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public service along with these other television providers. giving you a front row seat to democracy. host: we are joined by john farrell, author of “richard nixon: the life." what is the significance of president nixon's resignation 50 years later? guest: i think he is with us always or at least will be because he was the only president to resig >> he was the only president to resign in disgrace. his life was so shakespearean. he came from nowhere. he had this meteor christ a vice president -- he had this meteoric rise to president. comeback, claimed the white house again and then was brought down by his own flaws. it is an irresistible story,

along with the way that he was a polarizing figure, so half the country hated him, have loved him. each portion of the country -- a huge portion of the country loved him right up until the end, so as long as a couple of generations are around, he will be a magnetic figure. host: what was president nixon doing 50 years ago this morning? guest: he varied from his usual routine. usually eight a very simple breakfast of skim milk, cereal or yogurt from his favorite famous southern california dairy. he was down in the kitchen this instance and there was a meeting from his steward and he said let's have corn beef hash and eggs, so they whipped him up corn beef hash and eggs, which she later said was probably too heavy for the events of the day

he had to face, but he did have that little flare. when lunch came, it was back to his pineapple and cottage cheese , but he did have that little deviation of the norm for breakfast. host: let's hear how he announced his resignation from office, the day before, august 8. [video clip] >> prefer to carry through to the finish, whatever the personal agony would have been involved, and my family unanimously urged me to do so. but the interest of the nation must always come before any personal considerations, from the discussions i've had with congressional leaders, i have concluded that because of the watergate matter, i might not have the support of congress that i would consider necessary to back the very difficult decisions and carry out the duties of this office in the way

the interest of the nation would require. i have never been a quitter. to leave office before my term is completed is a warrant to every instinct in my body. but as president, i must put the interests of america first. america needs a full-time president and a full-time congress, particularly at this time, with problems we face at home and abroad. to continue the fight through the months ahead for my personal vindication, with almost -- would almost totally absorbed the time and attention of both the president and the congress. in a time when our entire focus should be on the great issues of peace abroad and prosperity without inflation at home.

therefore, i shall resign the presidency, effective at noon tomorrow. vice president ford will be sworn in as president at that hour in this office. [end video clip] host: john farrell, you would have been a very young man. what was your reaction? guest: i was here in washington, d.c., and the atmosphere that night and that afternoon before he announced when word got out that he would make the speech, was giddy. people were driving around the white house in caravans honking horns. there was a great celebration, and in contrast to the next morning, when it was 50 years ago today, it was a typical, swampy august morning, misty day, and it was much more solemn

and one of the great moments in american history was his speech to his staff. host: why giddy? guest: i think because of vietnam, vietnam, vietnam. his chief of staff said if you examine the nixon presidency, your first thought has to be that every single moment of every day, every decision was somehow related to vietnam. vietnam tour the country apart, ripped it apart, and i think we are still enduring living through repercussions from vietnam today. host: we are going to be talking about richard nixon's resignation that happened 50 years ago until the end of the program. you can give us a call if you would like to make a comment, if you are old enough to remember it. call us and share the memories with us. the lines original.

if you are in the eastern or central time zones, call us on (202)-748-8000. mountain or pacific, (202)-748-8001. i would like to read to you a quote from your book, and it says, "the final house had more than the sre of shakespearean scenes. nixon was choking back sobs and rushing fromhe rm ter telling a group of his old friends from congress, 'i hope you will not feel like let you down,'but no scene an astonishing spectacle was more memorable thanix's fair will talk to the white house staff friday morning. the actor met the moment. it m wl have been the most raw and clearly painful and unforgettable speech in american political history." what do you mean by that? guest: richard nixon was personally a very awkward person and did not have great personal

relationships, aside from a few friends and family. and the way he got along that way, going back to whittier high school and college in southern california, was to be an actor. he was an accomplished actor, so he was good at memorization, good at getting prepared for an event, and then carrying it out, a much better than he was as a spontaneous human being talking very we are talking right now. there was a couple of anecdotes in the book, one of which, when of his aides is brought in to be introduced for the first time to the president of the united states, and nixon stands up and basically hums and hazen cannot even think of the words to say, hi, welcome to the staff. in his famous comeback many years later after he left office , and he began to polish his

