Where is nixon from

Nixon was re-elected to Congress in and two years later, in , won a seat in the U. In , General Dwight Eisenhower selected the year-old first-term senator to be his vice presidential running mate. A few months after accepting the nomination, Nixon became the target of a negative campaign that raised questions about money and gifts he allegedly received from industry lobbyists.

Eisenhower and Nixon won the election of and were re-elected in In , Nixon claimed the Republican presidential nomination, but lost one of the closest elections in American history to U. Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts. The turning point of the campaign came in the first-ever nationally televised presidential debate. During the broadcast, Nixon appeared pale, nervous and sweaty compared with his tan, well-rested and vigorous opponent. He claimed that the media disliked him and had slanted campaign coverage in favor of his handsome and wealthy opponent.

Nixon returned home to California, where he practiced law and launched a campaign for governor in When he lost this election as well, many observers believed that his political career was over. He prevailed in the U. Nixon took office at a time of upheaval and change in the U. In January , Nixon administration officials reached a peace agreement with Communist North Vietnam. The last American combat troops left Vietnam in March of that year.

The hostilities continued, however, and in North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam and reunited the country under Communist rule. He reduced tensions between these Communist nations and the U. Nixon also signed important treaties to limit the production of nuclear weapons. While Nixon was running for re-election in , operatives associated with his campaign broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington , D.

Facing impeachment by Congress, Nixon resigned from office on August 9, He was replaced by Vice President Gerald Ford , who a month later pardoned Nixon for any wrongdoing. A number of administration officials were eventually convicted of crimes related to the Watergate affair. Republicans split 22 to 22 on the vote, with Democrats unanimously in favor. Thus, after Eisenhower's attempt to use Nixon to contain McCarthy failed, the administration had resorted instead to quiet resistance, allowing McCarthy himself to bring about his own downfall.

Apart from his specific assignments, Nixon also served as the administration's general political expert. No one in the administration had a more thorough knowledge of the way Congress worked and how to get legislation passed. He always attended cabinet meetings and contributed his insight by pointing out the political implications of any decision. He urged cabinet members to get to know the chairmen of the committees that had jurisdiction over their departments. Eisenhower's speech writer, Emmett Hughes, described Nixon as "crisp and practical and logical: never proposing major objectives, but quick and shrewd in suggesting or refining methods.

Cabinet members, he said, should not be afraid to make partisan speeches and should concentrate them in competitive congressional districts. He even suggested that they should welcome the chance to appear on such television interview shows as Meet the Press.

Meanwhile, both Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles used Nixon to publicly explore policy options and propose ideas that they were wary of advocating themselves. As Ike put it, "He [Nixon] can sometimes take positions which are more political than it would be expected that I take. Nowhere was this approach more in evidence than on the campaign trail.

The Republican strategy in had been simple. While Eisenhower ran a positive campaign that emphasized his appeal to citizens of all parties, Nixon's job was to "hammer away at our opponents. Nixon's campaign was a hard-hitting anticommunist assault, charging that Truman's secretary of state, Dean Acheson, "had lost China, much of Eastern Europe, and had invited the Communists to begin the Korean War," and calling Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson a graduate of Acheson's "Cowardly College of Communist Containment.

In fact, it seemed as though he were campaigning throughout his vice presidency. In he hit the campaign trail once more on behalf of congressional Republicans. In many ways, Nixon emerged as the party's spokesman during these years because Eisenhower was unwilling to take on that role. Eisenhower was determined to be president of "all the people," and did not "intend to make of the presidency an agency to use in partisan elections.

According to White House Chief of Staff Sherman Adams, "[Ike] told Nixon and others, including myself, that he was well aware that somebody had to do the hard-hitting infighting, and he had no objection to it as long as no one expected him to do it.

The outcome was not favorable for the GOP, which lost two Senate seats and 16 House seats, and Nixon received little public credit for his efforts. Eisenhower's ambivalence about Nixon's attacking campaign style emerged forcefully two years later in their reelection campaign. Eisenhower told Nixon that he should try to elevate the level of his speeches and that he should avoid "the exaggerations of partisan political talk. It seemed that Nixon had finally decided to put away his rhetorical boxing gloves.

But it was a false impression. Nixon was uncomfortable with this approach. Republican crowds did not react with the same vigor as when he ripped into the Democrats, and he found it hard to suppress his "normal partisan instincts," and to "campaign with one arm tied behind [his] back. Ike, however, soon remembered why he had chosen Nixon in the first place. As the campaign intensified and Stevenson running once more and the Democrats stepped up their attacks on the administration, Eisenhower decided to give his aggressive vice president a bit more rope.

