Jerelle Kross with Nixon. Photo: Secret Service.
No one would be more repelled by let-it-rip Trump than anal Nixon. Nixon, shrewd and sweaty, imploded behind closed doors. Trump, crude and swaggering, is an open faucet.
“He left,” Trump says of Nixon. “I don’t leave.”
I remember Nixon’s exit. Fifty years ago, Marine Onenixon l swooped down from a cloudless sky and slid to a smooth landing on the White House lawn. The staccato of the chopper’s engine and the whirling of its propeller blades slowed to a stop. Nixon and his wife, Pat, strode solemnly toward the helicopter. Before boarding, Nixon turned and faced the cameras. Flashing a studied grin, he hunched up his shoulders and thrust his arms skyward. At the height of humiliation, Nixon posed as a human victory sign. As if to say, I may be the first American president to resign, but goddamnit, I’ll do it in style.
My style that day was Bay Area hippie. My friends and I watched Marine One take off and knew Nixon could never again figure in our lives. Yet eight years later, after I moved to Manhattan, he would figure in mine.
Nixon’s father, Francis, was a sixth-grade dropout and small-time grocer. When Harvard offered his son, Richard, a four-year scholarship, Richard, a self-conscious square who skipped second grade, had to turn Harvard down; Francis needed help in the grocery. To get into college, Donald “I’m the smartest” Trump likely paid a proxy to take his SATs.
Tortured Nixon knew to seek therapy. His psychiatrist, Arnold Hutschnecker, recommended potential leaders be vetted for mental health. Had his recommendation been heeded, we would’ve been spared the spectacle of Trump.
At the time of Nixon’s resignation, the FBI was suing Trump Management for racism. Donald hired Roy Cohn, who countersued and advised Donald to tell the government to “go to hell.” Trump Management was run by Donald’s father, who ripped off tenants, gave his children $1 billion, and evaded $500 million in taxes. Donald’s single motivation is an unconscious compulsion to win the approval of his father, for whom today’s strongmen are stand-ins. When he upstaged Dad by moving his business from quotidian Queens to magnetic Manhattan, Trump achieved a victory comparable to winning the presidency.
In New York, I began three decades of art directing The Times, mostly at Op-Ed. On a 1982 morning, the byline of one essay to be illustrated jumped out: Richard Nixon. How could we publish that pariah! But Nixon had established U.S.-U.S.S.R. détente, and his trenchant text rebuked Reagan for refusing to meet the Russians. “To celebrate agreements,” he wrote, “Brezhnev and I clinked champagne glasses.” But, Nixon cautioned, “This hard-headed détente is not a love affair.”
Trump, with his preschool worldview, behaves with despots as if on a date. He fell hard for Russia’s diabolical dictator. And with Daddy and Roy Cohn dead, Putin is Don’s perfect parent.
Nixon, a birthright Quaker and low-level federal employee, was doubly draft exempt. Yet he volunteered for WWII’s navy. Given a desk job, he requested combat duty and served four years. Fit Trump was re-classified as unfit when a podiatrist who rented space from his father diagnosed bone spurs.
When Nixon practiced law, he declined divorce cases because he disliked frank sexual talk from women. Trump asked Playboy to run a “Girls of Trump” feature with “wet-lip shots.” And he chided men: “If you need Viagra, you’re probably with the wrong girl.”
Banker Bebe Rebozo characterized Nixon as “a very sensitive man.” When a Nixon brother died of tuberculosis, Richard, devastated, didn’t speak for a week. When Trump’s brother lay dying, Donald went to the movies.
Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first secretary of state called Trump “a fucking moron.” John Kelly, his second chief of staff, called Trump “the most flawed person I’ve ever met.” Roy Cohn’s Trump? “He pisses ice water.”
Nixon lost his first presidential race by one-tenth of one percent. Evidence of voter fraud in Chicago and Texas urged him to contest the results. Nixon refused.
“Our country cannot afford the agony of a constitutional crisis,” Nixon said. “The mark of the good loser,” Nixon added, is that he takes his anger out on himself.”
With zero evidence, Trump defies America’s 2020 decision. From his father he learned, “You lose, you die.”
Nixon, who played piano and violin, destroyed himself. Trump, who plays half our country, is hell-bent on destroying democracy.
I illustrated Op-Ed with symbolic, idea art. Yet to spotlight the source of our détente essay, I wanted to picture its writer. Commissioning a seasoned artist was out of the question; they’d all created Watergate caricatures. Nixon was now the author, not the target. I’d have to draw him myself.
I decided to huddle Nixon with his Communist counterpart. Drawing lavishly browed Brezhnev was a breeze, but my loathing of Nixon ruined every attempt. In deadline despair, I high-contrasted two photos, collaged them together, and touched up the result, which I didn’t sign.
Arriving at work the next morning, I stepped from the elevator to the incessant ringing of a phone, which, I gradually realized, was coming from … my office. Who could be so insistent? I grasped the receiver.
“Hello, Miss Kraus? I’m President Nixon’s press secretary. The president wants to speak to you.” Then came the unmistakable voice of a peerless outlaw: “I admire your artwork, and I’d like the original.”
I tightened my grip on the receiver. “Honestly, Mr. President, originals belong to the artist.”
“I’d like to give you a copy of my memoirs.”
“Actually, Brezhnev made me a better offer.” Nixon didn’t laugh. “Okay, I’ll bring it to you.”
My offer to meet the real-life monster under America’s bed was a wild shot in the dark, but Nixon went for it.
