Nixon News & Notes
The Once & Future Nixon
The Watergate hotel is old. Its cement is faded, and the only retail in sight is an old gas station on an awkward corner. The mid-century modernism, once thought glamorous, feels as aged and isolated as the neighborhood itself. Pull into the small circle in front of the luxury hotel, however, and a valet will rush to your door, asking if you’re checking in or just stopping by.
In June 1972, the neighborhood was newly revitalized and prestigious. The Kennedy Center next door had held its first performance just nine months earlier, and the hotel was a hangout for artists, politicians, and celebrities.
In June 2016, after sitting vacant for nearly a decade, the hotel reopened and was finally restored to the glory it held in its eponymous era. Now, the furniture is high-fashion mid-century, the staff wear uniforms created by the costume designer for Mad Men, you can stay in the “Scandal Suite” for a night, and the $22 martini, served “just the way you like it,” is called “The Agent’s Choice.”
You’d have to order yours with gin, only soaking the olives in vermouth, to achieve the dryness of President Richard Nixon’s personal recipe, but as his most famous supporter, Elvis Presley, croons “Suspicious Minds” softly in the background, you can’t help but feel like the “the Old Man” himself is still just a mile down the road.
Rebirth
Nixon is back. And not as a cartoon villain, or some other crude caricature; rather, Nixon the Brilliant Statesman, Nixon the Strategic Architect, Nixon the Wronged, Nixon the Smeared, Nixon the Prophet, and even Nixon the Cool has made his triumphant return to America’s popular imagination.
For half a century in television, cartoons, and movies, wherever President Richard Nixon went, his scowl went with him. Nixon the Crook held such cultural dominance for so long that you’d be forgiven for not knowing he was re-elected in 1972 with nearly 18 million more votes than his opponent—a number not topped before or since. In the final tally, Nixon earned 162% of his rival’s votes—and won every single state save Massachusetts, even taking the Democratic nominee’s home state by nearly nine points. The Electoral College final count was 520 to 17.
Donald Trump calls Barack Obama the most corrupt president in history
President Trump on Sunday continued his pattern of blasting former President Obama, sharing a meme stating that he, not former President Nixon, was the country’s “most corrupt” president.
Trump posted a split screen of Obama and Nixon’s presidential portraits to Truth Social, with the photo including the caption, “One of these men is the most corrupt president in the history of the United States. The other is Richard Nixon.”
The incumbent president has long criticized Obama, his direct Democratic predecessor. Before running for president, Trump falsely claimed that Obama was born in Kenya and not Hawaii.