The Richard Nixon I knew, on the 23rd anniversary of his death

On Saturday, April 22, it will be 23 years since President Richard Nixon passed away. Five days after his death in 1994, Nixon was honored with a state funeral attended by five United States presidents. I was privileged and deeply honored to be a eulogist at that memorial service.

In the years since his death, President Nixon’s life and legacy continue to excite the passions of critics and admirers, and some who are both — as befits this brilliant complex man who governed our nation during very complex very challenging times.

But even his critics, if they are honest, must concede his presidency was profoundly consequential through the latter half of the 20th century, and continues to shape the shrinking world in which Americans live today.

Take a fair, objective look at Richard Nixon’s life, and you will see an active reformer of incredible energy and indomitable spirit; a man who said and believed that, “It’s important that people understand the obligation that we all have to do the things that will produce a better tomorrow.” That is of course why he sought the presidency, to empower Americans to use our priceless gift of personal freedom to become all that each of us can be.

He believed that with the individual opportunity that freedom creates there comes individual responsibility to create more opportunity as a teacher, a physician, a banker, an inventor, or an employer. And his responsibility as president, he felt, was always to decide and do what was best for the country.

An early striking example of his doing so came in the 1960 presidential contest between Nixon, a two-term incumbent Vice President, and Senator John F. Kennedy, which proved to be one of the closest and most controversial in history. Less than 113,000 votes for Kennedy decided the result. With Kennedy’s razor-thin margin of victory marred by allegations of voter fraud in Illinois and Texas, Nixon was urged by friends and supporters to contest the results and demand a recount. President Eisenhower even offered to pay for it. But Nixon refused to do so.

As hard as he had fought to win, he instead conceded. Flanked by a tearful Pat Nixon, he told his supporters to respect the outcome of the election, and support President-elect Kennedy.

He said that a recount would take months, and that the country needed a new president without the delay and uncertainty that a legal challenge to his authority and powers would cause. Richard Nixon put national unity above personal ambitions and the deep disappointment that he and his family, his supporters, and his party would feel.

I was a law student then in 1960. It would be another two years before I met Richard Nixon and volunteered to serve as an advance man for his 1962 campaign for governor of California. It was not an easy campaign. To the contrary, it produced stress for the candidate and for the staff. But both Nixon and his truly admirable wife Pat, whom he dearly loved, were thoughtful and considerate then and in later campaigns to staff who were devoted to them. They made us feel appreciated.

But even more our loyalty was based on admiration for a man willing to take high political risk to bring change in our relations with an emerging foreign power then dwelling in hostile isolation half a world away. Nixon had no guaranty of how his bold initiative would be received either here in America or in China, but he put his own personal credibility on the line as he figuratively bridged the Pacific — and even broader cultural and governance differences — to achieve an enormous foreign policy breakthrough as he developed, shaped and established formal U.S. relations with China, breaking a silence of many decades with the giant Communist nation.

Yet today, too many Americans still are unaware of exactly how important, principled, and consequential a president he was.

He reversed the flow of revenue from states to Washington and transferred more than $80 billion from the federal government to states and local governments, empowering them to decide spending priorities for themselves in a program he called “Revenue Sharing.” As San Diego’s mayor during the Nixon presidency, I and numerous other state and local officials were more than grateful for his concern and ground-breaking initiative.

Quietly, without fanfare, he steadily enforced the desegregation of schools in the South. By 1974, less than 8 percent of African-American children were attending all-black schools, down from nearly 70 percent in 1969. This was a man who walked the walk, not just talked the talk.

He was a tough, confident no-nonsense negotiator, willing and able to sit down and work with both allies and adversaries, like the Chinese and the Soviet Union. In all his negotiations he made certain that American interests were protected, at the same time working to reduce the danger of nuclear war.

He literally rescued the state of Israel from probable destruction. Some years ago, on my first trip to Israel, I asked a table of new Israeli friends, “Who is the most popular American president for you in Israel?” Without hesitation, they all replied, “Richard Nixon, oh yes, Nixon — he saved us.”

Richard Nixon was reelected in 1972 in an 18 million popular vote landslide — the largest in U.S. history. My Israeli friends would understand why, I think.

Former President Bill Clinton, a fellow eulogist at Nixon’s memorial in 1994, wisely urged his listeners to look at the entire record of President Nixon’s extraordinary achievements. He was right: There is so much more to admire, than the tragic lapse that caused his resignation, and the profound regret with which he apologized for it to the American people.

Nixon believed that to try and fail was far more honorable than to fail to try at all. A born dogged fighter, it wasn’t within his nature to quit. He proved it time and again. When he lost to John F. Kennedy in 1960, lesser men would not have even undertaken the extraordinary comeback and leadership he accomplished against countless odds. He was by the example of his personal tenacity as well as by wise counsel a powerful, immensely valuable mentor.

Perhaps the most severe test of presidential leadership is whether one truly puts the needs of the nation before his own. But the corollary is that if you have made a mistake that deprives you of the ability to govern, you must not put your nation through the prolonged trauma that will deepen the wound and delay healing of the America that Richard Nixon loved so deeply and had otherwise served so well. So as he had once before, to prevent injury to his country, Richard Nixon felt compelled to give up the precious prize of serving his country, and did so.

That was the Richard Nixon I knew.

Pete Wilson is the former Governor of California (1991-1999), the former United States Senator from California (1982-1991), Mayor of San Diego (1971-1983) and California Assemblyman (1967-1971). He was a eulogist at President Nixon’s funeral on April 27, 1994 and recently spoke at the reopening of the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, CA.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.