Jimmy Carter, No. 39

October 1 & 2, 2022

Plains, GA

 

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter

The tiny community of Plains, Georgia, is known for one thing — it is the home of Jimmy Carter.

 

The town, population 758 and home to the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park, plays up that history and connection. The historical park is made up of several sites important in Carter’s life — all with free admission: His boyhood farm, his current home, his school, the railroad depot — home to his 1976 campaign — and brother Billy’s gas station. The one-block “business district” boasts a giant sign on the building that says “Plains, Georgia. Home of Jimmy Carter. Our 39th president.”

 

As Carter was famously known as a peanut farmer, wooden cutout peanuts dot the downtown — as did “Happy 98th Birthday” yard signs on the day we visited: Oct. 1, the birthday of America’s oldest living president.

 

Carter didn’t actually grow up in Plains. No, his family’s farm was 2.5 miles away in the now-defunct community of Archery. And that is where we headed after we landed at the Atlanta airport.

 

A 2 1/2 -hour drive later, we arrived at the farm in mid- to late afternoon. Hurricane Ian was spreading destruction in Florida and the Eastern coast of the United States, but we were far enough inland to be spared and rewarded with a brilliant blue sky and 80-degree temperature—a treat for October.

 

We were not alone. It was Carter’s birthday, so we shouldn’t have been surprised to see a lot of cars, several tour buses and a couple of shuttle buses. Outdoor tents were set up with dozens of folding chairs, obviously for some sort of presentation or lecture. And the National Park Service had set up tables with games and puzzles related to Carter’s presidency.

Turns out, the niceties were for a group of donors from the Carter Center, the Atlanta nonprofit Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter set up to focus on humanitarian causes and the importance of democratic elections after he left the presidency. Fortunately, their festivities were ending as we arrived. The group left to do a drive by of the Carter Compound, where the Carters were enjoying his birthday behind the property’s Secret Service-protected gates. Also in town were former staffers with the White House Communications Agency, who had planned a weekend reunion in Plains. (More on that later).

 

Carter boyhood home

Carter’s boyhood home — the family moved there in 1924, when Jimmy was 4 — is an unassuming, one-level bungalow on the family farm. The house has both a front and back porch, and there are several spacious rooms on each side of the center hallway. Billy, who was 13 years younger, took over Jimmy’s room when Jimmy — who was the oldest of Earl and Lillian Carter’s children — went to the U.S. Naval Academy.

 

The windmill

At first, the family had to use an outhouse. But in 1935, Earl Carter bought a windmill from a mail-order catalog, and built it with piping to provide running water for the kitchen and bathroom with shower and toilet. The shower head is actually a bucket with holes in the bottom, and the water was cold. But still, the family found the cold water superior to the no indoor water. The Carter family also installed electricity in 1938. 

 

Each room in the bungalow is filled with books. Lillian Carter instilled a love of reading in her children, and in fact, encouraged them to read—rather than talk—at the breakfast table.

 

The farm was 360 acres, and Earl Carter grew cotton, corn, peanuts and sugar cane on the land in addition to the family garden and pecan trees. Earl sold it in 1949, with the National Park Service later buying 17 acres back in 1994 to establish the historic site.

 

The family had 20-30 mules and horses to work the crops, plus cows. Of all their chores, the Carter children hated cleaning the cotton the most.

 

The family also had pecan trees. The kids and Lillian would collect the pecans from the trees, walk down the railroad tracks to town and sell their pecans — “free money,” Lillian said.

 

The farm, which looks to have been self-sufficient, has more than a half-dozen buildings, including Earl Carter’s commissary/store, barns, a blacksmith building, pumping shed and tenant houses. It also has a grass tennis court and a reproduction of the windmill. Jimmy Carter voices the audio recordings in the various buildings, explaining life on the farm.

 

In one recording, Carter says that the proudest moment in his young life was when he and a mule were finally able to plow the land.

 

The Carter's general store

The store in particular is quite impressive. It sold just about everything a farmer or tenant could need: sugar, flour, tobacco, food, lard, fatback, salmon, sardines, candy, clothes (gloves, overalls, shoes), medicine, soap, and matches, to name some of the items. It even has a gas pump.

 

Workers paid on credit, with the money coming out of their paychecks on payday. Unfortunately, that meant that the workers were almost always indebted to the Carters.

 

Currently, the farm has some chickens, five goats, a bunch of crops, and a scarecrow.

 

Jack & Rachel Clark

Carter also shares in a recording that the black sharecropper couple that lived on the farm, Jack and Rachel Clark, were huge influences in his life, right behind his parents. Carter would stay with the Clarks when his parents were out of town.

 

The Clark’s house is not that small, but it does show the inferior construction as compared with the Carter home. There are holes between the floor boards, and newspapers hang on the walls as insulation. 

 

Archery no longer exists.  We asked a young volunteer what had happened to everyone.  He said Archery “had dried out.”  We could only ponder what that meant.

 

Having thoroughly toured the farm, we headed out. But we arrived at the high school/visitors center about five minutes before closing time, so we decided to return the next day and headed to the Carter Compound, as it is called, about a one-minute drive up the street.

 

Carter compound guarded
by the Secret Service

There is a public viewpoint on Main Street, technically on the Carters’ property.  The Carter’s house is behind a Secret Service-guarded gate. You can’t see the house, though you can see some other buildings as well as part of the pond where Carter likes to fish. The beginning of Rosalynn Carter’s butterfly garden trail begins here, as well.  We felt the eyes of the unseen Secret Service agents on us as we stared at the compound.

