The one thing you had to give to Nixon was that he took full responsibility for his decision. But what did it get him? He was forced to resign in disgrace, rather than face an embarrassing impeachment trial in Congress. During the years that followed, he made several attempts to tell his side of the story, but by then, no one was listening. And we all know how it ended. He died in some small California town, broken and utterly alone.
I have to admit, I'm a bit uneasy with this assignment. Don't get me wrong; I think it's a good exercise for our writer's group; we've probably avoided taking it on directly for too long. But it also makes me all too aware of my limitations as a writer. When you live every day speculating about what might have been, performing the same task on paper seems more than a little redundant. Let's face it, I make a much better non-fiction writer.
I guess most of you already know where I stand. I really liked and respected Nixon. It's kind of hard to admit that, even after so many years. He was always controversial. People thought he was a real S.O.B. for challenging the Illinois ballot in '60, but as it turned out, Mayor Daley really was trying to fix the election.
The cards were never in Nixon's favor, but he did the best with the hand he was dealt. From that moment in early September when he first learned about the missiles, he acted quickly and decisively. Who knows? Under better circumstances, he might have even reduced tensions with the Soviets. Unfortunately, the whole thing blew up in his face. In everyone's face.
The further the war recedes in time (and my own memory), the more that its events seem absolutely immutable, somehow predestined. The rumors. The prime-time address. Vice President Lodge's physical confrontation with the Soviet ambassador in the UN. The last-minute attempts at a diplomatic solution. The news that the Marines were meeting stiff resistance on the beaches around Havana . The Soviet attack on West Berlin . Nixon's ultimatum to Khrushchev. The missiles, the bombers and the mushroom clouds.
I know it's popular right now to speculate about what would have happened had someone else been president, had Nixon simply conceded the election in 1960. Believe me, given the chance, anyone who lived through those times would gladly erase what happened. But that doesn't change the facts; it doesn't make the impossible possible.
What could John Kennedy have done that Nixon didn't? It's doubtful he would have kept such a close eye on Cuba , and if anything, his administration probably wouldn't have learned about the missiles until late September or even October. By then, the damned things would have been pointed at Washington , New York, even Los Angeles, and then we would have lost even more cities. As bad as things are, they could have been much worse: I tend to favor the view that Nixon kept the war from spinning totally out of control. Could we have hoped for any better from Kennedy, who had far less experience in international affairs?
That might be one of the reasons I never totally trusted Kennedy. While Nixon had a cabinet comprised of veteran policy hands, you always had the feeling Kennedy would have given posts to family members and close friends. If he had won, he probably would have named his brother Robert as Secretary of State and given his father a job like Attorney General! The Soviets would have walked all over him.
Nixon, on the other hand, spoke their language. Some say that he was too tough, that he backed the Russians into a corner and didn't leave them any room to maneuver or negotiate. But it seems pretty obvious now that they had always intended to go to war with us. Nixon just made them tip their hand too early.
The funny thing is, we didn't get hit nearly as badly as we'd expected-a smattering of air bases, and Chicago , Cleveland and Boston . (Plus all those people in the two Berlins .) We almost thought we had gotten off easy, but there were lots of things we hadn't considered: fallout and dust in the atmosphere, longer winters, disease, hunger.
I often think back to William Faulkner's speech when he won the Nobel Prize back in 1950, where he predicted that man would not only endure but prevail. These days, even enduring is an accomplishment. At least the famines are over. The real irony is that we don't live as well now as the Russians did before the war. We laughed at them for their food lines, empty department store shelves, and cheap booze. Welcome to America in the '80s!
In the years that followed the war, we learned that the USSR was largely bluffing when it came to bombers and missiles. But we didn't know that as we sent in our own planes and warheads and dropped everything we had on them. I've heard stories of how bad it is in Russia -what did the Japanese estimate? Something like 190 million people? Despite the fact that the Soviets caused the war, I think most Americans have had trouble coming to terms with numbers like that. It's almost like someone threw a snowball at us and we retaliated with a hand grenade.
Now we're all jaded fatalists. A lot of you aren't very old, but we weren't like that before the war. We thought anything was possible, from space travel to giant computers that could store all of a company's records. We used to have strong presidents like FDR and Eisenhower-not weak one-termers like Spiro Agnew or Jimmy Carter. (Imagine Carter becoming president in an alternate reality!) Instead of a superpower, you're now citizens of a diminished nation in a dangerous world. And it never seems to end: 25 years later, we're having the same tired problems with the Chinese.
I guess I should wrap this essay up. Thanks for suffering the ramblings of an old man. I apologize for my gloomy tone, and have high hopes that the other efforts will be much better than my own!. I wish I could have conjured each of you a vision of a place where everything is clean and bright, where you have plenty to eat, and where family and friends don't die of thyroid cancer. But I can't. It just doesn't exist.