A Great Anniversary: 41 years ago today Nixon Resigns.

[kairos12]

I remember it well. For me it ranks up there with the Apollo moon landing as a truly memorable occasion. Today, at the his library, they should have a guy in a Nixon mask greet everyone with that infamous last wave before he boarded the helicopter.

[Historic NY]

1. I remember it well....................

[KingCharlemagne]

4. I well remember the look of absolute glee on my mother's face (since passed), as

it became more and more apparent that Tricky Dick was going to have to resign or be impeached and removed. My mother had hated Tricky Dick since his 1950 Senatorial campaign in California against Helen Gahagan Douglas so her vindication, though a long time in coming, was all the sweeter for its delayed realization.

[SCantiGOP]

15. Double anniversary !

42 years ago, exactly one year earlier, VP and designated attack dog Spiro Agnew shocked people by using a curse word on TV, when he said that stories of him taking bribes were "damned lies." He resigned a few days later and slunk off to such obscurity that the spell checker now doesn't even recognize the word "Spiro".

My Goodbye Nixon story: cutting a class from grad school with a best friend so we could hold a joint and a lighter with the promise that the celebratory reefer could not be lit until the corrupt bastard actually said the word "resign." That was one sweet doobie.

[MBS]

33. my parents' hatred of Tricky Dick goes back to that 1950 election, too

Having campaigned for Helen Gahagan Douglas, they watched his dirty tricks M.O. up close and personal . When Nixon campaigned for president a second time, in 1968, as the "New Nixon", my dad would mutter over his coffee, "There'll never be a new Nixon". Of course, he was right.

His resignation was a happy day for my parents, too!

[Cirque du So-What]

2. Should be a national holiday

'Disgraced Dickie Day' or somesuch.

[femmocrat]

3. I also remember it well.

I watched just about every minute of the hearings. I was a new mom with a colicky baby.

[kairos12]

8. They should make Marvel Action heroes of those committee members-starting with Sam Ervin.

[KingCharlemagne]

38. A spin-off line could include Judge John Sirica, Frank Wills (the Watergate Hotel security guard

who discovered the break-in), and Special Prosecutors Archibald Cox (of 'Saturday Night Massacre' fame) and Leon Jaworski.

[yuiyoshida]

5. Nixon before resignation and full speech, August 8, 1974

[George II]

6. And a reminder...the Nixon Administration became the first to resign...

...a year or two earlier Spiro Agnew resigned, too, putting Gerald Ford in the position of being the only President never to face an election.

[Cirque du So-What]

9. He ran in '76

and the Watergate hangover, amplified by his swift pardon of The Dickster, ensured his loss

[Bluzmann57]

7. I remember it as well.

My parents hated Icky Dick (as my mom called him) and were alternately gleeful because he was leaving and saddened at what this bastard did to the USA. I guess a lot of people felt that way. I was 16 at the time and knew very well that this was a corrupt and evil man.

[lastlib]

10. WOO-HOOO!!1!

. . . . . .

A happy day in my life as well! That basturd should've gone to prison. He should've rotted in the same cell that his evil minion Cheney should be occupying today.

[jalan48]

11. It was a beautiful sunny day where I was.

I really felt like all the work we had done in the 60's and early 70's had paid off. I've never understood how only seven years later we had a rightwing Republican President.

[jwirr]

16. Rw TV preachers and MSM. I was so glad to get rid of him. But we did not get rid of his minions.

They are still around singing their song of hate and war.

My little daughters had worked in the McGovern headquarters with me and even as young as they were they sat and watched him resign.

[jalan48]

35. McGovern was one of my favorites. The country would be a much better place had he won.

[KingCharlemagne]

39. The self-same right-wing Republican President who, as Governor of California, once

promised 'blood in the streets' of California University students advancing those causes of the 60s and 70s. As a teacher, I shall never forgive Reagan that threat. Unforgivable and should have immediately disqualified him for any higher office.