 

The Carters’ house was built in 1961 and has undergone several renovations. The property includes a pool, pond, jogging path, a guest house above Carter’s woodworking studio, and several other buildings.

 

In this house, Carter wrote his inaugural address and other important speeches, interviewed candidates for vice president and Cabinet positions, and met with foreign dignitaries. The house also houses a lot of memorabilia from the White House, a National Park Service guide told us.

 

Afterward, we headed out of town on country roads to spend the night at the Lake Blackshear Resort inside the Georgia Veterans State Park, about 45 minutes south.

 

Lake Blackshear

 

Lake Blackshear is in Cordell, Georgia. Don’t let the word “resort” fool you. It was a lovely space, with lots of things to do, but it wasn’t ostentatious. 

 

Soon after we arrived, we enjoyed a sunset swim in the lake. Our swim was a mere 20 minutes, though — the

Swimming in Lake
Blackshear

water was cold, the sun was setting and we were concerned that the many alligators reportedly living in the area hadn’t gotten the memo that they dislike beaches and cold water, and would come to taste us. There are “Gator Country,” warning signs throughout the resort and state park.

 

After settling in, we had dinner at Cordelia’s restaurant at the resort. Cathy had shrimp and grits, being as we were in the south, while Tom had cioppino. For dessert, we had a delicious peach bread pudding crumble with vanilla ice cream. Yum!

 

The next morning, Cathy went for a run around the state park (both on trails and street) while Tom explored. The park features a bomber and three smaller planes, plus about a dozen tanks on display outdoors. 

Afterward, we rented kayaks for an hour and explored the beautiful cypress swamps and checked out the wildlife. This is more likely where the gators would hang out, but we didn’t see any.  Again, the weather was too cold for them to be active — but Cathy wasn’t taking any chances. She didn’t get too close to cypress, and stayed far away from the turtles on the log we saw (perfect snacks for any gators in the area).

 

Then we headed back north to Plains, after lunch at the resort’s Cypress Grill on the lake. 

 

Visiting Plains and the rest of the historic site

 

We went directly to the Plains K-12 school, where the White House Communications Agency veterans were staging their reunion in the couple-hundred-seat auditorium.

 

The agency is a military branch that is in charge of all the secure communications at the White House — switchboards, communications on trips, internet, etc. The group started doing informal reunions several years ago at the hometowns of various presidents. Typically, a couple dozen people show up. But for the reunion in Plains, a couple hundred people came for the three-day gathering, several of the former staffers told us. We chatted with some of them.  We were told that the WHCA is a semi-secret, 80-year-old military agency. It is part of the White House Military Office.  Apparently, you can’t apply to the Agency, but are hand picked after much vetting.  Cool cloak and dagger stuff.

 

One of the former staffers we met was Ron Peterson, who started working the White House switchboard in 1980 and told us about meeting President Carter during his first week on the job. He passed Carter as the president walked from the Old Executive Office Building (EOB) to the West Wing. They said “good morning” to each other. The agency was in charge of keeping track of Carter at all times. So he told his supervisor Carter was in the West Wing. His supervisor said no, he’s in the EOB. Mr. Peterson said no, I just passed him. Then a marine called to report that he had indeed arrived in the West Wing.  It was an event young Peterson never forgot.

 

The school has been converted to a visitor’s center, with three adjoining rooms displaying information about Carter’s presidency and post-presidency. One room is set up as a schoolroom so visitors can see what school was like for Carter and his fellow students. There also are displays throughout discussing segregation and what that was like for the youth of Plains. Another room is a gift shop (of course).

 

The center is not chock full of historical information, like the Ford Museum was — you need to go to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta for that. But it did have some interesting history and some videos

Carter's high school, now a museum

.

 

Carter established two Cabinet departments: Energy in 1977 and Education in 1979. He also appointed the first Black female Cabinet member — Patricia Harris, who ran the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

 

Carter, a nuclear power expert when he was with the Navy, had been long concerned about the environment and put 32 solar panels on the White House roof.

 

There are many photographs of Rosalynn Carter.  Jimmy and Rosalynn knew each other all their lives. The day after their first date, Jimmy told his mother he was going to marry her.  They married a year later on July 7, 1946.  She was 18 and he was 21.  They’ve now been married for 76 years!

 

Rosalynn was very involved in the presidency, almost shockingly so. Perhaps it was because Carter had learned his lesson after deciding to return from California to Plains when his father died—without consulting her. He also didn’t tell her he was running for the Georgia State Senate. Her wrath was considerable and after that he consulted with her on everything.  During his presidency, she attended Cabinet meetings, held weekly lunches with Carter to discuss policy, was her husband’s representative with world leaders, met with Cabinet officials by herself, reviewed legislation and lobbied Congress. 

 

The school/visitors center also houses videos and displays about his foreign policy accomplishments, particularly the Middle East peace talks at Camp David

 

The year was 1978 and Carter was able to convince the leaders of Egypt (Anwar Sadat) and Israel (Menachem Begin) to meet at Camp David, MD.  The two leaders were so antagonistic toward each other that Carter had to meet with each leader separately and slowly negotiate the terms of a peace treaty.  But within13 days, everyone had agreed to a framework for peace and signed the “Camp David Accords.”  On March 26, 1979, the famous three-way handshake and signing of the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty took place at the White House.  It is Carter’s signal achievement.  The display includes a picture of Anwar Sadat touring Carter’s woodworking studio with him.