image, he is have dinners at his home in new jersey, and various reporters and columnists would be invited. he would sit at the head of the table, chinese food was served to remind everybody that nixon was the one who went to china, and he would get this amazing speech about foreign affairs, going from one hotspot to the other, analyzing different players and people, and one of the reporters had to go use the bathroom, went upstairs down the hall, was walking down the hall on the side table, and they were nixon's notes. he looked at them and realized that the speech had been memorized. nixon was great at acting at memorization and presentation, not a great guy at one-on-one conversations or relating to fellow human beings. host: we will take a look at this and then to cause. here's a portion of president nixon's farewell address speech to his ecstatic the white house. [video clip] >> sometimes when things happen

that do not go the right way, we think that when you don't pass the bar exam the first time, i have been to, but i was lucky. my writing was so poor, the bar examiners that we just have to let the guy through. we think that when someone dear to us dies, we think that when we lose an election, we think that when we suffer a defeat, that all is ended. re-think as tr said that the light had left his life forever. not true. it is only the beginning.

the young must know it, the young must know it, they must always sustain us because the greatness comes not when things always go good for you, but the greatness comes when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes because only if you have been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain. and so i say to you on this occasion, we leave proud of the people who have stood by us and serve this country. we would like you to be proud of what you have done.

we want you to continue to serve in government, if that is your wish. always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty, always remember others may hate you, but those who hate you do not win unless you hate them. and then you destroy yourself. [end video clip] host: that very last line, "and then you destroy yourself," was that him accepting responsibility? guest: this is spontaneous, this is self-knowledge, richard nixon had allowed himself to be visible over the years instead of contrived of personality, i think he could have maybe survived watergate. but he was instinctively a guy

who fought back at his enemies. his career in politics was self-made. he had no great sponsors. he was picked to be vice president by eisenhower and was not treated well by the eisenhower staff or by the president. everything he did was by himself. he had no great person to learn from. it made him opportunistic, and it made him swing from time to time to the dark side of his personality, which i always thought came from his father. his mother was a very idealistic quaker. host: he called her a saint. guest: he called her a saint. and that is where i think he got the peacemaker urges. he wanted to bring about any's attentions from the cold war, but his father, frank, he was a real sob and brought his sons

up to think that they could not quit, that they had to fight, fight, fight, and the odds are stacked against him. and many of the strains of what we see in today's politics were pioneered, championed by richard nixon throughout his career, praying on the fears and grievances of the people. host:e got a question from text from scott, what, if any, parallels can you draw with what is happening today with former president trump? guest: i get askedguest: guest: i get asked that a lot, which is that nixon had a governor back there who said if you do not push the line, yes,

you can play on the edges of race and racial resentment, but you have to be subtle about it. you cannot destroy the country, if the supreme court says you have to do this, then you go out and do the best job of any president integrating public schools in the south, and that is what he did. donald trump i do not believe had that scholarly side or has that idealistic side. i think he certainly has the opportunistic side that nixon had. he is a self-made man, but the great comparison is that both of them know how to take the average american and say, you know, they are screwing you. i'm the one person who can represent you. that other person has different colored skin, he is getting benefits you are not getting, and you are paying for them.

they are both very good at that. and coincidently, they knew each other. both learned a little bit from roy cohn, a noxious, horrible new york city lawyer, and there are a few strings where they touch each other. host: let's talk to harry, west virginia. guest: good morning. thank you for taking my call. first, nixon's legacy is not what he did wrong but what he did right. he opened up china, much like admiral perry. who among us can say we have never committed sins? the question about america as we forget, we are forgiving and loving people, and what nixon

did, yes, it was wrong. i lived it. i was in school until my dad told me you have got enough degrees, masters, a law degree, phd. he said, you have got to make a living and do something with your life besides read books. and nixon allegedly had been a good student in law school and allegedly his name was iron butt because he could just sit there for hours and hours and hours. so it is true that he had a good memory. watching all this watergate with erlichman, and john talk about

