XPost: soc.history
From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net
On Fri, 15 Apr 2022 13:36:07 -0700 (PDT), Jeffrey Rubard
wrote:
Saturday, January 20, 1973?|?Inauguration Day
It had been “one helluva show.” The Grieg piano concerto, in
particular, had been a revelation. Van Cliburn was superb: no one
could match his virtuosity. Of course, most of the Republican high
rollers who feasted on colonial roast duckling and plantation
pineapple in their tuxedos and long dresses—“clowns,” in Richard
Nixon’s estimation—“did not know what the hell was going on.” But the
president had thoroughly enjoyed both the music and the political
symbolism of the evening.
His arrival at the Kennedy Center had been heralded with “ruffles and
flourishes” from sixteen military trumpeters in full Ruritanian
regalia. The orchestras at each of the three inaugural concerts had
blared out “Hail to the Chief” as he entered the presidential box, as
per an “action memo” from his chief of staff, H. R. “Bob” Haldeman.
Best of all, he had succeeded in “sticking it to Washington” by
excluding the dreary, politically correct National Symphony Orchestra
from the festivities. Instead, he had brought the outspokenly
conservative Eugene Ormandy down from Philadelphia to conduct the
rousing finale to a wonderful event.
The clanging church bells and simulated cannons of Tchaikovsky’s 1812
Overture were still reverberating in Nixon’s ears as he said good
night to the evening’s guest of honor, Mamie Eisenhower, at the front
door of the White House. He took the mirror-paneled elevator to the
residence on the second floor and then headed left through a
succession of grand hallways lined with books and paintings to his
private den in the far corner of the mansion. This was the Lincoln
Sitting Room, the smallest room in the White House and his personal
favorite. The cozy Victorian parlor was the place where he did his
best thinking and writing, scribbling his ideas onto yellow legal pads
to the booming strains of Victory at Sea. He settled into his plush
Louis XV–style armchair, a birthday present from his wife Pat, resting
his feet on the matching ottoman. A black-and-white print of the
Lincoln family hung on the wall above his head, next to the window,
which provided a perfect picture frame for the floodlit Washington
Monument.
Snug in his sanctuary, Nixon gazed into a crackling fire set by his
personal valet, Manuel “Manolo” Sanchez. He was still dressed in the
tuxedo he had worn to the Kennedy Center, offset by black bow tie and
gleaming presidential cuff links. His hair, dark brown with splotches
of gray, was carefully brushed back, a sartorial choice that
emphasized his receding hairline and protruding widow’s peak. His
already thick jowls had filled out even more during his first four
years in office. Combined with his darting eyes, they gave him a
tortured look, as if he were perpetually brooding over past slights
and disappointments. The upturned, slightly twisted nose, on the other
hand, suggested a bumbling American everyman, like Walter Matthau in a
goofy Hollywood comedy. Assembled together, it was a face that was
neither handsome nor ugly, distinguished nor plebeian. But it was
certainly memorable.
It was already past midnight, but the thirty-seventh president of the
United States had no desire to sleep. In less than twelve hours, at
noon, he would be appearing on the steps of the Capitol to deliver his
second inaugural address. He was still tinkering obsessively with the
text. “As I stand in this place so hallowed by history, I think of
others who have stood here before me,” read one of his last-minute
tweaks. Another note reflected his determination to scale back the
Great Society that his Democratic predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, had
devoted so much energy to constructing: “our goal for government—to
take less from people so that people can do more for themselves.”
Nixon read through the speech once more, fountain pen in hand, marking
the passages he wished to emphasize in dark blue ink. He underlined
some phrases and scratched in a few additions, until the text
resembled a heavily annotated sheet of music. He had issued strict
instructions that the speech not go “a word over 1200 words.” As with
so many of his peremptory commands, the order had gone unfulfilled,
largely due to his own contradictory impulses. He had planned to
emulate Abraham Lincoln—who had used just 701 words for his second
inaugural address, one of the most memorable in American history—but
there was too much he wanted to say. In the end, he had settled for a
speech of 1,800 words, still reasonably short by modern-day
presidential standards. He calculated that it would take sixteen
minutes to deliver, including applause.
As he prepared to take the oath of office for the second time, the son
of the struggling Quaker grocer had many reasons to celebrate, despite
his perpetually restless nature. He had been reelected by the largest
margin of popular votes of any president in the nearly
two-hundred-year history of the Republic. He had won the grudging
respect of the foreign policy crowd—that despised band of elitist
snobs—for the geostrategic brilliance of his opening to China. Most
gratifying of all, he was on the cusp of concluding a peace agreement
with the Communist government of North Vietnam, heralding an end to a
war that had cost the lives of fifty-eight thousand Americans and
countless Vietnamese. Four years previously, in his first inaugural
address, he had described the “title of peacemaker” as “the greatest
honor history can bestow.” The road to peace had been long and bloody,
but the prize was finally within his grasp. The initialing of the
peace accords was set for January 23, just three days away, in Paris.
Of course, the Nixon haters were still out in force. They had seized
on the bizarre scandal spawned by the attempted bugging of Democratic
Party headquarters in the Watergate office building back in June
1972—“a third-rate burglary attempt,” the White House spokesman Ron
Ziegler had termed it—to cast a shadow over his smashing reelection
victory. There had been sensational stories in the press alleging a
link between the White House and the hapless band of Cubans caught in
the act of breaking in to the Watergate. But the trail seemed to be
petering out. The burglars were refusing to provide the names of the
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