 

That was the high-water mark of his presidency.  It was all downhill from there:  boycotting the Moscow 1980 Olympics in response to Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan, 13% inflation, energy shortages, relinquishing ownership of the Panama Canal.  

 

All of that was co-mingled with events in Iran.  Ah, Iran.  

 

In a remarkably bad piece of judgment, Carter said that “Iran, because of the great leadership of the Shah, is an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world” (Zelizer, 2010).  In October of 1979, Carter allowed the Shah to come to the United States for medical treatment, creating a power vacuum in Iran which was quickly filled by the followers of the formerly exiled Ayatollah Khomeini.  The Shah arrived in the U.S. on Oct. 23, 1979 and a few days later, Iranian students stormed the American embassy and took more than 50 diplomats hostage.  The “Iranian Hostage Crisis” would grind on for the rest of his presidency. Carter authorized a rescue mission in 1980 that only resulted in a pile of broken machinery and eight dead soldiers in the Iranian desert. 

 

Carter, who had had an approval rating of 75% earlier in his presidency was now below 30 percent.  His presidency had started on such hope after Ford’s caretaker presidency.  On inauguration day, he, Rosalynn and nine-year-old daughter Amy got out of the presidential limo and walked hand-in-hand down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.  

 

His presidency fizzled out and he never really stood a chance against Republican Ronald Reagan who won 489 electoral votes. Carter won only 49 electoral votes and won only Georgia in the South.  

 

One room was dedicated to the Carter Center, Carter’s signature post-presidency project.  Its mission is to prevent and resolve conflicts, enhance freedom and democracy, and improve health (cartercenter.org).  As laudable as the Center’s mission has been, there is a controversial event that may (or may not) have taken place in 2013.  Tom’s 91-year-old mother, who follows our travels and participated in our last visit to the Gerald Ford Museum, told us that she detests Carter because he had praised the 2013 Venezuelan election.  This would be surprising since Carter was a stickler for clean elections.  In 1989, Carter denounced Panama’s election that was being manipulated by strongman leader President Manuel Noriega.  Carter also helped set up the 1990 Nicaraguan national election at the invitation of Marxist President Daniel Ortega.  With Carter’s system and with the Carter Center monitoring the election, Ortega lost to Violeta Chamorro.  

 

So back to the Venezuelan election.  A web search revealed a May 2013 story in Foreign Policy titled “Jimmy Carter gets it wrong on Venezuela, again.”  The article states that Carter said that the election was "the best in the world."  However, we could find no other references to that statement on the internet.  We read the Carter Center’s report on monitoring the 2013 Venezuelan election but nowhere does it say anything about it being the “best in the world.”  It does say that the automated voting machines worked but that there was no way to verify access to voting machines or to prevent multiple voting by individuals.  The rest of the report noted gross inequities in access to media for non-state candidates as well as a lack of political observers in election audits.  The report offered ten recommendations for better elections.  

 

While at the farm, Tom asked a Carter Center staffer about Carter’s statement.  She said that it “sounds like something he would say” sarcastically but he would have qualified it with all the reasons it was not.  Was he quoted out of context?  This is yet a mystery—at least to us.

 

Afterward, we toured the tiny town of Plains. And we mean tiny.  

 

It is basically on one barely used two-lane road, aptly named Main Street, with a long building of storefronts, a grain silo, several churches and some other businesses.  On Sunday afternoon, although most of the bedraggled stores were open, nobody was moving around on the sidewalk.  There were only a handful of cars (including ours) parked on Main Street.

 

We popped in at Billy Carter’s Service Station, whose 1970s look has been preserved, right down to an old Coca-Cola machine and 1970s gas pumps. There also is a placard discussing the importance of the station historically: The media covering Carter’s campaign turned it into their headquarters. 

 

1976 Presidential headquarters

The railroad depot, almost across the street, was the home of Carter’s 1976 campaign. It was chosen for one simple reason: It was the only public building in town that had a bathroom. It is tiny, basically one room and the bathroom. Trains don’t stop at the station any more. Next to the depot on Main Street as well as the butterfly garden path is a lovely headstone for “the Depot dog: “J-Who’ 1976-86.” The garden path is a beautiful assortment of flowers and plants, all luring bees and butterflies on this warm day. The garden includes benches and even a swinging loveseat to enjoy.

 

Downtown Plains

Since it was a Sunday, many of the town’s stores were closed or had closed early. We finished our trip with a visit to the still open Plains Peanut Store.  A young woman named Tonya served us some peanut butter soft serve ice cream, swirled with chocolate. Delicious! Tonya told us she moved to Georgia from Queens, NY because her sister had a crush on Dominque Wilkens of the Atlanta Hawks professional basketball team.  And now she is in Plains and loving it. She said the cost of living can’t be beat.  Indeed, our soft serve was only $2.50.  

 

Brenda, the store owner—as well as many people around town—said the Carters are gracious and humble and “down to earth.” While we didn’t get to see them, even though we were so close, we did learn that the Carters had come into town Thursday night for dinner. One Park Service guide said that while he is now frail and in a wheelchair, his mind is still sharp and “you had better know your stuff” when talking with him.