the cancer on the presidency, watching it unfold live, it is so devastating, but we have to forgive and move on. host: all right, harry, we will get a response. caller: thank you guest: one of the things that struck me when i started out to do the book was i made the calls to people on the staff and friends of nixon who were still alive, and i was struck by the devotion and love that these men and women had for him, which clashed with the caricature i had grown up with, which was that he was a mean guy who could not inspire affection or love. and that made me want to say

there must be something else there. i think you're something else there that i came to believe and put in the book is that they recognized the personal cost that it took for young dick nixon to rise from nowhere in the outback of southern california by himself, over and over again, as he said in that clip, to the highest mountain top, and to do things like go to china, integrate southern schools, create the environmental protection agency, to do really good things in his presidency, yet, that there was this fatal shakespearean flaw that he recognizes in that speech to his staff and then you destroy yourself. it is a great story, and i think that is one reason that he will

always stand out as someone, as that caller remembers fondly, and many people will forget him, and other people will not. host: anthony, kentucky. guest: -- caller: my thing was 1972 was the first year that 18-year-olds got to vote for president, which is kind of a big deal. before you had to be 21. i did vote for nixon, but nixon stomped the grass. -- stop the draft. my draft number was really low. i was going to go. what he did with watergate, the men had grace and guts. he stood for something. unlike today, i do have a question, by the way, but we

have a president who has dementia and will not step down. nixon steps down for evidently from what i read, they erased a few things of tape? he did not edit or do all the things of today. he did not get rich from china. he did not make a lot of money from china. nixon had grace and guts, and he was a true american. and i have got to say that he did come through here, and my wife did play in a band when he had come in, and it was kind of a cool thing. but i did turn around, vote for him, and then he stopped the draft and saved me, so that, a lesson, too. thank you for your book. i'm going to pick it up. guest: mission accomplished. [laughter] yeah. changing to an all volunteer army was another on the great

list of domestic accomplishments , with a great deal of dispute over how he handled vietnam. in the book i suggest that he would have been much better to have brought it to a quick end since we did not get much out of the long run, but in his mind, he had a great geopolitical picture of a structure of world peace that required him to go to beijing and moscow from a position of strength and he did not feel he could do that if he had cut and run from vietnam and is a 20,000 american lives but more importantly, it would have saved hundreds of thousands of southeast asia, and that is one of the great sins of richard nixon, that he had been a young

lieutenant in world war ii, he had seen churchill, roosevelt, eisenhower bomb the german cities, and he had become convinced that these great men believe that if civilians had to be sacrificed, then they had to be sacrificed, and i don't think he's saw the proper distinction between bombing a nazi regime and laying waste to villages, a backward people in southeast asia. host: talk about his life growing up in los angeles and how begun to politics to begin with. guest: he had a series of ups and downs, he grew up -- like i said, his father was dirt poor. they bought an abandoned church and turned it into a grocery store, and that is where richard and his brothers worked.

so he was always one of the brightest kids at whittier high school but also one of the poorer kids. that was a source of irritation because no matter how much you would go out for the football team, there would be a feeling of snobbishness among some of the kids. and that feeling of snobbishness, the resentment towards the elites, he carried through his entire life. when he was president, you can hear him on the tapes railing about georgetown elites, but he was a star student, incredibly bright. he was invited by the alumni of harvard and yale to apply. they said that it will not be a problem, but the family did not have the money to pay for him to make the trip, and he went to little whittier college.

in the day he got accepted to duke law school and the family said you are going, he was described as being excited because he was getting out. along the way, he meets this magnificent woman who calls herself pat. and they settle off in this incredible idealistic crusade to change the world for the better. and she gives him on one of their first anniversary is her birthday present, a little figurine of a knight on a charger, which is how she saw him. he volunteers for world war ii, he annoys his superior until they sent him to the war zone, and he serves under fire for a combat air support for the guys to load and unload the planes,

and goes up to the next island in the south pacific. and things have changed in america in 1945. there is a feeling that is gone with life, and a bunch of conservative republican businessman from south carolina come to him and say, would you like to run for congress and are you a registered voter, and you are republican, right? he was a complete nobody. when i say he did it all by himself, he did it all by himself. host: sylvia, virginia, you are next. guest: thank you. in 1974, i was taking a summer school class, and the history teacher wanted us to write a paper, a term paper to graduate. i had to go to summer school on all the president's men, and i refused to do it. we were puritan republicans, and i cried and told them i could not write a paper on that, so he was kind enough to allow me to write a paper on another person.

