[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]

 
                        PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON

  Mr. SIMPSON. Madam President, even now as the reality of it all 
starts to settle in on us, it is hard to believe that Richard Nixon is 
gone. He was many things in life--an extraordinary politician, a 
President who accomplished a great deal, a loving father, a devoted 
husband, a leader in foreign affairs, and a diplomat of incredible 
talent, ability, and foresight.
  He was all of these things and so much more. He was also a very dear 
friend, someone on whom I and so many of my colleagues came to rely for 
sage advice that cut right to the heart of every issue we presented to 
him and he to us. I know that I shall personally truly miss him, for I 
used to spend time with him in New York and also here in Washington. 
When he would come here, he would call, and I would go to his hotel. In 
only moments, suddenly one could clearly realize that President Nixon 
had some incisive suggestions, advice, and counsel which would be of 
assistance in extricating ourselves from some difficult position, 
whether in domestic or in foreign affairs. He always had an 
extraordinary reservoir of good sage commentary.
  So when I sat down and began to put some thoughts together to express 
my feelings, as so many of us are preparing to make the journey to 
Yorba Linda to pay our last respects and bid him farewell, I fondly 
remembered back about 36 years ago. It was 1958, I would gauge, and it 
was an election year. In my memory, there was a faint fall chill in the 
air, as there often is in Wyoming during campaign time, and my dear 
father, Milward Simpson, was the Governor of Wyoming. We had all gone 
to an event at which Vice President Richard Nixon would be the main 
attraction. My dad was involved in a campaign--a spirited campaign it 
was, indeed. The slogan of the Democrats that year was, ``Give them the 
gate in '58.''
  They did that very well with my father. They gave him the ``gate,'' 
and he was defeated for reelection as Governor. Later he went on to run 
for the Senate and was elected with a great majority, and that pleased 
him.
  Richard Nixon was like that, too. He had been up and he had been 
down. I recall the remarkable entourage that was there to greet him on 
that fall day in 1958. We all stood together as a family--Pop, Mom, my 
wife Ann, and our young son, our first-born, Bill. I recall Richard 
Nixon coming toward us from the plane and thanking us for attending. 
Then he scooped up my young son, held him for a moment, and, of course, 
the cameras clicked. Later a picture came from the Vice President to 
that son, which was a souvenir with an inscription of that special day 
some 30 odd years ago.
  That was my first visit with Richard Nixon, but it was certainly not 
the last. From 1958, down through the years, I came to know this 
remarkable man as did we all as Vice President and President.
  More recently, I was privileged to come to know him on a more 
personal basis as an adviser, a confidant, and as a strategist for our 
party and for our country. He has earned a serious place in our 
history. I do not think anyone will ever fire the emotions of the 
Nation as he did. In his over 40 years of public life, he served as a 
lightning rod for some incredibly powerful passions from all along the 
political spectrum. He was a man whose friends were well aware of his 
shortcomings--the foibles we all try to hide from others, and from 
ourselves. His enemies had to give him his due, grudgingly indeed, 
because he was a brilliant political strategist, a foreign policy 
wizard, a tough campaigner, and an expert in the realm of foreign 
affairs.
  He had few equals in those areas. No one understood politics better 
than Richard Nixon. I like to say, like my friend Lloyd Bentsen often 
has: ``Politics is a full contact sport.'' No one knew that better than 
Richard Nixon did. He also knew something else, that in politics losing 
and winning are both part of the same game. And if you cannot handle 
losing, you will never be a winner. There is no denying that Richard 
Nixon was a winner. I do not think we will ever see a politician placed 
on five national tickets who walked away a winner in four of them.
  I want to share a favorite quote of his. I have seen this in various 
versions. This is probably the most succinct version. It summed up his 
feelings about politics, and it was spoken by Theodore Roosevelt. It 
has been called ``In the Arena,'' which President Nixon later used as a 
title of one of his many books. All of his books were always pungent 
and clear. But the quote was: ``Far better it is to dare mighty things, 
to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure than to take 
rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much 
because they live in the great twilight that knows not victory nor 
defeat.''
  Richard Nixon was always quite impossible to categorize. If you did 
not think he was on the ``mark'' on one issue, you found yourself 
thinking he was on the ``beam'' in another. Those who criticized his 
early days as an anti-Communist later found themselves forced to admit 
that his reputation and the credentials he had forged during those days 
made him the only political leader who could have gone to China to pry 
open that long closed door. The door was opened, and it truly was ``the 
week that changed the world,'' as Nixon himself called it. With the 
lines of communication now open between our country and China, Nixon 
then focused on warming our relationships with the Soviets, and he 
succeeded. His efforts resulted in some vital arms control agreements.
  Through the years, he also had some intriguing encounters with the 
media. Yes, indeed, he did. We all recall his comments--I have seen it 
replayed many times in the last few days--to the press after losing the 
governorship of California: ``You won't have Richard Nixon to kick 
around anymore'' --or his comment to David Frost during his interviews 
with the President that the people being attacked by the media ought to 
``come right back and crack 'em in the puss.''