 

We’ll end our journey by sharing a little story of how Carter and Gerald Ford became friends after the conclusion of their presidencies. They began their friendship as they travelled to Egypt in 1981 for the funeral of Anwar Sadat who had been gunned down by extremists because of the made peace he had made with Israel.  Carter and Ford agreed to help each other raise funds for their presidential libraries.  Over time they worked on many projects together.  They became so close that Ford asked Carter to give the eulogy at his funeral, which Carter did.  It’s a great example of how great men can put politics behind them and work together for the good of the country.

 

Directions

 

Plains, GA is located on U.S. 280 West about 2.5 hours south of Atlanta airport.

 

References

 

Cardenas, Jose R.  2013.  Jimmy Carter gets it wrong on Venezuela, again.  Foreign Policy, May 7, 2013.

 

Carter, Jimmy.  2015.  A Full Life, A: Reflections at Ninety.  Simon & Schuster.  New York, NY.

 

DeFrank, Thomas.  2007.  Write it When I’m Gone.  Berkley Books.  New York, NY.

 

Rubenstein, David.  2019.  The American Story:  Conversations with Master Historians.  Bob Woodward on Richard M. Nixon  Simon & Schuster.  New York, NY. 

 

Study Mission of The Carter Center 2013 Presidential Elections in Venezuela, Final Report.  April 14, 2013.  Cartercenter.org

 

Sullivan, Kevin and Jordan, Mary.  2021.  The Carter’s Record-Setting Love Story.  The Washington Post, July 6, 2021.

 

Zelizer, Julian.  2010.  Jimmy Carter.  Times Books.  Henry Holt and Company.  New York, NY. 

Gerard R. Ford - No. 38 - Grand Rapids, MI - April 9, 2022

Gerald R. Ford

What is the best thing Gerald Ford did as president?

Why, build a pool at the White House, of course.

 

As avid swimmers, we were thrilled to learn that Ford was the president who installed the outdoor pool on the White House grounds. And he didn’t build it for his kids or to float on his back. He was a lifelong, dedicated swimmer who did laps every day, sometimes even twice a day in his retirement years. He quipped, “Fifteen minutes in the pool are worth two martinis” (DeFrank, 2007).

 

In fact, on his first day as president, the first thing he did in the morning was take a swim before heading to the White House.

 

In 1975, the pool, along with a cabana and showers, joined the list of amenities that first families have added to the White House. The outdoor pool, which joined the indoor pool built when FDR was in office, was the only change Ford made to the White House.

 

We learned about Ford’s love of swimming at the Gerald R. Ford Museum at the beginning of April 2022. It was a cold, gray, wet, raw day - with snow in the morning, despite the calendar saying it was April. A good day to spend inside a museum.  Tom’s 90-year-old mother, Marianne, who lives in nearby Kalamazoo, joined us.  (When we started our presidential journey 12 years ago, we had envisioned reaching Gerald Ford far earlier and having Tom’s father, Robert, join us.  Sadly, we lost Robert last summer.)

 

Gerald Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, MI.

The museum, which lies along the Grand River in Grand Rapids, Mich., is sleek and modern looking. It features a lot of open space, and it offers visitors many short films and interactive videos to learn from. It covers his entire life — from displays about his abusive father and loving stepfather to his Eagle Scout career (the only president to be an Eagle Scout), his political career and finally, his funeral. 

 

One display focuses on his love of sports. Growing up, he played basketball, track and, of course, was on the high school swim team (in the photo of his team, he towers above his teammates). His real love, though, was football, and the museum includes information about his attempted recruitment to the NFL by the Green Bay Packers — by Curly Lambeau himself(!) — and the Detroit Lions. While flattered, Ford opted to go to Yale Law School.

 

Ford's swimming days -
He is in the front row far left.

His stepfather was a big believer in sports, saying that sports “taught you how to live, how to compete but always by the rules, how to be part of a team, how to win, how to lose, and how to come back to try again.”

 

Another interesting fact highlighted in the display about Ford’s teenage years: In high school, he had a choice to go to a new high school, considered elite, or to South High, populated by children of immigrants. A family friend and his basketball coach told his parents to send him to South High, where “he will learn more about living.” And he did.

 

Of course, the museum is focused on Ford’s legacy as a congressman, vice president and president.  When he entered Congress in 1948, he was advised to either be a “parliamentarian” or get on important committees and become an expert.  So, he worked his way onto the Public Works Committee and the Appropriations Committee.  He spent 25 years in Congress, reaching House minority leader in 1964.  In October 1973, Nixon chose him as vice president to replace Spiro Agnew, who was caught up in a bribery and tax fraud scandal.  

 

Ford married Betty Bloomer, a ballerina and model in 1948.  When he proposed to her earlier that year, he told her, “I’d like to marry you, but we can’t get married until next fall and I can’t tell you why” (Thomas, 1999)  He had not yet announced he was running for Congress.

 

And while we kid (sort of) about the pool being the most important thing Ford accomplished as president, many — including George H.W. Bush — would argue that Ford’s presidency was critical to the nation because he “restored the integrity of the Oval Office.”

 

After taking office after the Watergate scandal, Ford said:  “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.  Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men….”

 

Ford was a modest president, eschewing the trappings of power.  He insisted that the Marine Band play the University of Michigan fight song instead of Hail to the Chief when he walked into rooms.

 

Ford signed the Helsinki Accords with the Soviet Union in 1975.  The agreement helped improve relations between the United States and the USSR and made travel to Eastern Europe easier.  For Tom’s family, it meant his parents could travel to their birth country Hungary with less fear of arrest for leaving the country ‘illegally’ in 1957.  Ford said later that the Helsinki Accords led to the downfall of the Soviet Union because of the human rights provisions in it.

