[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 47 (Tuesday, April 26, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 26, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 PASSING OF PRESIDENT RICHARD M. NIXON

  Mr. HATFIELD. Mr. President, we are saddened by the passing of 
Richard Nixon. Throughout his illustrious career, Richard Nixon was 
known as a statesman, peacemaker, and world leader. Up until the moment 
of his passing, he was on the threshold of new American thinking.
  My first encounter with Richard Nixon was when he was a U.S. Senator 
from California attending the 1952 Republican National Convention. I 
was a delegate pledged to Dwight Eisenhower. Our paths again crossed 
after Nixon was named Vice President and was asked by President 
Eisenhower to attend Oregon's centennial celebrations in 1959. At that 
time, my wife, Antoinette, and I were living in a small apartment 
awaiting the renovation of our home. The Vice President came to our 
apartment for lunch and pronounced himself an eternal fan of 
Antoinette's string bean casserole.
  It was this Richard Nixon that many Americans, and certainly the 
media, missed. To many, his humanness was remote. But despite all the 
difficult times he faced, it was not lost. President Nixon's reserved 
nature was made more approachable by his gracious and warm wife, Pat, 
and his impressive daughters Julie and Tricia. His family acted in full 
partnership with the President throughout his career. The passing of 
Patricia Nixon last year was a loss to all.
  As I got to know the President better, through our time spent at 
Republican Party functions and during his visits to Oregon, I came to 
admire the intellect of Richard Nixon. In 1960 he asked me to give the 
Presidential nominating speech at the Republican National Convention. 
He often commented upon the brevity of my remarks but I believe that my 
assessments of the man were indicative of his long career.
  In that speech I said:

       Never before has a Vice President been such a full 
     participant in the making of national policy. Never before 
     has a Vice President shared so intimately in the shaping of 
     major international decisions.
       And yet he is one of us, and like so many of us, owes an 
     unending debt of gratitude to parents who nurtured him, a 
     wife whose love and companionship have earned for him, and 
     for us, the affection and respect of uncounted millions from 
     Ghana to Warsaw.
       He has known hard times, he has known hard work. He has 
     trod the path of peacemakers, but he will not surrender the 
     hopes, the ambitions, the achievements of this Nation, nor 
     will he make apologies to express regrets for this country's 
     policies of self-preservation.
       In this hour when the world, itself, is half-slave and 
     half-free the leadership in the White House is the beacon for 
     free men and all who would be free.
       May I present in nomination a fighter for freedom, a 
     pilgrim for peace . . . the Honorable Richard M. Nixon.

  Beyond personal remembrance, our Nation will collectively recall his 
statesmanship. No American in this century influenced American foreign 
policy as President Nixon did.
  It has been said that his philosophy was never to look back. Indeed, 
he did not. Even as the heaviest bombings were being inflicted upon the 
North Vietnamese, and against the wishes of American conservatives, 
President Nixon ended the two-decade-long enmity with China. Spending 
an entire week in China, Nixon helped shatter myths on both sides: 
about the Chinese and about Americans. As a March 1992 Time magazine 
article described the event: ``The trip * * * marked the beginning of a 
more pragmatic and complex, less concentrated and crusading application 
of American power.''
  Nixon's immediate aim during the China visit was to improve 
understanding and communication. He said at the time that his hope for 
the trip was that ``walls will not divide peoples of the world, that 
peoples regardless of differences in philosophy and background will 
have an opportunity to communicate with each other and know each 
other.'' He succeeded and although our relationship with China has 
always been complicated, I believe communications made possible by the 
Nixon visit altered the fate of two countries. President Nixon's 
contributions to United States-Union of Soviet Socialist Republics 
detente and his active efforts to promote a new relationship with 
Russia after the Soviet Union's collapse built upon his China efforts.
  Because his foreign affairs views were freely given and actively 
sought by world leaders over the past few years, little has been said 
about President Nixon's contributions to American society. Motivated by 
an empathy for the poor borne of his own poverty-ridden childhood, his 
interest in a guaranteed annual income for all Americans furthered the 
drive to eradicate poverty. Although his plan did not succeed, his 
administration won increases in funding for welfare, food stamps, 
Social Security, and disability pensions.
  Nixon's administration provided a moderate Republican stand on 
poverty and social programs and opened doors for new thinking on 
program development. Above all, his programs made a difference. As 
Congressman Tom Foley remarked in 1989, ``The Nixon administration was 
most important in advancing the antihunger fight in America.
  President Nixon lived a long and productive life marked by both dark, 
difficult times and by intellectual brilliance. I extend my deepest 
sympathy to his family for the loss of this incomparable man.

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