Nixon—the man who still thinks he’s president

Press, 11 August 1979, Page 15

Nixon—the man who still thinks he’s president

By

ROSS MADDEN

At precisely 9 a.m. each day, a slightly stooping figure in immaculate grey suit, white shirt and dark tie punches the intercom button on his desk and announces: "The President is ready.”

Half-a-dozen aides troop solemnly into the office — not the office of the thirty-eighth President of the United States, but of the thirty-sixth, the man who, five years ago on August 8, resigned in disgrace to avoid impeachment over the Watergate scandal ... Richard Milhous Nixon.

Today, at 66, . Richard Nixon still pretends he is President of the United States. As an aide who has been with him since pre-Watergate days explains: “The trappings of power — the American

flag above his desk, the chatter of tape machines, up to five colour TV sets, the still-used title of President — are the shadows to which he clings. “But he is very slowly coming to terms with the fact that he no longer enjoys real power. Nowadays, talk at the morning conferences can veer between broad discussions on the international scene to the latest baseball scores ...”

On to Nixon’s desk, sifted by a posse of secretaries, come bizarre offers of jobs from all over the world, some of them ’ serious, many from cranks.

One that has captured the former President’s imagination is that he should become a film star, and play the role of an

American President in a movie about a head of state who is switched for a “genetically engineered” double during a visit to China. “It’s a thriller to be filmed in Manila later this year,” says the film’s producer, Harry Pope. “I have had discussions with friends of the Nixon family in Los Angeles and there is a 50-50 chance he will accept the role.” It is an assignment which Nixon, a bom performer, could probably fill easily. But if he accepts, it certainly won’t be for need of money. By the most conservative of calculations, he is now an extremely wealthy man with a still formidable earning power. Government accounting records show that he re-

cieved around $78,000 in the last financial year from pensions for his 23 years of government service.

His non-taxable expenses, paid from the United States Treasury under the Former Presidents’ Act, came to a further $163,329 last year, not counting his free postage.

Personal services — office expenses and travel — are bills met by the Federal Government, and from the date of his resignation to the end of last year, the figure has been put at $625,642. Former Presidents get ro u n d-the-clock Secret Service protection, but what that costs is never revealed. At the time of his resignation, a figure of $622,000 was quoted.

Nixon is reportedly in much improved health these days. The phlebitic left leg still gives intermittent trouble, but he need never worry about having to pay medical expenses, a costly nightmare which dogs other wealthy Americans in late middleage.

A White House spokesman explained: “Former Presidents are entitled to free health care in military hospitals, and there are any amount of convalescent centres which they can use." The perks may still be there, but the days of extreme high living have gone.

Richard Nixon is still paying off a mountain of debts which he incurred just after his resignation, and before he was able to take advantage of his peculiar position as a disgraced celebrity. It was these debts which led to the sale, last May, of his California

home, the so-called “Western White House.” A leading Nixon aide, Jack Brennan, explained: “The Nixons simply could not afford to maintain the estate. Running the house used to be the particular job of Mrs Nixon, but this has become impossible since her stroke three years ago.”

The sprawling Spanishstyle villa with its six acres of grounds on the Pacific coast at San Clemente has now been sold for an undisclosed sum, unlikely to be less than $1,400,000.

To this profit must be added that made from the sale three years ago of another home. Key Biscayne, Miami.

Nixon paid $125,000 for it in 1969, but paid out $92,000 in personal improvements which included fitted catpets, luxury kitchen appliances, bullet-proof windows and a swimming pool. The price for which Nixon sold it was put at $320,000.

But where the big money has been made is in the sale of his memoirs and his television appear-

ances. An estimated preliminary $3 million has been made by the former President — but this does not include income from later royalties.

His slice from overseas syndication is as high as 20 per cent And that does not take account of spinoffs like sales to radio and to educational centres which continue to bid for cassette tapes of the controversial David Frost interviews.

Controversy has raged around the ethics of making a fortune out of persona! disgrace. The "New York Post,” for example, thundered: “How long can Richard Nixon play his con game in the country with the help of collaborates who still view him as a lucrative property?” Con game or not, the

money continues to roll in. But, recently, say those closest to him, Richard Nixon has had a new preoccupation — how to spend his old age.

Jack Brennan explained: “He is spending an increasing amount of time with his family. Daughter Tricia’s son, Christopher, born last March made him like a boy again.”

Another one-time adviser added: "He clings to his family for any evidence that he is still popular. He hasn’t forgotten the marvellous reception his other daughter, Julie, had in South Carolina. She got a princess’s welcome and phoned him to say: ‘Daddy, they still like us down there.’ And, of course, there’s always golf. He took delivery of a

new electric golf cart only the other day.”

All observers agree that Richard Nixon, if not precisely a happy man, is at least content.

But the share of responsibility that he is prepared to admit for Watergate remains as guarded as ever. As he explained recently to viewers on French television: “It was my mistake that after Watergate, I did not take the decisive action needed to apprehend those who were guilty.”

But that does not prevent Richard Nixon, and those around him, from continuing to live in a fantasy world that, for everyone else, came to an abrupt end one August morning just five years ago.