Nixon’s family feels the strain

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34133, 21 April 1976, Page 17

Nixon’s family feels the strain

from “The Final Days”—the book about President Nixon’s last day s at the \\ hite I louse, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

His support in Congress is dwindling, and Nixon is sliding fast. Even his close aides and friends are shocked at his erratic, sometimes drunken behaviour. The transcripts of some of Nixon’s Watergate tapes are released and a fresh public storm is about to break.I he strain is also beginning to take its toll on the President’s family.

Henry Kissinger was in the Middle East shuttling l>etween Jerusalem, Cairo, and Damascus when the transcripts were released. Copies were forwarded to the secretary’s plane. At night, in his motel, and in the air between capitals, he had time to read.

He put aside the materia! that had been packed for him — a book on chess, some thrillers and a pornographic novel — and turned to the transcripts " ith morbid fascination. Around Kissinger, Nixon was proud, even arrogant. Here the president seemed full of self-loathing, oblivious to bullying and disrespect from his subordinates. Ehrlichman talked to the president like an exasperated parent addressing a stupid child. The language was baffling. Sure, the president occasionally referred to someone as an ‘asshole’’ after a few drinks, but never much more than that. In Kissinger’s presence,

Nixon was almost prudish — prissy even, the secretary thought. Nixon's greatest personal asset, Kissinger had thought, was his willingness to make big decisions himself, seeking consultation with only a few people — an ability to “take big bites of a problem,” as the secretary phrased it. Anti-Semitism But here, with Haldeman and Ehrlichman — “the fanatics” — it was all different. Watching the conspiracy unfold in the taped conversation confirmed what Kissinger has suspected. “Of course, that’s how it must have happened and evolved," he told his aides. “This explains why Nixon refused to cut his ties with Haldeman and Ehrlichman even after their resignations.” The transcripts would be Nixon's undoing. Even if he clung to office, how would he govern after this 9 All moral authority was gone, Kissinger said. The deletions and denigration characterisations suggested something else long concealed about the Nixon character. Rumours and some reliable reports circulated that Nixon regularly employed ethnic slurs, particularly anti-Semitic ones, and that some had been deleted from the transcripts. Was Nixon a racist? An anti-Semite? For his part, Kissinger was convinced that the president was anti-Semitic. He had believed it for years. As the son of German Jews who had fled the Nazis, he was particularly sensitive to what he regarded in Nixon as a dangerous brand of antiJewish prejudice born of ignorance. He saw in the president an antagonistic, gut reaction which stereotyped Jews and convinced Nixon that they were his enemies. Many times, Kissinger

returned from a meeting with Nixon and told his deputy: "That man is an anti-Semite.” The remark by Nixon which most often unsettled Kissinger was well known to the president’s close associates. “The Jewish cabal is out to get me.” But the meaning of the often-rejected comment was a source of debate within the Administration. Many believed that it reflected hostility more to intellectuals than to Jews. Most of the First Lady’s days were spent in her pale-yellow bedroom on the second floor of the White House. Her room, and the blue sitting-room adjoining it, overlooked the south grounds and offered a spectacular view of the Jefferson Memorial and beyond. A devoted letter writer, she spent hours on her correspondence. And she did a lot of reading, including the thin inspirational volumes on friendship and love which rested on the night table next to her canopied bed. These were her rooms, and she had her privacy. Around 11 a.m. she would write out her lunch order, most often a chef’s salad, soup, or a sandwich, and coffee to be served at one o’clock. More often than not, these days, the tray came back to the kitchen with the coffee gone and the food untouched. No talking When she and the president dined alone, there was always a great rush to get the food from the kitchen to the table. Often the Nixons had been seated for only a minute before the butlers started pressing to serve them. Why the big rush? a member of the kitchen staff had asked. “A minute -is a long time when you’re not talking,” a butler had explained. On Camp David weekends the president and his wife hardly saw each other. When they did, silence usually prevailed. Backstairs their distance was an open secret. Marine Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Brennan, the Preisent’s military aide, joked that his duties included briefing Nixon on how to kiss his wife. Mrs Nixon had always hated being a political wife. Since Nixon had come to Washington as a Congressman, she had yearned to return permanently with her husband and children to California and live like an ordinary American family.

She and her husband had not really been close since the early 19605, the First Lady confided to one of her White House physicians. She had wanted to divorce him after his 1962 defeat in the California gubernatorial campaign. She tried, and failed, to win his promise not to seek office again. Her rejection of his advances since then had seemed to shut something off inside Nixon. But they had stuck it out. Sly drinking Watergate, and the tapes particularly, widened the gap. In spite of the rein she kept on her emotions, the transcripts had visibly disturbed her. “How foolish to have tapes,’ she told her few friends and several chosen assistants. She would then smile or laugh nervously. The tapes were like love letters, she said. They should have been destroyed. The White House physicians were worried about the First Lady. She had returned from a South American trip in April, 1973, distraught and even more underweight than usual. She - was becoming more and more of a recluse and was drinking heavily. On several occasions in the early afternoon, members of the household staff came upon her in the pantry of the second-floor kitchen where the liquor was kept. Awkwardly, she had tried to hide her tumbler of bourbon on the rocks. Helen Smith, Mrs Nixon’s press secretary, tried to get the First Lady out to more parties and receptions. But wherever there was a gathering, there were reporters with Watergate questions. Marriage strained “Why bring it up?” Mrs Nixon asked dejectedly when reporters caught up with her on a trip or on one of the family’s dinner outings to Washington restaurants. When Helen Smith tried to schedule interviews or television appearances, the First Lady usually refused, saying, “Dick’s too busy.” Tricia Nixon Cox, called “Dolly” by her mother, also hated public appearances and avoided interviews scrupulously. So Julie Nixon Eisenhower, the younger daughter, became the family link to the outside world. Julie was so wound up in her father’s defence that it was straining her marriage to David Eisenhower, Ike’s grandson. Her devotion to her father was

uncomplicated and David resented the situation. He wanted his wife back. He thought her illness earlier in the year, a tubular pregnancy, was psychosomatic; it had happened because she had got herself so worked up over what was happening to her father. Family lights Mrs Nixon was unhappy with David. “Why aren't you giving Julie support?” she wanted to know. Julie was out in the front lines defending her father, Mrs Nixon said, while David was in the library studying or off somewhere playing “Diplomacy,” a board game in which the players represented nine-teenth-century’ European Powers, behaving in a way that would . have startled Kissinger. There had been shouting once and David had stormed out of the room. He was fighting hard to draw a line where politics couid stop, where family loyalty could stop, and his

own personal morality and his own life could begin. It was hard to find that place. TOMORROW: The Watergate drama nears its climax. Copyright “The Press” and the New Zealand “Herald” 1976.