Off. Would have come in on a crest of patriotic taking over now in a crisis feeling out in the country, so i feel that ago knews troubles which had nothing to do with watergate were a major part and probably the most skillfully crafted Foreign Policy leader. I agree with part of that. I believe if you had taken away watergate and if he had managed to get to a second term of course, there was still vietnam. To put that issue aside and just say that nothing had happened bad in the second term, i think he would have been he wouldnt have been on rushmore but he would have been in the 1920s or high teens. But he took on this unbelievably difficult task taking on this war at a time when the country was as divided as in the civil war. Its no and he still managed to put together a structure for the kind of multipolar world that we live in today, opening china, soviet union, allowing japan and germany to rebuild. I still think that and then given todays polarize politics politics, you have to look at his domestic record as well. But his people, John Ehrlichman and others, did significant work with the Democratic Congress on a number of other issues and so Teddy Kennedy once said that if he had taken Richard Nixons healthcare plan, it would have been the best deal he ever made and he held out for too much at the time. Host clearly one of the turning points, the tapes, its this question from Mark Hastings also on our Facebook Page which i think is a looming question of this whole era, why did he not destroy the tapes . Guest part of the reason was that he was sick with pneumonia when the tapes were announced. He was in the hospital. And his attorneys the went out to visit him at walter reed and they presented the tapes. The political types said burn them and they had an eraser that they could have done it without having a big bonfire on the white house lane. But other advisors said that the law is plain, as soon as you know this is possible evidence in a criminal case even though no prosecutor has asked for them, you have an obligation to preserve them and you could be impeached if you destroy them. He wanted to save them. They were incredibly valuable and they bolstered his Foreign Policy and his history as a leader. Host as you point out in politico, two attorney generals were found guilty, the white house chief of staff, the white house counsel, john dean and John Ehrlichman all spent time in jail. The director of the cia found guilty, the director of the fbi caught destroying evidence and resigned, and the list goes on. Guest and a special prosecutor fired and another one taking over and an attorney general resigning over the firing. So that was the famous saturday 19th massacre in 1973. Its going to be based on this wealth of information thats come out since Steven Ambrose did some work in the 1990s. The final white house tape only came out last august. Nixons testimony before the grand jury came out the year before that. So theres lots of new stuff to factor into the story of Richard Nixon. But its a biography. Its about a man. Very little attention i think is portrayed to the story of this extraordinary man. Host it will focus on his early years as well. As we look at Richard Nixon 40 years after he stepped down from the presidency. Caller i was ten years old when i watched president nixon resign, but im wondering, mr. Farrell, do you believe, having written a biography on this man that his abilities or maybe his im getting insecurities from watching his speech and all the coverage and things that have been written about him do you think that affected how people now look at the presidency and even his presidency 40 years later overall . Host thank you catherine, for the fall. Guest he had a good side and a dark side. And the dark side was very vicious. It was antisemitic, prejudice in some way, at war with his instincts. His resignation led to this agree crisis of conscience in government. All way before Richard Nixon took office. By the end of the 1970s, were in a dismal state in america thinking about things. Jimmy carter tried the gentler approach, i will never lie to you, tell you the truth, and then reagan said its time to forget that and dwell on the good things. So we bounced back relatively fast. But anybody who was there must remember the late 1970s was an awful time for america. The economy was in dismal shape, the military was in dismal shape, were hearing about jfks affairs. And with the exception of maybe bruce springsteen, very little good came out of the 1970s. Host the speech that he delivered from the east room to cabinet officials at 9 35 and then at 10 00 oclock eastern time he boarded army one and at noon air force one became a president ial plane and gerald ford became the president. Guest the highlight of the morning is what we just watched. That speech was remarkable in so many ways. It was supposed to be a lowkey event. Pat did not want it televised and nixon did. Host why . Guest i think he wanted to make one more argument. People ask why did he debate kennedy when he had nothing to win in 1960. Nixon had this Good Government side to him as well with obligations that had to be met. He had watched one of americas great heros up close for eight years so he thought the American People deserved the debate. But there was this part of him that was a good, you know, a nice kid who wanted to do the right thing. And i think a little bit of that, that morning showed through as well. You know, im the president , this is what the president is required to do as painful as it is, i need to talk to the people, the staff and thank them. I need to do this gracefully. We need to have this event on the south lawn. And part of it was personal. You know, if you go to the president ial museum where the helicopter