Goodbye, So Long, Farewell — 37 years ago today, Richard Milhous Nixon became the first President to resign from office

By Jack Brummet

Criminal Justice Editor

The date August 9th, 1974 is still burned into my head.  For weeks, we had all been waiting, hoping for, and expecting Dick Nixon to step down.  His former Vice-President Spiro Agnew [1] was now in prison, and would soon be most of his henchmen and White House inner circle.  This was a good thing.

President Nixon should have resigned long before August 9th; he could have ended what his successor Gerald Ford called "our long national nightmare." But he held on, even as incredibly incriminating evidence--hundreds of hours of "secret White House tapes, grand jury testimony, transcripts from numerous House and Senate committees and subcommittees, leaks from "Deep Throat,"  resignations, convictions, and indictments--poured in. As much as I admire him a few select, very specific fronts, he was the ultimate paranoid personality, and despite all his accomplishments, a real danger to society and liberty in general. I remember parties that summer night in 1974.  All that being said, I am something of a Nixon scholar, and have been to his museum and birthplace in Orange County.

clownin'

 

the historic meeting with Chairman Mao Tse Tung (now transliterated Zedong)






All This Is That articles on President Nixon:

Visiting Richard Nixon In NYC
Jackie Gleason, Richard Nixon and The Alien Fun with Richard Nixon's Ghost
Nixon's Back Pocket speech in case of a space disaster
RMN's Comedy of Errors
The photographer who stole Richard Nixon's Soul
Lying and Contractions
POTUS 37, or, the comedy of errors
Presidents it was fun to vote against
Visiting Richard Nixon

 

[1] An excerpt from the hilarious Agnew page on the Uncyclopedia:  "Agnew, raised as a Democrat, suffered a head injury in 1951 that left him a Republican. His conscience gone, he became a politician, and made successful use of knockout drugs to secure appointment to the Baltimore County Board of Appeals. Finding the opportunities for graft as County Executive too limited, Agnew ran for Governor of Maryland in 1966. In this overwhelmingly Democratic state, he was narrowly elected after his Democratic opponent, Cliff "Screwtop" Hooper, made a number of gaffes, which included denouncing Maryland as "a cesspool of inbred hillbillies" and opening fire on crowds of his supporters with a shotgun." 
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