Tricky Dick

Get out of the middle of the street.

Sir?

I am aware of the intense interest

concerning developments over the last few days.

This has, of course, not been a diff--

Has been a difficult time.

Tonight at 9:00 Eastern Daylight time,

the President of the United States

will address the nation on radio and television

from his Oval Office.

People have begun to just sort of gather

outside the White House, just stand near the gate thee

on Pennsylvania Avenue and across the street here.

This applause you hear-- what has happened

is that a moving van

has just pulled up, over at the White House.

But the hard fact is that no one really knows

what's going on in the president's mind.

One thing is certain: it's difficult for everyone

to live with this tension much longer.

Is that really not getting anywhere that you can see?

I don't think it is. I gotta , but it might.

Okay, sir.

Hey, you're better-looking than I am.

Why don't you stay here? Ha.

Let me see the--did you get these lights properly...

Yes, sir. - My eyes always have--

You'll find as you get past 60--

That's enough.

Thanks.

My friend Ollie always wants to take a lot of pictures.

I'm afraid he'll catch me picking my nose.

Well, you want a level, don't you?

Yes, yes. Good evening.

This is the 37th time

I have spoken to you from this office.

Need any more?

Each time, I have done so to discuss with you some matter

that I believe affected the national interest.

That's fine.

Okay.

We are standing by now

for President Richard Millhouse Nixon,

37th President of the United States.

The explanation of this man and what has happened to him

I think maybe we won't all fully understand.

Get out!

You never knew really who he was.

Good evening.

This is the 37th time

I have spoken to you from this office.

It's as though he has needed enemies,

from the beginning, not only for political reasons,

but to give him his own identity.

Now, my mother was a Quaker,

and my father was a Methodist.

But when they married, they compromised.

They both became Quakers, of course.

We were poor. We had very little.

We all used hand-me-down clothes.

I wore my brother's shoes,

and my brother below me wore mine.

When I was ten years of age,

we had the store and service station.

It was mostly study and work. Not much play.

They knew that when their father told them

to do something, there wasn't any question about it.

When he spoke, he meant exactly what he said.

We'll put it this way. He didn't believe

in any of the modern methods of raising children.

He said, "You spare the rod, you spoil the child."

It was a happy home.

A happy home--let me describe it another way.

Sometimes, I think we judge happiness, in these days,

as being a life in which there are no problems.

That isn't my estimate of happiness.

In our family, we had many great problems.

We had many great crises.

When I was in high school,

my youngest brother Arthur died

of tubercular meningitis very suddenly.

Within a week he was dead.

And then my oldest brother Harold had tuberculosis...

and my mother, for three years,

stayed with him in Arizona.

It was a rather difficult time, actually,

from the standpoint of the family being pulled apart.

Me and Dick were real buddies,

but the tuberculosis got him.

Harold died.

I think when you lose an older brother,

you suddenly have to take on the role of elder son.

So I always had the drive of my father behind me

saying, "Now, look. I had to quit when I was

in the sixth grade, and so you're going to do better."

When we came in as freshmen,

Dick Nixon was something of an opportunist.

He wasn't athletic,

but he went out for the football team.

This, I feel, was deliberate,

because the image served him well,

since this would contribute toward his election

as Student Body President and as a leader on campus.

I worked my way through college

and through law school.

In 1940, probably the best thing

that ever happened to me happened.

I married Pat. She was a beautiful girl,

and she was a very remarkable person too.

Her mother died when she was about nine years of age.

Her father died when she was 16,

and still graduated from USC with honors.

In 1942, I went into the service.

I enlisted in the Navy.

I was convinced that with this aggression

that was sweeping across the globe,

that no one could stand aside.

How jubilant was the taste of victory,

how sweet the rewards of peace.

I received a wire from an old friend.

The banker in our hometown of Whittier, California

saying, "We're looking for candidates

to run for Congress."

I was off.

Richard Nixon, from the very beginning,

had such a will to win

that anything he could use in the campaign,

apparently, was all right.

In the year 1946, young, bright,

but unknown Dick Nixon was given a chance

to run for Congress from his home district in California.

Jerry Voorhis had been the incumbent for ten years,

in a relatively conservative district.

By a whirlwind of charges and innuendos,

the anti-Communist Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis

was made to seem a pro-Communist.

Of course, that first campaign

was the most exciting of all.

There's nothing like winning the first one.

As far as Mrs. Nixon was concerned,

she liked adventure.

She thought that it was very important

to live an exciting life,

and frankly, going to Congress would be exciting she thought.

Representative Nixon, what do you think

Congress can and Congress must do

to deal with this problem of foreign espionage

within our own government?

I think the first thing that Congress must do

is to continue to expose these activities

through the Committee on Un-American Activities.

The facts regarding the sinister Communist conspiracy

and other subversive activities

should be brought to the American public.

I am not and never have been

a member of the Communist Party.

Mr. Nixon, I urge that your committee members

abandon such verdict first and testimony later tactics.

Hiss was good-looking, suave, sophisticated,

Ivy League manner.

He was a very effective witness.

At the time, everybody was backing Hiss.

The committee wanted to drop it completely.

Everybody was advising Nixon to drop it,

that it would kill his career.

But somehow I had a feeling.

I said, "There's something about that fellow

that doesn't ring true."

It is the intention of the Committee

on Un-American Activities

to pursue this investigation until we put the spotlight

on those high officials in the State Department

who are responsible for

selling this country down the river.