is, and if you stand there and watch the tourists you can tour the inside of the helicopter. Three out of four people at the top of the stairs turn around and do this because that moment is burned into our memory. Host well go to jim in massachusetts with john farrell here on American History tv. Go ahead, jim. Caller hi. How are you . Mr. Farrell, very nice to talk to you. I was wondering if nixon had won in 1960 i know this is a hypothetical question but do you think because he wouldnt have had eight years to build up some more resentment or paranoia, whatever you want to call it, would this have happened . I dont think watergate the extent that it was would have happened. What do you think . Guest it was different times. The Republican Party was moderate, Eisenhower Party in 1960. The Democratic Party was much more conservative. There were some demons that came out in the 1950s in nixons behavior and also in the 1960 campaign. He famously tried to run it himself. If he had trusted his aides more, he probably could have done better. But theres probably something to what you have to say. He thought he won the 1960 election. A lot of people did. He felt it was stolen. So that really, people have told me who knew him, pushed him over the edge because the greatest prize he won fair and square had been taken from him and at that point, all bets were off. The kennedies had done it to him, and as he said very famously on one of the tapes, they use any means, and were going to use any means. Host why did he run for governor in 1962 . Guest because he was under pressure from the Republican Party to save california and he was thought to be the only one who could do it. He ran to keep his options open for 1964 although i dont think that he really revollished the idea of rematch. But maybe he was thinking about 1968 after kennedy left. Host i want to go through the key players in this. First of all, judge john sirica. Guest republican parties loved him. He was known as maximum john for throwing the book at street crime departments and other organized crime types. And it was only when he used those same tactics against the white collar guys in the white house that they discovered that the American Civil Liberties union maybe had it right. Host john chief of staff. Guest they resigned because of their involvement in watergate and he had to take them to camp david and ask them to resign. It was a very poignant moment that night that he calls i believe halderman and he starts talking about them as brothers, you can feel the pain in his voice and all i can think of when i hear that tape is this is a guy who lost his dearlybeloved younger brother to a disease and his admired golden boy of the family older brother to a long war with tuberculosis and all i can think of when i hear that tape is that nixon is identifying this loss with the pain of that loss in his past. They were his closest confidants. Host how about John Mitchell and magruder . Guest people like to say we still dont know who ordered the watergate burglary and its because one of them is lying. My personal feeling although its totally unreliable is that mitchell gave a wink to magruder to go ahead. Host rosemary wood. Guest loyal. All the way. Took whatever happened to her. Jo joined the Senate Office all the way through. Host this picture that is so iconic from 1973. Guest took the fall there probably. That was the 18 and a half minute gap when they finally lost the legal battle about the tapes. They began to listen to them, the lawyers, and they found that there was this long gap in the beginning of one of the tapes of nixon talking with halderman and rosemary woods explained the fact that she had been answering the phone while trying to transcribe and reached for the pedal and thats where you see that great reach. The expertise was that the tape had been deliberately erased. Host and richard from minneapolis on the phone. Caller my question is to mr. Farrell, do you think that Richard Nixon would have been in favor of the Free Trade Agreement with china that clinton and the republicans signed in 1988. My personal opinion is he wouldnt have been in favor of so much free trade with china that would take our manufacturing away. Guest thats a good question, and the tapes are best evidence for so much of what were going to talk about. The tapes show that nixon did have worries about the rise of japan and europe and their Competitive Position with United States manufacturing then when he was in office. So he may have had some worries about that with china. However, in all these cases where it was Foreign Policy versus domestic trade, his solution was to open up trade to these Different Countries but then use the power of the government to boost whatever sector was going to be impacted. So one of the reasons that he pushed so hard for the Shuttle Program and the sst, supersonic transport airplane, was because he saw that europe and japan were starting to compete with us in airplane manufacturing and he wanted to counterbalance it by boosting United States lead in other areas in military and space. Host were looking at scenes from Richard Nixon when he travelled to china in 1972. How significant of a Foreign Policy decision was that for this president . Guest i think it was huge. He couldnt have had a claim to greatness if he hasnt played this great game. And one of the sad things about watergate you can look through that and you can see that nixon had this vision of a multipolar world in which china would balance russia and the United States would play the two off each other and the chinese were thinking the same thing. Its a safer world. Going back to the balance of power that kept europe safe from big war. But while hes doing that as you read through these