The Naftali Doctrine

That's Kathy O'Connor, President Nixon's last chief of staff, with his brother Edward and our Nixon foundation friend Ric Leczel this morning after ceremonies marking the opening of the new Watergate gallery at the Nixon library.

Ed was stooping to stay in the frame. The Watergate opening is standing tall as a national story. Follow the links to the LA Times (Chris Goffard's first take), Orange County Register, Associated Press, USA Today, Washington Post, and ABC News -- where, if the story makes the evening news, it will be introduced or reported by former Nixon aide Diane Sawyer. The AP's Michael Blood favored me with a quotation as follows:

John Taylor, who worked for Nixon after he left the White House and helped design the original exhibit, said it was difficult for those who revere Nixon to deal with Watergate. He said the content in the new exhibit made him uncomfortable but with the passage of time, "you can hear the truth, you can accept the truth and you can learn from the truth."

"In the next 50 years America is going to answer the question, what is the sentence that goes with Mr. Nixon?" Taylor said. "Is it, he went to China, or that he quit? For that to be a fair dialogue, this day had to happen."

Kathy and I went to work trying to get the private Nixon library into the federal system in the mid-1990s. Nixon family members desiring a richer settlement from a lawsuit torpedoed our first effort in 1996-97. We finally succeeded in 2007 -- well, we plus $1 million for some blue-chip lobbyists.

That still left the matter of our polemical 1990 Watergate gallery, which had outlived its usefulness, as often happens at first-generation presidential museums that have to grapple with unpleasant or controversial events. Today's unveiling of a stunningly presented, federally anointed replacement was a tribute to Cold War historian and exhibit curator Tim Naftali as well as to two archivists of the U.S., Allen Weinstein (shown signing the handover papers in 2007) and David Ferriero. Ferriero in particular withstood considerable pressure from the Nixon-Bob Haldeman aides who took control of Nixon's foundation as Naftali was conducting his painstaking work.

At today's ceremony, attended by 200 federal library staffers and loyal volunteers (that's Kathy with docents Connie Mesko and Gloria Norton), both Ferriero and his deputy, Sharon Fawcett, amply praised Naftali's professionalism and integrity. Kathy and I were especially pleased to hear that, having gotten him into these often treacherous straits in the first place. Today's mountaintop moment after two difficult years had Naftali waxing prophetic in his eloquent prepared remarks, praising the durability of the U.S. system when one of the three branches abuses its power and suggesting that all presidential libraries should exhibit curatorial as well as archival integrity and openness.

While the Naftali doctrine should be given close attention by Ferriero and his colleagues whenever principles of good practice at presidential libraries are discussed, the structural difficulty with his approach is that a president's rich friends won't contribute millions to see a warts-and-all museum or indeed wart one. Read more about libraries and money here. Until now, NARA has put up with a generation or two of museum hagiography in exchange for warehouses for storing millions of pages of memos and letters as well as photos, gifts, and other artifacts. Now that the vital records of an eight-year administration can be stored on a few MacBooks, will presidential libraries persist? Tune in in two years or six. If there is an Obama library and museum, you can bet that Roger Ailes and Sean Hannity will be howling for curatorial integrity and openness as strenuously as any Nixon critic ever did.

While I have a pretty good idea what's in the Watergate gallery thanks to the background at nixonlibrary.gov, I look forward to spending a quiet afternoon with the massive interactive exhibit, walking that long, hard road with 37. I'll be especially interested to learn who won the argument between Naftali and Nixon's White House men over whether the museum-going, taxpaying public has been permitted to hear substantial excerpts from oral history interviews with Naftali in which Dwight Chapin, Fred Malek, and others discuss dirty tricks, counting Jews in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other discouraging moments from an era when a peace-making, partisan warrior of president, caught in the maelstrom of a war he didn't start, mediated between his dreams and demons.

In any event, it was high time for the Nixon library, now in its 21st year, to grow up and accept that the judgment of history, no matter how it comes out for Nixon, lies beyond the reach of advocacy by family, friends, consultants, and especially those whose own reputations hang in the balance alongside the president they served, often honorably but sometimes, as this new exhibit shows, not.
Above photo, showing Nixon library director Tim Naftali briefing the media on the Watergate gallery, is by Jebb Harris of the Orange County Register.