 

Asked for her recollection of Ford, Tom’s mother replied, “I remember him coming down from an airplane and almost fell, and then people made fun of him.”  It’s true. Despite his athleticism, he had a reputation for clumsiness – as immortalized by Chevy Chase in Saturday Night Live.

 

Ford was subject to not one, but two, assassination attempts, both in the same month!  First, a Charlie Manson follower named Squeaky Fromme took a point-blank shot at Ford in Sacramento, CA.  Luckily, there was no round in the firing chamber of the loaded revolver.  Later that month of September 1975,  Sarah Jane Moore took two shots at Ford in San Francisco and missed him both times.

 

In addition to pardoning Nixon, Ford gave amnesty to Vietnam war draft dodgers.  He also pushed for admittance of 120,000 Vietnamese immigrants when South Vietnam fell in April 1975.

 

The economy was in the dumps.

During most of his time in the White House, the economy was in the dumps.  There is a line graph at the museum that shows inflation and the unemployment rate during his presidency.  In August 1974, inflation was running at 10.9% and the unemployment rate was 5.5%.  Inflation would rise to 12.4% by the end of that year and by mid-1975, unemployment was at 8.6%.  

 

Between the economy and the Nixon pardon, Ford’s run for a full four-year term in 1976 was doomed.  Another faux pas:  he dumped his Vice President Nelson Rockefeller for Kansas Senator Bob Dole.  (He never forgave himself for being disloyal to Rockefeller.)  

 

Conservative California Gov. Ronald Reagan sensed vulnerability in Ford and challenged him for the Republican nomination.  He almost won, too.  Ford held on by only 117 delegates out of 2,300.  In the general election, Ford lost to Georgia Gov, Jimmy Carter 297 to 240.  It didn’t help matters that Ford proclaimed in his second debate with Carter that “There is no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe, and there will never be under a Ford administration.”  Whoops.  

 

But Ford always believed he could have beaten Carter if Reagan hadn’t weakened him.  He said later, ““I deserved an opportunity to run…” (DeFrank, 2007).  Reagan’s success as a politician always bothered Ford.  He “considered Reagan a superficial, disengaged, intellectually lazy showman who didn’t do his homework and clung to a naïve, unrealistic, and essentially dangerous worldview.” (Defrank, 2007)

 

In retirement, Ford continued to crave his swimming.  At age 90, he still swam twice a day.  When he was sick at age 92, he complained, “My damn doctors won’t let me go in the pool.”  (DeFrank, 2007 ). 

 

Tom and his mother, Marianne
outside the museum.

Ford died in 2006 at the age of 93.  He and his wife, Betty, are buried just outside the museum.  We walked along a path to pay our respects.  Ford was the right president at the right time—honest, hardworking, and self-effacing.  He used to quip, “I’m a Ford, not a Lincoln.”  

Directions

 

The Gerald R. Ford Museum is located just off Highway 131 in downtown Grand Rapids.

 

 

References

 

DeFrank, Thomas.  2007.  Write it When I’m Gone.  Berkley Books.  New York, NY.

 

Thomas, Helen.  1999.  Front Row at the White House;  My Life and Times. Scribner.  New York, NY. 

Richard M. Nixon - No. 37 - Washington, DC and Arlington, VA - Dec. 18, 2021

                                                                  

Richard Nixon was a thinker, an internationalist,  a devoted husband and father.  He was also a paranoid, a loner, an anxious person, sometimes a drunk; a man uncomfortable in his own skin (Bradlee, 1995).  He didn’t mix well with people.  “Cocktail party conversations is not a subject for which President Nixon will go down in history,” said Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s secretary of state (Wicker, 1991).  

 

Nixon is, of course, famous—or infamous—as the first president to resign for his activities related to the Watergate break-in.  That would be the focus of our Nixon visit.

 

* * *

In mid-December of 2021, we were still avoiding flying as the  new omicron variant swept across the country. So, we decided that the best thing to do would be to visit places associated with Watergate.

 

Now, this particular adventure didn’t sound too promising. Our itinerary: Drive from our Maryland Beltway home into downtown Washington, D.C., look at an office building, head across the Potomac River into Arlington, look at a parking garage. 

 

Sounds fun, right?

 

But it actually turned out to be a really fun day trip, almost like a leg of Cathy’s favorite TV show, The Amazing Race.  We dragged our ever-suffering friend, Dottie, who was already a three-time veteran of our presidential visits.

 

* * *

 

Nixon grew up poor in a house in Yorba Linda, CA without running water or electricity.  His entire life he felt looked down upon by those who were better off, the “elite.”  He felt like he had to work harder than anyone to prove himself.  He attended a small college nearby, Whittier College, and went out for football, not an obvious sport for his lean frame. But again, he needed to prove himself.  But he could not excel in the sport and didn’t earn a letter.  

 

But he did well in law school, graduating 3^rd of 25 from Duke Law School in 1937.

 

* * *

Nixon is known as a fervent anti-communist, which is ironic because outside Watergate, Nixon is best remembered as president who opened the West to Red China when he made his historic visit there in 1972.  

 

His anti-Communist views helped him win his first political fight against incumbent California Rep. Jerry Voorhuis in 1946.  Nixon hinted at ties between Voorhuis and Communists.  The ploy worked and Nixon won his seat 57 percent to 43 percent.  