transcripts, you see that all this other stuff is going on, hes got secret negotiations on vietnam, hes got secret trips to china, the russians are angry, nixon is bombing North Vietnam right before the russian summit not knowing whether or not the russians are going to cancel the summit. This is all going on at the same time that all the planning for watergate is going on. So its real easy to absolve nixon of not keeping a tighter rein on the boys because so much stuff was going on. And then he made the fatallyflawed decision to not send them to the grand jury and instead cover it up. Caller i trace it back to watergate because of the fact that republicans were mad at democrats and wanted to get even with democrats for bringing down nixon. Ultimately that led to them trying to impeach bill clinton and i see a lot of that hate toward president obama. Guest to only a slight extent. Watergate was the final act of vietnam. All the polarization goes back to that. There are times when i look at my kids and i say, boy, you know, this isnt going to end in this country until the vietnam finally dies away and were not here anymore to poison the waters but i would trace it back to watergate. I think nixon was the last casualty of vietnam. Host were getting tweets as well. This is from brad, always amazed that president nixon won 49 out of 50 states and then 20 months later forced to resign. Guest its amazing. Theres a fellow who writes social history about the 1960s and 1970s and in his book nixonland, noting in 1964, you have Lyndon Johnson with this huge land slide and then eight years later, you have nixon with an identical land slide from the other side and so it was very volatile at the time. Host harry is on the phone from florida. Caller i was wondering if president nixon was forced to resign by the Republican Party for watergate because of what he did in his democratic headquarters. If he, like, was forced to do that. Guest at the very end, it was probably the 7th, the congressional leaders from capitol hill, hugh scott, john rhodes, Barry Goldwater, came to the white house and he said how bad is it and they said we cannot win. That was an easing and a pushing out. By that week in august, almost all of official washington had decided that nixon had to design, that was the best way to go and he was getting pressured from all different sides. Ben bradley told me that one of his great sources in the last act of watergate was Barry Goldwater because he believed he had to go and was talking to the washington post. Host this is from our Facebook Page. He took full responsibility for his actions and thats not something that leaders do today. But did he take full responsibility and did he fully apologize before his death . Guest well, as with many things about Richard Nixon, who was a very shifty character, its hard to answer definitively. He makes the argument that part of the reason that he left was that as a patriot, he couldnt put the country through further turmoil, all his Foreign Policy goals would have been shattered and there were to many important things going on in the country and he had to leave and he recognized that. The other part was that he did not have any Political Support anymore. And the third part he was hoping that if he left, he would not be tried for the crimes of the coverup and, indeed, he was pardoned. Host in fact, you wrote that nixon thought that his Foreign Policy would be part of his Lasting Legacy and that may diminish how people viewed watergate when he stepped down. Guest it was a wonderful conversation between he and kissinger where kissinger will remember you as a great president and he said, well, henry, that depends on who writes the history. So he set out to write nine or ten books to redeem himself, to tell his side of the story. And whats interesting in my research his first book was called crises and theres a memo about that in which hes asked what are you going to do when you retire, write books . And he says, no, never going to write another book in my life. That may have been his greatest penalty for watergate, having to crank out these books. Host good morning to you. Caller good morning. Aloha from hawaii. Host the weather . Caller we got through it. Thank you. My question is how important was the tapes in getting nixon resigning and as well, how competent was his cabinet when he resigned . Host thank you. Guest the short answer is that nixon had a very confident competent cabinet. He brought some truly spectacular talent to washington. The first part of the question is if it had not been the tapes, he would have stayed on. The country was not ready to take this moment us historical act of impeachment just on the word of one white house lawyer who had a selfserving interest in saying my boss told me to do this stuff. Host mark from massachusetts. Caller im grateful for the coverage that youve had all weekend. I just want to make a comment to the author. It was simply that i disagreed with his commentary on president nixons farewell address. I thought it was rather weak and not very the remarks were fairly circuitous. In any case, what i really wanted to say is that when president kennedy was asked about the election of 1960 and Richard Nixon during that election he simply said that he came in the way he went out with no crash. Thank you. Host his remarks on august the 9th. Guest and what i loved about the farewell to the staff was that it shows nixon finally reaching a point of selfawareness. When he talks about, you know, were in the arena but dont hate because if you hate you destroy yourself. That tells me that he got it at the very end after all these years of reflexively lashing back, he recognized the flaw in himself. I thought that was what made that such a powerful