Healing Comes With Patience

Talking about his new book and his brother, Ed Nixon covers some contemporary ground:

He said Richard Nixon was a booster of energy independence way back in 1971. He's convinced the answers to the nation's problems lie in private investment. And he sees Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney, rather than "entertainer" Rush Limbaugh, as true leaders of today's Republican Party.

No fan of the media's treatment of his brother, he nevertheless believes Richard Nixon's accomplishments are being recognized.

"Healing has come with patience," Ed Nixon said. "You see the total life of the man."

We Don't Equate / On The Date / Burma-Shave

A Route 66 specialist tries to discern when 37 and his brother, Edward, traveled the historic highway together. He says it was 1939, but I could've sworn Ed said 1938 during his recent talk at the Nixon Library.

Today, The Edward Nixon Library

Go here for the Orange County Register's coverage of Presidents Day at the Nixon, including wonderful photography of Edward Nixon and our other guests by H. Lorren Au, Jr.

The Happiest Library In The World

In 1938, in the midst of the real Great Depression, Richard Nixon, then working as an attorney in Whittier and La Habra, California, bought a stripped-down black two-door Oldsmobile (no heater or radio) and saved a little more money by picking it up at the factory in Michigan. He decided to take along his eight-year-old brother Edward. They hopped a train to Detroit, picked up the car, and then started home to Whittier. Ed said, "Dick handed me a map and said, 'We're going to Los Angeles, and we're taking Route 66. If you can find a stretch of road that's long and straight enough, I'l let you drive.' He let me drive plenty, as it turned out."

Will Rogers had died three years before, and so the brothers stopped off in Claremore, Oklahoma to see the Rogers Memorial, which had just opened. Richard pointed to a bronze plaque at the base of Rogers' statue and asked his little brother to read out the humorist and commentator's most famous quotation: "I never yet met a man that I didn't like."

As Ed tells it, "Dick said, 'What do you think that means?' I replied, 'I guess it means he hasn't met everyone yet'."

The vignette is about two born introverts teaching one another to trust but verify when it came to strangers. Richard and Edward actually shared the same gentle heart, probably better suited to the latter's chosen and relatively solitary career choice of geology. The rock-ribbed Nixon and sole survivor among Hannah and Frank's five boys was in Yorba Linda today to talk about his new book, The Nixons: A Family Portrait, to a crowd of 800, many of whom waited in line for two hours after his talk to have him sign their copies. The crowd was full of Nixons, Milhouses, and Marshburns, representatives of a sturdy and diverse family that should get a deserved moment in the sun thanks to Ed's colorful memoir (whose working title was once "The Rest Of Us").

It was also my last day at the Nixon Foundation before beginning full-time ministry at St. John's. I'm with Mr. Rogers: In 18 years, I never met a man or woman I didn't like at the Nixon Library. I got to say goodbye to about 30 of our Docent volunteers, summoned by our event master, Sandy Quinn, to help with our 2,000 Presidents Day visitors. Our Docents are renowned throughout the Presidential library system for their hospitality and expertise. Entertaining and educating our audience as usual was Paula Burton's corps of school-age Celebration USA Singers. Representatives of American Legion Richard Nixon Post #679 were in full force, selling poppies and telling visitors about our chapter's growing membership. Only at the strictly bipartisan Nixon Library will you find Abraham Lincoln and Harry S Truman giving lessons in Presidential history to young and old alike. My successor, former RN chief of staff Kathy O'Connor, cheerfully worked the crowd. Legendary former Orange County GOP chairmen Tom Fuentes (complete with his new liver) and Lois Lundberg were in their accustomed places of honor. Clara Jane Nixon, widow of Richard and Edward's brother Donald, and Bob Meador (shown above left) were honored as founding members of the Nixon Birthplace Foundation, which preserved the President's birthplace and its furnishings to be enjoyed by 150,000 Library visitors each year.

President Nixon's friend and White House aide Bruce Herschensohn (who wants to tell you all about his iPhone, whose apps include the full text of Anna Karenina and "Where's My Car?") and my devoted and beloved assistant of nearly 17 years, Cheryl Saremi, seemed to concur that the Library would persist without me (though I have trouble imagining the world without them, shown above). I was even blessed to meet the youngest Nixonian, Lily Feith, daughter of former Docent Guild president Steve Feith and his wife, Danielle. Indoctrination begins early at the Nixon Library, so we should have Lily conversant on the Hiss case by age five. For now, Godspeed, my friends and colleagues. You know where to find me.