 

Rep. Nixon was placed on the House Un-Americans Committee and worked closely with Sen. Joseph McCarthy ferreting out “Communists” from American government and industry.  Nixon achieved instant fame by promoting Whittaker Chambers, an editor at Time, in his testimony against Alger Hiss, a former State Department official and president of the Carnegie Endowment, regarding allegations of spying for the Soviets.  (Hiss was eventually convicted of perjury in 1950.)

 

Soon Nixon was on his way to the Senate.  

 

In the election of 1950, he was paired against fellow Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas, a former actress.  Nixon again used allegations of Communist ties to weaken his opponent.  He also hinted that her husband, Melvyn Douglas, was Jewish.  He won with 59 percent of the vote, but his tactics earned him the nickname, “Trickie Dickie.”

 

Sen. Nixon didn’t spend much time in the Senate.  His reputation as a fervent anti-communist prompted Dwight Eisenhower to choose him as his vice-presidential running mate in 1952.  But first, Nixon had to survive the “Fund Crisis.”  He was accused of having a secret fund to buy himself and wife, Pat, luxurious items such as a fur coat.  He was pressed by Eisenhower to take his case to the nation.  Nixon went on TV and said that Pat had a “respectable cloth coat.”  He also said that the family had been given a cocker spaniel named Checkers as a gift.  He said his daughters loved the dog, and he wasn’t giving it back.  His “Checkers” speech, heard by about 60 million Americans, garnered sympathy for Nixon and he was cleared to run.

 

As vice president, Nixon was given broad responsibility including foreign assignments.  He advocated for a space agency after the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957.   And he kept up his anti-communist obsession.  When he visited Uruguay, he debated the communist leader of students and had a respectable showing.  But when he tried a street “debate” with 2,000 demonstrators in Lima, Peru, it didn’t go as well.  The demonstrators became threatening, and he had to take refuge in his car.  Things got worse in Venezuela when crowds violently attacked his car.

 

He was never close to Eisenhower and was having invited to Eisenhower’s Gettysburg farm home.  When Eisenhower was asked by a reporter about Nixon’s accomplishments as vice present, Eisenhower famously replied, “If you give me a week, I might think of one.  I don’t remember.”

 

When it was Nixon’s turn to run for president, he went head-to-head with rising Democratic star, Sen. John F. Kennedy.  They held the nation’s first televised debate on Sept. 26, 1960, before a huge audience of 70 million. (The debate is available on YouTube.) Kennedy appeared self-assured and he opened the debate by attacking Communism, one of Nixon’s signature issues. Nixon was defensive throughout but came across better than had been expected. Sometimes Nixon appeared nervous, but he generally gave a strong showing.  It is interesting to learn that Nixon had a severe blood infection during the debate. Nixon was better on substance than style; critics said that Nixon had a 5 o’clock shadow and that his shirt collar was too big.  

 

Nixon pushed as hard as he always did becoming the first presidential candidate to campaign in all 50 states.  

 

In the end, Nixon could not overcome Kennedy’s good looks and charisma.  He lost a close popular vote race (a difference of 118,000 votes out of nearly 69 million cast).  But he lost the Electoral College vote by a larger margin: 303-219. 

 

JFK’s campaign was accused of stealing votes, including having Chicago Mayor Richard Daly find “ways” of increasing the vote count in Illinois.  (But winning Illinois would not have flipped the election.)  Nixon, to his credit, refused to contest the results because he didn’t want to harm the democratic process.  “I will not give this nation’s enemies an opportunity to downgrade democracy and to say that our elections were fraudulent. Those who lose accept the verdict and support those who win,” he said.  

 

In 1962, Nixon took a shot at the California governorship but lost decisively to Edmund Brown (52 percent to 47 percent).  His political career was seemingly over.  Nixon whined to the press, “You don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.”

 

But he was back in 1968.  The Republicans had built a solid base in the South, partially due to the backlash against LBJ’s Great Society civil rights initiatives.  The Republicans had courted the Southerners who had been solidly Democratic since before the Civil War.  But now many Whites resented the gains Blacks had made.  Nixon ran on a “law and order” platform, an often-used racial scare tactic, and recruited Maryland Gov. Spiro Agnew as his running mate because Agnew had a tough-on-Blacks “law and order” image.  

 

Much later it became clear that Nixon’s staff had illegally become involved in foreign policy during the election.  Henry Kissinger had leaked information regarding the Paris Peace Talks to the Republicans.   The Republicans sent messages to President Thieu of South Vietnam that he should stall the Paris Peace talks because he would get a better deal from Nixon than Democratic candidate Hubert Humphry.  (It was never proven that Nixon was personally involved in these tactics.)  Nixon won the election with 301 electoral votes to Humphrey’s 191 votes.  (Segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace collected 46 electoral votes as a third-party candidate.)

 

With Nixon’s election, the Republican Party was virtually flipped ideologically with the Democratic Party of the 1800’s.  The Republicans now stood for limited government and resentment of minorities.  The proud party of Abraham Lincoln was no more.

 

Unlike LBJ, Nixon preferred to focus on foreign rather than domestic policy.  (He and Foreign Policy Advisor Henry Kissinger worked closely, generally excluding the State Department from their activities.) He would make major breakthroughs with China and the USSR.  But Vietnam was the tar baby that he could never shake.  