moment. Kennedy had pay lot of nerve to say that. I mean, right after watergate ben bradley wrote the book conversations with kennedy and he was bragging about the fact that he got a call from the mayor saying mr. President with good luck and good luck from your friends in chicago, were going to carry on while youre president. But the implication was that we stole it from you, jack and he was laughing about it with his friend at. Washington post. But, you know, kennedy was not as good nor was nixon as bad as i think Popular History tells us. Host i want to go back to the address that Richard Nixon gave to the American People. He likes delivering addresses. And in that moment on the red carpet, that was part of the ceremony. Who orchestrated all of that . Guest it was his staff orchestrated it for him but with his approval. Every step of the way of those last 48 hours, he did it the way he wanted to do it. Like i said, he felt he had he didnt have to. He could have snuck out of town but he felt an obligation to do it publically, however painful it was, he wanted to make one last speech to the American People that morning. Interesting was that pat did not want that farewell to the staff to be televis televised. She thought that was a private moment. He was talking to his loyalists, his family members, and they shouldnt have the tv cameras in there. And nixon, for whatever reason, decided to bring the cameras in. Host and what were looking at right now at army i and you can see the white house staff lining the south lawn, one of the most iconic moments of American History. A great james taylor song called line them up. Host jenny is on the phone. Caller yes. I wonder why more attention isnt given to the fact that nixon in the 1968 election was working behind the scenes with vietnam and that supposedly cost humphry the election because the peace talks were delayed. And how and when was it discovered that he had been doing this . And does the author feel that this was treason on the part of nixon. Guest Lyndon Johnson certainly felt so. Basically what happened is in october of 1968, the Nixon Campaign began to hear rumors that there was going to be a bombing clause. One reason was that there was the power to settle something because the russians wanted a deal cut before nixon took office. And the other reason was to help humphry get elected. And if you go back through the oral histories of the Lyndon Johnson library youll find that his aides believed this could lead to a deal and that nixon was the main cause of shooting it down because he sent an envoy to the south vietnamese saying hang tough, youll get a better deal if im elected. That came out immediately in 1968 by theodore white. It came out in various newspaper articles almost at the time. So it was there during nixons term in office. He managed to dodge it all this time. Theres a new book out which is fascinating. It puts forth the proposition that the reason nixon sent the burglars out on their First Mission to steal back papers that revealed his role in the chenault affair because Anna Chenault was the apparent go between. Host we want to thank cbs for allowing us to share with you their coverage from 1964. And it wasnt definitive that evening of august 8th but they were hedging their bets. Guest he was tricky dick. You never knew who he was going to do. If you go through the different testimony and books like the final days and what julie and david told another author, will swift, recently is that nixon went back and forth in those hours and listened to his docounsel from his family a they said hang in there. Videotapes that have been released by the Nixon Library where he reads that letter from julie that says daddy go through the fire just a little longer. So there was still doubt up to the end about what he was going to do. And finally word came out that morning and afternoon that indeed it would be a goodbye speech host what was his relationship like with pat nixon . Guest will in his book which was called dick and pat paints a much more normal relationship than is to be expected. One thing that happened when nixon left office under such terms and all this other stuff came out, there was really no governing of rumor. Almost anything that could said about nixon was said and many of the things were that it was a loveless marriage, that they were both alcoholics, that he had abused her. All these things happened that sort of cast the relationship in a dismal manner. And as i think will conclusively shows their relationship had its ups and downs, its bitter moments, but they were a team. They were both the same hard luck kids out of the outback of Southern California who came together and she believed in his possibilities all along. Nor did she ever want to go back to her meager beginnings. So they were a Team Together and the marriage survived another 20 years after watergate which couldnt have happened if there wasnt something there to keep them together. Host some early pictures. Doug from chicago. Go ahead, please. Caller thanks. I am really enjoying reading nixons memoires. Cspan has done an excellent job all week in chicago with the nixon tragedy. What strikes me david recently which i think is an excellent book besides nixons memoires memoireses memoires. Im an old hip pi fropy\fro pi frompy guest that is true. The crowds chanting outside the courthouse. It was quite a moment if you were in the washington area. Host you got married on august 10th . Guest august 9th, the morning of the actual resignation. Thats why i remember so much what happened that final week. It actually helps me in recreating the mood for the writing. Nixon had some great admirers in the liberal intelligen intelligenceia. The thought that came to normans mind was a guy with daughters