OPINION:
In his three-volume biography of President Richard Nixon, historian Stephen Ambrose asked, “What was lost when Nixon resigned?”
On the 50th anniversary of Nixon’s resignation, the question arises, “What if President Nixon had served his full second term, unencumbered by Watergate?” It’s a question worth considering today.
At the start of his second term, among Nixon’s top priorities was a substantial reorganization and consolidation of the ballooning executive branch along functional lines. His proposal would have retained four core Cabinet departments — State, Treasury, Defense and Justice — largely as they were. But he sought to take the remaining eight departments and consolidate them into four smaller, streamlined departments: the departments of Human Resources, Natural Resources, Community Development and Economic Development.
This plan faced opposition, not just from Congress, but also from the permanent federal bureaucracy and even from some of his own Cabinet officers. They feared the loss of their positions and their power and influence.
To prevent this radical restructuring, the combined power of the anti-Nixon majority in Congress, a team of special prosecutors drawn from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and a media that for more than 25 years was consumed by Nixon hatred, was unleashed on the Nixon White House. Determined to protect the status quo and end the Nixon presidency, they worked in tandem to drive Nixon from office. No tactic, no matter how unethical, was off-limits. Nixon had to go. And the power and influence of what has come to be called the deep state has continued to grow, infringing on the rights of Americans in ways unimaginable 50 years ago.
What else was lost when Nixon was driven from office?
Would South Vietnam have been lost?
In 1973, the Paris Peace Accords ended, what was at the time, America’s longest war but Nixon was on record that if Hanoi attempted to conquer the South, American military and economic assistance would still be required to support the South Vietnamese military.
In a March 29, 1973, address to the nation, the president made clear his intention to enforce the accords, saying that “the leaders of North Vietnam should have no doubt as to the consequences if they fail to comply with the agreement.”
Within a month, however, the long descent in the Watergate morass began to take a serious toll.
An argument could be made that North Vietnam would have been unlikely to launch the offensive that led to the conquest of South Vietnam had Nixon remained in office. By continuing to supply the North with military supplies and weapons it needed to defeat the South, the Soviet Union and China would have been reluctant to upset the detente they had reached with the United States. And if the Republicans had not suffered such enormous losses in the 1974 midterm elections due to Watergate, it is arguable that Congress would not have entirely cut off aid to South Vietnam.
If South Vietnam had survived, millions of lives would have been spared the communist bloodbath that followed when South Vietnam and then Cambodia fell. Hundreds of thousands would not have perished in the South China Sea as they fled the Communist conquerors. And America’s prestige would not have suffered the damage it did after it abandoned its allies in Southeast Asia.
Was the chance for peace in the Middle East lost when Nixon resigned?
In October 1973, Nixon saved Israel in the Yom Kippur War by authorizing a massive airlift of materiel. In June 1974, just nine months after ensuring their defeat in the Yom Kippur War, Nixon traveled to Egypt and Syria. Remarkably, he was hailed by millions. The seeds of a lasting peace were planted. But they failed to fully take root.
Had Nixon remained in office without the burden of Watergate, he and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, might have been able to make serious progress toward peace in the region. Nixon understood that one of the keys to achieving that peace was realigning the region’s superpower alliances. By marginalizing the Soviet Union’s influence, building closer diplomatic and economic relations with the United States and maintaining solid support for Israel, Arab nations would have had far less incentive to continue to threaten Israel.
Furthermore, Nixon’s efforts would have strengthened more moderate leaders in the region. As a result of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, Arab states had to worry about the threat of a newly radicalized Iran intent on spreading its theocratic form of government. Iraq’s invasion of Iran in September 1980 was driven by its determination to prevent the exportation of Iran’s Islamic revolution. That war, which lasted eight years, took as many as 1 million lives.
The loss of a reorganized federal bureaucracy, the loss of South Vietnam and the loss of a chance for an enduring peace in the Middle East are just three of Nixon’s many other priorities — foreign and domestic — that might have been successfully pursued in a full second term but were lost in the relentless and ultimately successful pursuit of the president.
Although there is no way to know what would have happened if Richard Nixon had served his full second term, without “Watergate” being used to end his presidency, this much is true: American history in the last quarter of the 20th century would have been much different, and likely much better.
• Robert M. Bostock is a speechwriter. He served as special assistant to President Richard Nixon.
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