 

His major domestic policy achievement was signing landmark environmental legislation.  Of course, he was pressured into it by a Democratic-controlled Congress.  1970 was the year of the first Earth Day, and Congress passed environmental protection bills one after another.  These laws were passed and signed by Nixon:  the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Coastal Zone Management Act.  Nixon vetoed the Clean Water Act, but Congress overrode it.  The most important bill (which
was signed prior to Earth Day) was the National Environmental Policy Act, which guaranteed environmental review of all major projects.  In December 1970, Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

 

It’s ironic that the anticommunist crusader, Nixon, warmed to the idea of opening relations to China.  It was a gradual process that included China inviting the U.S. ping pong team to play in China in April 1971.  Next, Kissinger a made secret trip to China in July 1971 to arrange the next visit—President Nixon’s.  Nixon and a delegation visited China for six days in February 1972.  Nixon met with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and even met with Chairman Mao.  The intent was to keep China from becoming too close to the Soviet Union.  (The cost was acknowledging China’s claim that Taiwan is a part of China—a troubling issue to this day.)

 

In May 1972, Nixon traveled to the Soviet Union to hold a summit with Leonid Brezhnev.  During the meeting, the U.S. and Soviets agreed to peaceful coexistence and signed an antiballistic missile (ABM) treaty.  (While there, Nixon had the opportunity to speak on Russian TV directly to Soviet citizens.)  During his term, Nixon would hold three summits with the Soviets.  

 

Like LBJ, Nixon did not want to be the first president to lose a war.  He worked toward what he called “peace with honor.”  But to pressure North Vietnam toward peace, he needed to escalate the war—secretly.  In May 1969, the New York Times revealed that the United States had taken the war into Cambodia earlier in the year, bombing North Vietnamese positions there.  (Nixon retaliated against the media by authorized illegal wire taps of some of his aides and some journalists—a slippery slope to Watergate.)   

 

In April, ground troops were authorized in Cambodia.  Mass demonstrations followed in the United States.  On May 4, 1970, National Guardsmen shot dead four protesting students and bystanders at Kent State University.  

 

The appetite for war was gone, but it would take until March 1973 to pull out the last of the troops and for Congress to cut all funding for the war.  In two more years (April 30, 1975), the North Vietnamese conquered South Vietnam.  

 

With the illegal bugging noted above, Nixon was on the road to Watergate.  His team used “bugging, following people, false press leaks, fake letters, cancelling campaign rallies, investigating campaign workers’ private lives, planting spies, stealing documents, planting provocateurs in pollical demonstrations” as political tactics  (Bernstein and Woodward, 1974).

 

When Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers were printed in the New York Times on June 13, 1971, Nixon was determined to stop the leaks.  His team created a team of “plumbers”  operating out of the Executive Office Building.  They were directed to break into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist on Labor Day weekend 1971 and dig up dirt.  E. Howard Hunt, a former CIA officer, and G. Gordon Liddy, a former CIA agent, were in charge.  In addition, Nixon’s aides created an “enemies list” that included 20 names such as Representative Ron Dellums of California, journalist Daniel Schorr and actor Paul Newman.

 

The actual Watergate break-in took place on June 17, 1972.  The buildings were described as a “futuristic complex, with its serpent’s-teeth concrete balustrades…”  (Bernstein and Woodward, 1974).  The five plumbers, dressed in business suits and wearing Playtex surgical gloves, entered the building carrying walkie-talkies, film, cameras, tear gas and wiretaps. Their target was the Democratic National Committee Headquarters located on the sixth floor.  A security guard noticed that some door locks had been taped over and called police. The police found and arrested the five plumbers. One of the arrested men carried an address book that included the phrases “W.House” and “W.H.”  

 

It would take years for the entire plot to be revealed and traced directly to the Oval Office.  The story included hush money, firings, resignations, congressional hearings, a special prosecutor, missing tapes, a Supreme Court decision, three articles of impeachment and finally Nixon’s resignation on August 8, 1974.  Much of the early sleuthing and exposure of the scandal came from the hard work of two young Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward (29) and Carl Bernstein (28).   Their work is chronicled in their excellent book, All the President’s Men (1974).  

 

* * *

 

Despite being a lifelong Washington-area resident, Cathy always thought the Watergate complex consisted of two buildings — the residences and the infamous office building. She was wrong. Situated along the Potomac River and next to the Kennedy Center, the massive complex consists of six curved buildings, with several of them encircling a big courtyard. The buildings were constructed between 1963 and 1971, with the first two, the hotel and office building, opening in 1967. It was the first mixed-use development in D.C., and the buildings’ curvature was considered a good example of the new modern architecture. It was designed by Luigi Moretti, an Italian architect who was a favorite of Mussolini’s and had been jailed briefly during World War II, according to Washingtonian.

 

Fun fact: The Italian company that owned the property at the time, SGI, was partially owned by the Vatican. 

 

Fifty-odd years later, the buildings don’t look so modern, with their gray exteriors and thousands of teeth protruding from every floor’s balcony. Still, they look better than the boxy, brutalist design of many of the federal buildings downtown.

 

While we were hunting down the office building and wandering through the courtyard outside the Watergate Hotel, we found Watergate-themed private plastic people pods on the terrace.  Excited about this bit of unexpected Watergate-themed nostalgia, we were able to explore them unencumbered, since they were still closed for the morning.