[jalan48]

40. I agree.

I'm still mystified why the Democrats selected a Conservative Southern Democrat in 1976 when just about anyone who had been picked would have won. Carter is a good man but for some reason after Watergate and all the rest of the Republican dirty tricks Democrats went conservative.

[KingCharlemagne]

41. I no longer remember well the nominating cycle of 1976 -- I shall have to take a trip down

the smoke rings of my mind later today, methinks -- but I do have this vague memory of Carter's appeal as a plain-spoken (read 'honest') and D.C. outsider-type figure.

I'm actually a trifle charitably disposed to former President Ford, as he presided over a constitutional crisis and managed to get us through it for the most part with our Constitution intact. Reagan with Iran-Contra would begin the dismantling of that same Constitution a scant 10 years later, of course, but that's not Ford's doing. (In fact, Ford and Reagan were bitter rivals for the Republican nomination in 1976. I came within a hair's breadth of shaking V.P. nominee Nelson Rockefeller's hand at the Crown Center Hotel in Kansas City, MO that August during the Convention. Shook his wife Happy's hand instead. The Yippees were having their annual convention across the street in the park.

[jalan48]

42. Frank Church's committee in the late 70's exposed a lot of the illegal BS that had taken place.

And, only a few years later, Reagan. I remember the Yippees as well, Rubin spoke at our university and the place was packed.

[Saphire]

12. I was 15. Our whole apartment complex

had a massive party. It was the first time that I got absolutely hammered. Good Times

[hollowdweller]

14. I was 14. Was into politics even back then. I still have the newspaper with the headline from then!

[secondwind]

13. I remember we were camping in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with a 5 yr old... heard

about it on the radio, while we sat around a campfire.

[paleotn]

17. So do I.....

....once again, so long dick! A certain 7th grade teacher got royally pissed at me for calling him tricky dick. After all the shit he pulled, he still had supporters to the end. Things haven't changed much.

[Hamlette]

18. the beginning of the end for my father being a republican

My parents lived in Scotland and my sister lived in Denmark and I'd spent 6 weeks with them that summer. My sister lived in a college dorm and I met several students about my age (24). I was surprised and humbled by how much they knew about the US government. They knew all the names, even corrected me when I once confused Ehrlichman and Halderman. I was thinking: "Do they still have a king?" I know nothing about their government and they have followed this as closely as I had.

I went back to Scotland and my parents saw me off on August 6. We'd had to leave early that morning for the drive to the ferry and saw a newspaper for the first time at the dock. The headline was about the "smoking gun" (tape showing Nixon was in on the coverup which he'd denied). When we were done reading about it I asked my Dad if he thought he should still be prez and my dad, a staunch republican and Nixon defender, sadly answered "no". I thought, if my dad says he has to go, he's done for.

Odd, I can remember everything about that coffee shop, sitting at that table, reading the paper and my now deceased dad. He was a great guy and became a flaming liberal not long after that.

[LittleGirl]

19. That's when I felt

They are all crooks and didn't participate in politics until I aged to nearly 50.

[Cyrano]

20. I hate that he was prez when we reached the moon

In 1961, JFK challenged us to put a man on the moon in the next decade. It took only eight years. And on July 20, 1969, men walked on the moon because of the efforts of the tens of thousands of people who were involved in the Apollo project, and because we had a president who challenged us to make it happen.

One of our greatest presidents asked us to do the (virtually) impossible. And one of our worst presidents got to let the entire world see him on TV talking to the first men who landed on the moon. This didn't tarnish the accomplishment. It did, however, tarnish humanities judgment of who they select to be their "leaders."

[love_katz]

21. Thanks for the reminder.

That was one of the best days in U.S. history. I LOVED it! . So long Tricky Dick. And you were a scum bag low life thief no matter what you tried to say to the contrary.

[LiberalElite]

22. A Great Day for America -

[DawgHouse]

23. I was 12 and I remember being a little scared.

I didn't know the whole story about what happened but I remember feeling a little sorry for him and then scared that our president QUIT his job.