“At 26 Federal Plaza,” he instructed, “go to the only door with no name. Knock three times, pause, then knock once.”
I felt prepared. I knew how Nixon had demonized his Senate rival, Helen Gahagan Douglas: he called her “pink right down to her underwear.” But I didn’t yet know a treachery so monstrous—and monstrously covered up—that it makes Watergate look like jaywalking. To prevent peace, which would’ve rewarded his Democratic opponent, Nixon monkey-wrenched the Vietnam peace talks Johnson had scheduled. The result? Seven more blood-soaked years of war.
Next to that, Trump’s a Boy Scout. But when fate handed him an opportunity for heroism on the coronavirus battlefield, the grandson of Friedrich Drumpf, who died of the 1918 flu, said, “I didn’t know people died from the flu.” Because Trump spurned masking, distancing, and “Testing inflates the numbers,” the world’s richest nation had the world’s highest death toll.
Despite his Quaker rearing, Nixon hardly resembled the Quakers on the pine benches of my childhood Friends meetings. A key Quaker principle says, “There is that of God in every man.” Would I find godliness in Nixon?
When I knocked the cryptic signal on the door with no name, two poker faces peered out.
“We’re the Secret Service.”
They ushered me inside and—poof!—they disappeared. I stood at the threshold of a vast chamber, more arena than office. Heavy maroon drapes shrouded the windows. There was neither sound nor movement. A veritable tundra of frozen formality. Then I glimpsed a blush of color. From a distant pole, it dangled limply. Next to the flag was a large, lawyerly desk. Slowly, a figure rose from behind that desk. Torso scooped out, head bent. Striding forward, he incarnated what I’d struggled to draw—a widow’s peak, jowls, extravagant ski-jump nose—atop shoulders that drooped like the flag. Nixon extended his hand.
“Good morning.”
“Hello, Mr. President.” Then my one rehearsed line: “You and I are both California Quakers. But I’ve remained a pacifist.”
My cheeky opener prompted Nixon to launch a lesson on Quakerism’s founder, George Fox.
“Fox maintained everyone was equal under God,” he began. And I soon saw why he identified with a Brit who died in 1691. “Fox,” Nixon said, “was harshly and unjustly persecuted.”
Listening to Nixon’s lament, I sensed an elephant in the room—nobody visits Nixon—and felt a surge of responsibility. Nixon was re-elected in a landslide. He abolished the draft. He lowered the voting age to 18. He created the Environmental Protection Agency. He insisted NASA build a reusable space transportation system; it became the space shuttle.
Trump lost the popular vote. He tried to dismantle the E.P.A. He declared NASA “closed and dead until I got it going again.” And, Trump added, “NASA should focus on much bigger things than the moon, including Mars, of which the moon is a part.”
When I handed Nixon the picture he coveted—in a five-dollar frame that, as a nod to Brezhnev, I’d painted red—he ceased orating and began inquiring. How long had I been at The Times? … Did I like my job? … Did I prefer New York or California? … Then a surprise:
“They’ve been real hard on me,” Nixon said, “but the Times is a damn good paper.”
Trump’s assessment of The Times? “They don’t know how to write good.”
I soon noticed, on Nixon’s desk, the figurine of a dog. That must be … Checkers. The story rushed to mind: to justify illegal campaign contributions, Nixon exploited the gift to his daughters of a puppy, Checkers:
“The kids … love the dog, and … regardless of what they say …, we’re gonna keep it.” Instead of facing its owner behind the desk, however, the cocker spaniel faced out, still performing public relations. (See photo.)
After Nixon lauded the Times, I thought of something to laud him for:
“Congratulations on opening China. They’ve invited me on a cultural tour.”
“I’m going to China next week.”
“Then why don’t I go with you!”
Nixon dropped his head. For an awkward 30 seconds, he stared at the floor. My humor had fallen flat. Finally, he looked up.
“You see, uh, uh …, Pat’s not going.”
High-school teacher Pat was a year older than Nixon. Each Trump wife has been a model younger than him—Ivana by three years, Marla by 18, Melania by 24. Wife number four may well be wearing pigtails when she gets the nod.
When Pat wouldn’t date him, Nixon drove her to dates and waited in the car to drive her home. And when urged to run for office, introspective Nixon, who had no name, connections, or fortune, said, “I’m somebody who is nothing.”
“I have the best words,” says the short-fingered vulgarian. “I alone can fix it.”
Nixon now reached for his 1,120-page memoir and inscribed its flyleaf. Then he penned a letter on personal stationary, tucked it between the book’s pages, and gave me the book. (See photo.) A camera flashed. An agent had re-appeared to record the moment. I glanced at my watch: 11:30. I’d been alone with Nixon for two and a half hours.
“I’m glad you came,” Nixon said, as he accompanied me to the door.
While I walked to the subway, the Nixon I’d just experienced ricocheted with the Nixon I’d long despised. And I remembered the conclusion of Op-Ed artist Brad Holland, whom critics liken to Goya. As Watergate dragged on, Holland’s Nixon drawings grew increasingly sympathetic.
“I saw in Nixon flaws I fear in myself,” Holland said, “and I came to feel an odd admiration for the man—as one of those perversely brave individuals who, in spite of their need to be admired, is willing to go through life without being understood.”
I didn’t find godliness in Nixon. But to picture him now, I’d need a slew of colors, a bunch of brushes, and no deadline.
And my détente picture? It’s preserved in the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. The Trump Presidential Library? Ground has yet to be broken.
This first appeared on the LA Progressive.