i just cried when he resigned. i was not able to get to vote for a president. at that time, i was able to vote for the primary of pennsylvania, and we were republicans to the point where we did not think that president nixon could do any wrong until several years ago, i do not understand exactly what happened at watergate. and it is just the love we had for him. thank you. guest: nixon used to say on the square, he would draw a square, and he would say, i'm proud of it. and i think what he called the great silent majority in middle america this, as you can hear from this caller, there is great affection and love for him that was worn down by watergate, but

also nixon was never very good on economics. and his presidency ran into huge problem with inflation in the watergate year, which is not a great time to have a double whammy of family subset of rising prices and seen scandal in washington at the same time. host: did we have reliable polling at the time? can we tell how popular a president he was? guest: at the end, he still held on to an approval rating of the american people, but he had lost liberals long ago, and he had lost the middle during watergate. host: darrell, michigan, good morning. guest: good morning. -- caller: good morning. finally, i think we have got a

great historian, and they have sliced and diced the watergate situation in his books. so my question is, i do not understand why a lawyer would authorize, and i do believe he authorized, i remember reading in a newspaper that they were invading the democratic headquarters because they believed that the democratic party was using soviet money, and they were trying to get documentation to prove it. of course, they were caught in the act. do you have anything to say about that or can you add details? guest: first of all, this is a long-standing, well-planned

bunch of dirty tricks. there was a white house tape that did not come out until several years later on which richard nixon is talking to aldermen, hr aldermen, and he says, bob, i want more wiretapping and surveillance. so you don't have a tape of halderman walking into the oval office and say that they're going into watergate tonight, but there certainly was a tone set from the top that we are going to use every trick possible, and of some of them go across the lines, some go across the lines. there is an amazing memo from that same time where you before watergate, nixon's aids runs into the manager and says we are going to put spies into all the different democratic candidates headquarters so we know where the desks are and where the phone lines are.

ahead of this, so we are ready when it is time to start doing the illegal bugging. a major problem is that he lied to the country and try to cover it up. and the famous smoking gun tape, he talked about using the cia to lean on the fbi and shutdown down the investigation, and then the tapes come out. if they never came out, he probably would have survived, but when the tape comes out, and they shall all the wrongdoing, his support evaporates. why were they going into larry o'brian's office? it was the democratic committee's headquarters. i think it was a logical target. they were not after one particular thing. they were after what scandals do they know about us and what scandals can we find out about them? and anything that they got they

would have been happy with. host: i would like to go back to your book, another quote about the time leading up to the resignation. "the judicia hearings wor the most part theater to sustain an existing con. it was time for tricky dick to go. as he reached a concsi after the saturday night massacre, it takes an inten ctravening force to shadow the consensual judgment. in nixon's case, the subsequent months only reinforced evidence." that's go back to that saturday night massacre, a bunch of staff members resigned. he had asked for archibald cox, special prosecutor to be fired. remind us of that time and with this have had happened if the special prosecutor was not fired? guest: so, as part of the

condition of surviving, mixing agrees to appoint a special prosecutor -- nixon agrees to appoint a special prosecutor, a law professor, and he mounts a very energetic investigation, staffing is legal and investigative teams with bright, young ivy league lawyers who would like to make a name for themselves and see nixon as an enemy who needs to be brought down as all prosecutors do. cox hears about the tapes from the watergate, the senate watergate hearings and presses for access to them in court. he is being too aggressive, and nixon asks the attorney general to fire him. the attorney general refuses. the deputy attorney general refuses, and finally, the solicitor general go ahead and

fires cox. and then you have a firestorm at the time, which was accurate, which is everybody saying, oh my god, he is putting himself above the law, and the outcry was so large that republican numbers of congress got on the phone and said, i'm calling you from grand rapids, missouri, we are losing on this one. you have got to do something. so they appointed another special prosecutor. and he went ahead and got the tapes, and they were devastating . it is very interesting in that before watergate, americans had this idealistic and warm view of their presidents. presidents could do no wrong. and then watergate happens. after watergate, there are things like they investigation into the cia, the fbi, the kennedy and johnson administration assassination

