by his outspoken exchanges with Nikita Khrushchev. As the Republican presidential candidate in 1960, he lost the election to John F Kennedy by a tiny margin. Standing for the governorship of California in 1962, he was again defeated.

Despite an emotional declaration that he was retiring from politics, he returned to win the presidential election in 1968 by a small margin, and he was re-elected in 1972 by a large majority. His administration (1969-74) was marked by continuing controversy over the Vietnam War, especially the invasion of Cambodia (1970) and the heavy bombing of North Vietnam, which ended with the eventual signing of a cease-fire in 1973. Other dramatic foreign policy events were Nixon's initiation of a strategic arms limitation treaty with the USSR, his reopening of US relations with the People's Republic of China (1972), and his visit there, the first by a US president.

During an official investigation into a break-in in June 1972 at the Democratic National Committee's headquarters in the Watergate building, Washington, Nixon lost credibility with the US people by at first claiming executive privilege for senior White House officials to prevent them being questioned, and by refusing to hand over tapes of relevant conversations. On 9 August 1974, after several leading members of his government had been found guilty of being involved in the Watergate scandal, he resigned, the first US president to do so, thus averting the threat of impeachment, and in September 1974 he was given a full pardon by President Gerald Ford. In his memoirs (1978) and other works written during his retirement he sought to salvage his damaged reputation and rebuild his image as a statesman.

Bibliography: F Emery, Watergate, the Corruption and Fall of Richard Nixon (1994); S Ambrose, Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician (1989) and Nixon: The Education of a Politician (1987); C L Sulzberger, The World of Richard Nixon (1987); T H White, Breach of Faith (1975).