 

These are called “Scandalous Igloos” and are offered by the Next Whisky Bar inside the hotel. Each igloo features a comfy sofa and chairs with blankets, table, typewriter and Victrola. The floors are the best part: They are made of a collage of newspaper front pages about Nixon’s resignation. The igloos also offer books about the scandal and historical quotes hanging on the igloo’s walls.

 

They would be a great place — though pricey — to take out-of-town guests during the fall, winter or early spring. (It would be an oven in the hot Washington summers.) On weekends, renting an igloo will set you back $300, with an additional $75-per-person minimum for food and drink, according to the hotel website. But for a true D.C. historical splurge, it might be worth it.

 

After we left the Watergate, we drove across the Teddy Roosevelt bridge into Rosslyn to hunt down the parking garage where a mysterious Watergate leaker nick-named Deep Throat and Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward met late at night between October 1972 and November 1973.

 

* * *

 

Deep Throat set up an intricate system to arrange meetings with Woodward.  Woodward had a flower pot on his balcony in which someone had once planted a small red flag.  Woodward was to move the pot to the back of the balcony when he wanted a meeting with Deep Throat.  Deep Throat would circle page 20 of Woodward’s morning copy of the New York Times and indicate the time of the meeting.  Woodward never figured out how Deep Throat got to his newspaper.  Woodward was required to take several modes of transportation to the late meetings, often taxiing to one part of town before switching taxis to make his way to the garage in Rosslyn, VA.  Woodward and Deep Throat would spend hours in the garage, sitting, standing, pacing, as they traded information. 

 

* * *

 

With help from Atlas Obscura, we found the Oakhill Office Building garage and even the proper entrance to reach the exact spot — space D32 — where Woodward and Deep Throat met.  (We now know Deep Throat was Mark Felt, the second most senior official in the FBI.)

 

And yes, we parked in space D32. That level of the garage was completely empty, and we couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

 

The inside of the garage is dark and dingy and now rundown — in fact, the office building and garage are slated to be torn down. You can see why they chose here to meet. You can also see why Woodward was a bit scared walking down the stairs to the back of the garage in the middle of the night. 

 

Taped on the support column next to the parking space where they met, near the exit door at the back of the garage, is a computer printout with a bit of information about their meetings. Outside the garage near the entrance—250 feet north of the entrance, according to Atlas Obscura—is a historical plaque commemorating the importance of those meetings. It was erected by Arlington County after Felt’s attorney revealed his identity in 2005 when Felt was in his early 90’s.

 

* * *

 

After our garage trip, we walked a mile toward the Court House Metro station and had lunch at a Corner Bakery. That was a mistake, although we do like Corner Bakery. On the way back, we took a different street with locally owned restaurants that likely would have been better choices. 

 

(After our visit we watched the movie version of All the President’s Men, an Academy Award-nominated firm starting Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.  We were disappointed that the garage depicted in the movie is not the same as the original.  The details of the garage location had not yet been revealed by Bob Woodward when the movie was made in 1975-1976.)

 

* * *

 

Within a month of taking office, President Gerald Ford issued Nixon a full pardon—to allow the nation to move on.

 

The irony is that Nixon didn’t have to resort to these illegal tactics to win the 1972 election.  Nixon won a landslide victory with 520 electoral votes, with Democrat George McGovern winning only 17.  (McGovern won Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.) 

 

Nixon spent the rest of his life rehabilitating himself.  He became an elder statesmen with respected foreign policy views.  He wrote more than a dozen books with poignant observations of world politics.  In his last op-ed published in the New York Times in 1994, he warned about the danger that Russia could pose in the future when he presciently wrote:  “The independence of all the former Soviet states is important. The independence of Ukraine is indispensable. A Russian-Ukrainian confrontation would make Bosnia look like a Sunday-school picnic. Moscow should be made to understand that any attempt to destabilize Ukraine -- to say nothing of outright aggression -- would have devastating consequences for the Russian-American relationship. Ukrainian stability is in the strategic interest of the United States. To the extent that Kiev is prepared to proceed with economic reforms, supporting these efforts should be a national security priority for the U.S.”

 

Directions

 

The Watergate is located at 2600 Virginia Avenue NW in Washington, DC.

 

The “Deep Throat” garage is located at 1816 N Nash St, Arlington, VA beneath the Oak Hill Office building.

 

References

Bernstein, Carl and Woodward, Bob.  1974.  All the President’s Men.  Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.  New York, NY.

 

Bradlee, Ben.  1995.  A Good Life:  Newspapering and Other Adventures.  Simon & Schuster.  New York, NY.

 

Bradlee, Ben.  1975.  Conversations with Kennedy.  W.W. Norton & Company.  New York, NY.

 

Dallek, Robert.  2003.  An Unfinished Life:  John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963.    Little Brown and Company,  New York, NY.

 

Drew, Elizabeth.  2007.  Richard M. Nixon.  Henry Holt & Company.  New York, NY.

 

Nixon, Richard.  1994.  Moscow, March '94: Chaos and Hope.  New York Times.  March 25, 1994

 

Rubenstein, David.  2019.  The American Story:  Conversations with Master Historians.  Simon & Schuster.  New York, NY.  Bob Woodward on Richard Nixon.

 

Thomas, Helen.  1999.  Front Row at the White House;  My Life and Times. Scribner.  New York, NY. 

 

Wicker, Tom.  1991.  One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream.  Random House.  New York, NY.

 

 

Websites

 

Watergate.info

 

atlasobscura.com