  That was the sort of combative spirit that helped the President, who 
had resigned his office, return and once again take an active part on 
the national scene. He could have been reclusive. He could have quit. 
He could have said, ``This is too much.'' But, no, he did not. In the 
20 years since he left office, we came to know Richard Nixon on a more 
intimate and personal level--all Americans did. We came to be 
remarkably impressed by his wisdom and insight of various aspects of 
our life in government.
  He was a political resource to other Presidents, and he gave freely 
of that. He was an advisor to members of both political parties on 
foreign affairs and domestic politics. He spoke the language of 
politics with an ease and knowledge and spirit and earthiness that few 
others ever had. And he was that.
  I remember in our visits how often, with a pungent turn of the 
phrase, you could suddenly rivet in on what was being obfuscated or 
what was being covered over or what was not being dealt with honestly 
on the national scene.
  Upon learning of his passing, President Clinton himself said that 
this is ``a world of great opportunity in no small part because of the 
vision of Richard M. Nixon.'' I think the President was very generous 
in those remarks, and his remarks are much appreciated.
  The vision which Richard Nixon had was taken from us all too soon. 
America shared 81 years of life with him, and because he was a public 
figure, we were with him almost every step of the way. We watched from 
the sidelines, critiquing, ``second-guessing,'' observing with 
fascination as to where his chosen path would take him, and wondering 
whether he would be beaten down? Would they not finally get him? They 
never did.
  And through it all, he had the caring and support of his beloved 
wife, Pat. She was a woman of total grace, style, civility, and 
kindness. She was a magnificent, special woman. I do not think he ever 
really became adjusted to life without her. She was his helpmate and 
companion, and his life without her became much more difficult for him.
  My mother, Lorna Simpson, was a great friend of Pat Nixon. They were 
much the same. Those same adjectives I would use to describe her are 
adjectives that I would use to describe my own mother, who is in her 
93d year of life and who is a woman of great zeal and steadiness, and 
love and loyalty. She came right through with flying colors in a 
political family. I can tell you that. And she still does.
  So we will be traveling to Yorba Linda, as several of us did for the 
services for his beloved Pat. We will go there to celebrate a life 
fully lived, that has all of the elements of life, fully reflected in 
every facet. It was a life of great success, and great tragedy. It was 
a life of great hope at times, and times when he must have surely felt 
total despair. His was a life that was ``larger than life itself'', and 
it was all played out on the stage before all of us, the stage of 
public life. The floodlights burned bright, where no one could hide. It 
was all out there in public view. And his life was performed for all 
for us--for us and the rest of the world to see.
  He was a man of amazing power, energy, fortitude, and guts. And I 
shall leave it to the historians to sift through the emotion--of which 
he had plenty, as most great men do--and find the essence of the man 
that was Richard Nixon.
  For me, his life is summed up in his own words, they appeared in his 
book, ``In The Arena.'' He said:

       In the end, what matters is that you have always lived life 
     to the hilt. I have been on the highest mountains and in the 
     deepest valleys, but I have never lost sight of my 
     destination--a world in which peace and freedom can live 
     together. I have won some great victories and suffered some 
     devastating defeats. But win or lose, I feel fortunate to 
     have come to that time in life when I can finally enjoy what 
     my Quaker grandmother would have called ``peace at the 
     center.''

  I close with a lovely little couplet that my grandmother used to 
share with me when I was a young man, and which served me well in 
political life, because in this line of work, if you are doing 
anything, you are making enemies.
  So this is a quote from Charles Mackay, who lived between 1814 and 
1889. And it is this:

     You have no enemies, you say?
     Alas! my friend, the boast is poor--
     He who has mingled in the fray
     Of duty, that the brave endure,
     Must have made foes! If you have none,
     Small is the work that you have done;
     You've hit no traitor on the hip;
     You've dashed no cup from perjured lip,
     You've never turned the wrong to right--
     You've been a coward in the fight!

  I think that says a lot about Richard M. Nixon. I am very glad that 
my friend has found his peace, and may he rest safely and securely in 
His arms.
  We shall be there to pay proper respect to his life, and he will be 
properly honored in memory. And I shall be there.
  I thank the Chair.

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