plot. in this whole veneer allows us to see for the first time what people have been doing in our names, and this is a crisis and also a feeling of shame and alarm that congress then reacted by passing a series of laws, nance -- campaign-finance, and it was called the watergate reform laws. americans being americans, we went back to making money, having a good time, lobbying in washington, and all of those watergate laws had been eroded, either by the supreme court lobbyists in congress. the situation is actually worse now than it was right before watergate and what we know about how american politics is financed. what was the second part of the question? host: i know you are not a legal

scholar, but devon currently the supreme court's judgment on presidential immunity that acts taken while in office would be immune, do you think that what richard nixon did, the illegal stuff you did back then, would he be considered immune under today's report -- court ruling? guest: it would get an argument, i'm sure, from the dissenters in the ruling. but that is what this rolling opens the door too, that a president who says, well, as a matter of national security, which was the excuse that nixon gave for the plumbers, we are going to go and break into the psychiatrist's office of a major critic of the war, and we are going to use that stuff against him to show the country that he is a threat and a dangerous

weirdo. what i read about that decision would absolve the president of the united states from prosecution for that order. host: susan, massachusetts, hello. caller: hi. i'm so glad this gentleman is on today. i grew up in that era, and i would watch every day the watergate hearings, and i grew up in the shadow of washington, d.c., and the washington post was the family newspaper, so we had been reading the whole drama as it played out from start to finish. i did come from a republican household, but my parents were very nuanced, and they thought nixon should resign for the good of the nation because the facts

were there. but i have maintained great admiration for nixon's incredible grasp of foreign policy. he was a visionary in that area, and even though he lost the white house in disgrace, i think he ultimately was a great american, but a complex one. and i also think he represented the unleashing of america's great talent. it was the busting through up the monopoly the police had with the ivy league schools, etc. he was more of the technocrat.

>> while the president was involved, he did not realize or appreciate the implication of his involvement and when the facts come out. i hope the president is for given. >> what do you think of that? >> interesting that. it has been 50 years and look at the c-span ratings of the presidency, he goes up and down,

high 20's or low 30's and not only the president to resign in disgrace and in watergate. i think over time, he will never be totally for given as john dean says but i think over time people became to appreciate about him 4

>> and when i see halderman and ehrlich man and agnew, it seemed he didn't know how to pick the people around him to give him great support and advice. guest: nixon accomplishments includes the integration of the

southern schools and includes affirmative action and includes the volunteer army and includes social security and for the first time -- he did all of this with the democratic congresses he never had a republican congress to work with. he knew that edmund musk yes was going to run against him and could steal his thunder by by signing the clean water act. many of these were counter moves to combat what was going on in the congress. but in his heart, this is a man who supported -- reagan didn't

but he supported every civil rights bill. he drew the line at forced busing says that wasn't a bad place to draw the line. not only was he awful, but he failed to supervise and he wore his closest aids down to the point tay they failed to supervise and they recruited the biggest bunch of knuckle heads and spy, f.b.i. world, underworld of washington, d.c.. and just ready to be -- there were so many stupid things it would take the f.b.i. to listen. >> why do you think that was, nixon wasn't a good person and

didn't read people very well? >> great scene in history where king henry of england is being harassed by his former friend, beckett, and he says outloud someone rid me of this. and some ambitious knight and they slaughter thomas beckett in the cathedral. and to a certain extent that was the story of watergate. nixon hired young ambitious people, and bring the dead mouse to the oval office door and look what we have done for you, boss and they would listen to the enemies and the jews and -- and they would go out and do these

incredibly stupid things and he would skip them or forgive them or so preoccupied with kissinger and talking about vietnam, russia andrussia, and we left oe was the first president -- this is a guy who had a lot of big stuff on his mind, but he definitely was a bad judge of personality. host: sam, in baltimore, maryland, good morning. caller: good morning. if you could answer this, it involves lbj, kissinger, and nixon. this concerns the vietnam war. as i understand the story, and correct me if i'm wrong or elaborate or corroborate, that lbj had a peace plan early on for vietnam, but then nixon had envoys around his back and say