like that cant be bad. Whittier college and what these now, granted theyre done before 1972 so its nixon in his glory in the white house and theres not really a lot of inclination for anybody especially if youre proud of him and from withe whittier. Theres a lot of mention of the pain he went through when his brother died of tuberculosis, and when he couldnt go to harvard because they had to pay for treatment, the pain he went through when his mother left the family and went to arizona with harold and dick had to work with his two remaining brothers and his dad to keep the family establishment going. So they give you a different glimpse of this really selfmade man. Host you spoke before about his relationship with clinton. He was also that kind of selfmade man with a dark side. I think its much easier for somebody like jack kennedy to rise and become president of the United States than it is for somebody like Richard Nixon, bill clinton because they always had those sort of nagging reasons to doubt, feelings of insecurities when they look at the accomplished, smooth talking people from more prosperous roots of life. Host whats interesting in 1994 when he died, he had that emotion emotional eulogie guest clintons remarks were very interesting because he said let this be the day from which they judge Richard Nixon from nothing less than his whole career. Looking back, it could have been a plea from clinton to republicans in congress who were even then plotting his own destruction. Lets keep everything in perspective. Im willing to im George Mcgoverns texas coordinator and so lets let by gones be by gones. But its good wisdom. These president s when they feel that burden, they do develop ties with each other with the only other people on the planet who have actually had those responsibilities and that obligation. Host norman is on the phone from michigan. Welcome to American History tv. Caller thank you. I would like to ask mr. Farrell if what he thinks of the way nixon is portrayed in the media. A good example would be oliver stones movie and some of the things that he said about nixon or portrayed nixon and what the reality is of nixons life. It was obvious that stone has a huge liberal bias. Im a liberal myself but i thought it was way over the top. And also, what do you think of the right now claiming nixon and making him out to be a better president than he was while at the same time understating how bad watergate was. Guest i think the right does understate how bad watergate was and the then they like to throw it up against president obama. I dont think that theyve embraced nixon because when you talk to somebody whos a conservative, they always want to go back to the age of reagan. They never talk about going back to the age of nixon because nixon did so many moderately liberal things. Went off the gold standard. Expanded social security. Established the Environment Protection agency. So you dont hear the right really rushing to his defense and in part because its a nowin proposition. Its hard to argue that nixon was driven from office unfairly. Oliver stones movie was, i thought, fascinating. In many ways it is sympathetic to nixon, it shows how his personality was formed and the hard knocks he took growing up. But then you run into his theory that there was a clique of fascists who then theres the psych dellic affects when nixon is making his acceptance speech and flashes of the vietnam war and loses me once you get past the early biography. Host now, mark felt, now known as deep throat. Guest well, he decided the best way was to call up friends in the press that he knew. Within months nixon and halderman knew it was felt that was leaking. They identified him right away and they said, whats his angle and halderman said hes angry because hes not number one. And so mark felt, very interesting character. It was a great story about mark felt. He supervised a separate set of break ins of antiwar radicals and he was put on trial and nixon was subpoenaed to testify and even though he was a prosecution witness, he testified in such a way that it was beneficial for felt and as the story goes when his conviction was overturned or he was found innocent, nixon sent him a bottle of champagne. Host john dean. Guest very complex character. Really a nobody until the spring of 1973 when he begins to realize that hes in deep trouble and that coverup is not going to hold together. At one point, dean maybe a famous list of watergate. He drew a line and said here are the people with preknowledge of the break gin and below the line he had people who had post knowledge of the break in and participated in the cover up. And i think the only person on both sides of the line was john dean because he participated participated with magruder and liddy in planning the break in and then he was approached by halderman about the cover up. He had a lot to lose in the spring of 1973 and as it began to fall apart, he told nixon, look, he way have to go to jail. Nixon couldnt face it. He told halderman and ehrlichman that he was going to talk to an attorney. But i guess nixon could not bring himself to act because if he had acted, if he had gone to the famous hangout roof, there would have been so many other horrors that he would have had to reveal and he felt it best to tough it out i guess. Host we are reflecting on the resignation of Richard Nixon 40 years ago on this date and of course gerald ford who was the first and only appointed Vice President becoming the first and only appointed president. When will your book be out . Guest either christmas 2014 or maybe around fathers day. Caller thanks for taking my call. I heard some of what this gentleman has been saying and i saw the person you had on prior to him and before that i think it