I'm over it now

[NBachers]

24. "I am not a crook"

[niyad]

25. the only thing marring that day was that he wasn't on his way to jail.

[Cyrano]

26. Walking on the beach in wingtips

The ultimate demonstration of being an up-tight, anal-retentive person is walking on the beach in wingtip shoes. Nixon would have been the answer to the prayer of a psychoanalyst who wanted to write a best seller.

Click on the link.

https://www.google.com/search?q=nixon+beach+wingtips&biw=885&bih=593&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CB0QsARqFQoTCMnSjKzvmccCFUuggAodU28JvQ&dpr=1.26

[Elwood P Dowd]

27. The first song I heard that morning when the rumors started spreading was......

[BigDemVoter]

28. I remember it very well. . .

I clearly remember Tricky Dick making that idiotic wave before he boarded the helicopter on the White House Grounds. It was embarrassing to watch, but we all cheered and laughed.

[turbinetree]

29. I am currently......................

reading the narrative of what the republican party by Rick Pearlstein and his trilogy (Before the Storm---Barry Goldwater, Nixonland, and Invisible Bridge ) from the 1950's forward from the years of Goldwater to Reagan and what we the public are seeing and feeling a continuation of this play out today with old names different disguises like the John Birch Society (Tea Party hypocrites), and Roger Ailes (Fix noise and a Nixon crony propagandistic ) Pat Buchannan blatant racists and Nixon speech writer and coming soon to the airwaves again and another propagandistic.

What was really disingenuous was that this criminal was pardoned (as Gerald Ford said ------------to heal the country, to move forward------------wrong----------- it showed that you could use the white house as a criminal enterprise---------just like Reagan did in Iran -Contra and George W. Bush----------------torture and invading a country based on a lie and not being prosecuted-----------because of being a "insider&quot , while men who had consciously left the country to oppose a illegal "police action" did not get the same pardon until later and are still considered un-american.

Wage and price controls under Nixon to keep inflation at bay while the military industrial complex was getting full payment-------------yep---------- deception was the name of game back then, just like now-----------but under the banner of red, white and blue.

Yes, I remember it well, protesting, and watching and losing friends in that "war with honor" Nixon ---------crap

I can still see the sweat rolling off his pointed nose and under his quivering lips--------------------good riddance---------- Nixon you should have gone to jail with no free pass---------------not many others were afforded that at all


Amazing history repeating itself and the characters are just the same, just different names in the republican party

[hifiguy]

31. Those three books are an absolute necessity

for understanding why this country is the hopelessly FUBARed mess it is today. Perlstein's is history for the ages and brilliantly written. Compulsively and addictively readable.

[hifiguy]

30. I watched it with my dad.

I was 17 and he was 65. He was an old union guy and a Truman Democrat and Ike was the only republican he ever spoke well of. I was a long-haired, dope smoking high school dropout bass guitarist. We didn't have a lot in common but we both absolutely HATED Richard Nixon. Dad's comment at the end of the speech was on the lines of "good riddance to that crooked bastard." I laughed my butt off.

[Motown_Johnny]

32. I was in DC and actually saw the helicopter

carrying him fly away (I was 12).

While on family vacation, this whole thing broke. We all watched it on TV and after the helicopter took off, it flew off in a direction that made it visible from our hotel room. We were not facing the White House so I didn't see it take off.



On a side note:

The only other time I have been in DC was 2 years ago for the 50th anniversary of the March On Washington rally. A baby panda was born in the DC zoo while I was there, so that was rather unique too.

[Elwood P Dowd]

34. I lived there in 1971 and 1972 when that scumbag was President.

Terrible times in many ways, but at least the repukes were not totally off the charts insane like today.

[spanone]

36. looking back on that day, i smile....

like it was yesterday....

[Facility Inspector]

37. Six years after that

Americans put another cheap thug huslter rethug into the white house.