My Sober Celebration With Nixon

AP Photo In an excerpt from his new memoir, Nixon’s Commerce secretary shares the juicy details of an irritable president after his 1972 re-election—and how he fired everyone shortly thereafter.

The morning after Richard Nixon’s historic landslide reelection victory in 1972, the members of the Cabinet were summoned to the White House. I assumed, as did the other secretaries, that the president wanted us to share in the celebration. Perhaps he would spell out his vision for what he wanted to accomplish in the second term after the significant achievements of the first.

But soon after we were ushered into the Cabinet Room, I saw Nixon in a pose I recognized. He was slouched as he walked in, his shoulders hunched, his neck thrust forward so that he seemed to be looking out from a dark corner. This was almost always a bad sign.

As [Nixon] spoke, my mind raced. Surely he wasn’t offering me secretary of State. Henry would certainly get that.

When we all sat down, the president delivered a brooding monologue, including the observation that this second term would not be like Disraeli’s, the British prime minister who served in 1868 and again from 1874 to 1880. It was impossible to know precisely what he meant, for that second term had advanced equality in England and produced treaties reshaping Eastern Europe. What was disorienting was that a day after whipping George McGovern by 18 million popular votes and 520 electoral votes versus 17, the president was in a dark mood when one would have obviously expected just the opposite. Why wasn’t he giddy with happiness, especially since this would be his last election and all around him at the table were some of his oldest and most loyal friends and supporters hoping to uncork some Champagne and raise a glass to his success?

The Education of an American Dreamer. By Peter G. Peterson. 394 pages. Twelve. $34.99. As this sober so-called celebration—no Champagne, no toasts to the future of a winning team—started to break up, Haldeman told us all to wait. He then rushed after the president as he retreated, still slumped, into the Oval Office. Moments later, Haldeman returned to “remind” us that the president expected all of our resignations immediately. The president had issued the same order to the senior staff—but as usual, Nixon had left the unpleasant work to others. In the aftermath, the euphoria of election night gave way to depression, anxiety, and genuine puzzlement. News reports said later it was the first time a president had asked his entire Cabinet to resign.

I had been back in my cavernous office in the Commerce Building—someone once likened it to the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles without the mirrors—for only a short time when my secretary told me the president wanted to see me at Camp David the next day. Caspar Weinberger, an old Nixon friend who was then director of the Office of Management and Budget, was the other invitee. Cap, as he was known, had succeeded George Shultz as director of management and budget when Nixon appointed George to be secretary of the Treasury the previous May. Cap also had long California ties to Nixon.

We boarded the Marine helicopter at the White House pad the next morning. On the clattering flight out to Camp David in western Maryland, we joked back and forth uneasily about where the trapdoor was in the helicopter floor that would open and suck us through into political oblivion. But we reached Camp David in one piece, and there was no trapdoor for Cap. Nixon offered him secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, a major assignment and a step up career-wise. For me, the trapdoor was camouflaged.

The president ushered me into a rustic Camp David living room—the place had originally been built as a camp for families, then converted to a presidential retreat by Franklin Roosevelt during World War II when German U-boats made the boating vacations he preferred too dangerous. Despite the casual setting, the president wore his usual dark suit, white shirt, and tie. Outside, leaves swirled, but even the fall colors at their peak paled against the purple shades of rhetoric Nixon laid on me. He told me he had read all the stories contending I was the best Commerce secretary since Herbert Hoover. They weren’t true, he said. I was better than Hoover. There was no comparison. What Henry Kissinger and I had achieved in the integrated commercial and strategic negotiations with the Soviet Union was remarkable. And speaking of Henry, he and George Shultz both held me in genuine respect, something that could not be said of anyone else in the administration. Furthermore, I had total support of the business community. Later developments made me wish I had his very generous words on tape!