was when i saw the clip that you showed of nixons resignation speech. And, gosh, it reminded me, again, of what a fascinating and enigmatic, mysterious person that nixon was. It was suggested to me that he had a narcissistic quality. That comes to mind all right but that doesnt answer the question about his personality. Complex, yes. But so was Lyndon Johnson and, yet, all of us felt we know Lyndon Johnson. The whole country had a sense rather immediately of the kind of man Lyndon Johnson was. Nixon, for example, in that resignation speech, he looked completely composed, completely unruffled, calm, collected. It was hard to realize that he was resigning. Host thanks for the call. Guest its a cliche but hes our most shakesperian of president s and the second was Lyndon Johnson. Host you called him a square. Guest he was. He walked on the beach in wing tips. He bowled in a tie. He appealed to the silent majority of middle class, working class, people who go to work, raise their families, go to church. That was the background he came from. Tom wickers biography of nixon is called one of us and he gets the quotes from one of nixons first campaigns in 1946, Richard Nixon is one of us. And he was. For all of his values, all of his triumphs. And for his darker sides and darker deeds as well. He was a great reflection of america at that time. Host william is on the phone from new mexico from john farrell here in washington. Good morning. Caller good morning, hi. My question is how much weight do you think the resignation of president nixon and president fords narrow election loss had the gop move away from the middle and i was also hoping you could expand on his initiatives such as title nine, clean water act. Thank you. Host thank you, william. Guest the domestic agenda, again, was in some cases, these were things that nixon initiated. He brought into his administration liberal thinkers as well as conservative thinkers. And they sort of went to war. But they did have a series of economic initiatives and social initiatives that they presented to congress. I think civil rights is one of the great moral tests of leadership in nixons time. In practicing the southern strategy which was a political strategy that preyed on southern resentments, you give him a black mark. But when you actually watch what he did in office, establishing affirmative action, citizens committees in states, and lobbying people to get desegregation of the southern schools. Caller i think there were something rotten in denmark. That hes a known mafia figure and i heard that the reason he broke into watergate three times because he was trying to get what the democrats had on the riboso campaign contribution. Guest there are some things of truth in that but not a lot. Riboso he was his close friend and in some ways bag man. Howard hughes gave a 100,000 contribution that went to a safe deposit box that riboso kept in florida. So if there was a motivation they were involved riboso with the break in, it would have been that he had this obligation with Howard Hughes. He also had dealings with him in the 1960s. So he knew that he could be damaged by this association with hughes and so that to find out what larry ah brian, which i remember of the Democratic Party who had also worked for Howard Hughes knew that was possibly why the burglars targeted watergate. But watergate was one of a list of targets. They were going to go to George Mcgoverns headquarterses that night. They had broken into the psychiatr t psychiatrists office of one person. Most of the conspiracies try to bring it down to one thing, cia, mafia, somebody bad, nixon wasnt responsible for his own downfall but he was. The first day he heard of the break in, he could have stopped the whole thing, put it out there. Instead he decided to obstruct justice and that was what he was forced out of office for, not the break in itself. Host had he done there, would there not have been any watergate. Had he come out in june of 1972 and said, yes, we were responsible and apologize . Guest the reason he wouldnt do it is because he still had to win reelection. At that point he was riding high in the polls. He knew that the negotiations with vietnam were coming to a successful peak. But he just didnt have it in him to take that chance and so the inclination was almost Second Nature for everybody in the white house, no, were not going to let this out until after the election. Host bob, from little rock, arkansas last caller. Caller thank you for taking my call. I think you have answered my question. Im a 78yearold guy and for all these years, what were the burglars looking for at the hotel . Guest they were looking for political dirt. I mean, they wanted to know what the democratic finances were, where they were getting their money, who was helping them pay for their convention. There was another the flip side of that was what dirt do they have on us. Why bug mcgoverns office, find out what their next press conference is going to be about. Infiltrate the campaign. These were all things to help nixon win the election and there are some bestselling, farfetched conspiracy though theories out there but they sort of ignore the fact that the watergate break in was just one of many and all of them had the purpose of getting nixon reelected in 1972. Host what was the relationship like between these two important figures, Richard Nixon and gerald ford . Guest it went way, way back to the late 1940s. They had served in the house together, they were world war ii veterans, they were men of the Common People who had struggled to make it up there. I interviewed president ford the first time i wrote about watergate was for a biography of tip oneil and he said nixons biggest mistake was not using the advantage he had in 1972 to