He told him, "Look, Dick, we've agreed that your speeches generally in this campaign ought to be on a higher level than in the past. Still I think it's perfectly all right for you to pick up on some of these wild charges and throw them back at the other fellow. So, while Eisenhower's staff privately worried about Nixon "running loose through the country," the "old Nixon" reemerged with Eisenhower's blessing and once more provided Democrats with their favorite target.

Two years later, many of Nixon's friends advised him to stay away from the congressional elections. Despite Eisenhower's continued popularity and his comfortable victory in , Republicans had lost ground in Congress in and again in Most observers predicted further losses in Many of Nixon's friends in the party, anticipating that he would run for president in , thought that being associated with the certain disaster of would only get in the way. As Tom Dewey told him, "I know that all those party wheelhorses will tell you stories that will pluck your heartstrings, but you're toying with your chance to be President.

Don't do it, Dick. You've already done enough, and is what counts now. Eisenhower was not willing to do so, and no one else could. In the end, Nixon could not resist, and he took to the campaign trail once more. He was more disenchanted with the party's organization than ever, and the results of the elections confirmed his pessimism. He reported to the cabinet, "There were just too many turkeys running on the Republican ticket.

The press proclaimed that the big winner was Rockefeller, while the big loser was Nixon. Years later, Nixon would lament, "Perhaps Dewey had been right: I should have sat it out. Rank-and-file Republicans did not forget that Nixon had tried to help, and party leaders throughout the nation owed the vice president a significant political debt.

He would collect in While Nixon's roles as political adviser and campaigner were the most important ones in defining his place in the administration, it was his role as international goodwill ambassador that brought him the most praise. Henry Wallace had been the first vice president to travel abroad, but no one either before or since did so with greater fanfare than Nixon. On most occasions his visits were intended only as gestures of American friendship.

Nixon's trip to Argentina for the inauguration of that nation's first democratically elected leader was one such visit. Sometimes, however, the vice president's travels had a more substantive purpose.

The letter made it clear that the United States would not support a South Korean invasion of the North, and Nixon was sent to obtain a promise from Rhee that such an action would not take place.

Nixon visited a number of countries in Asia from Japan to Pakistan, travelling 38, miles. He established a practice of meeting with students, workers, and opposition leaders as well as with government officials. His openness seemed popular in most of these nations, and he developed an abiding interest in the continent and its politics.

His travels gave him a reputation at home as an expert on Asian affairs that would remain with him throughout his life.

He also travelled to Austria in to meet with Hungarian refugees and to Africa a year later. But Nixon's most famous trips were still to come. When he set off for South America in , he anticipated an uneventful tour that would merely distract him from his attempts to talk the administration into cutting taxes at home. He was unprepared for the vehemence of the anti-American demonstrations he would encounter from those opposing U. In the capital, Caracas, the scene turned violent. A mob surrounded his car and began rocking it back and forth, trying to turn it over and chanting, "Death to Nixon.

But by that time, the car had been nearly demolished and the vice president had seen his fill of South America. President Eisenhower sent a naval squadron to the Venezuelan coast in case they needed to rescue the vice president, but Nixon quietly left the country the next day.

He returned to Washington to a hero's welcome. Over 15, people met him at the airport, including President Eisenhower and the entire cabinet. Over the next few days, politicians of both parties throughout the nation praised Nixon's courage, and congratulations poured in by the thousands.

It was Nixon's shining moment, but the respect was more the result of Americans rallying behind their vice president than any change in Nixon's standing.

Nixon's final trip abroad brought him more favorable reviews. As he and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev toured the exhibit, they engaged in a lengthy and sometimes heated debate on the merits of capitalism versus communism. Much of this debate was captured by American television, which transmitted an image of the nation's vice president standing in a model American kitchen defending American progress against a belligerent Khrushchev. The encounter became known as "The Kitchen Debate," and the nation once more took pride in its feisty vice president.

Nixon concluded his trip with a minute speech on Soviet television, becoming the first American official to address the Soviet Union in a live broadcast. He stressed "peaceful competition" between the East and West and expressed hope that the "Spirit of Geneva" would include a freer exchange of information.

On his return, Nixon stopped in Warsaw, Poland, and was given a remarkable and touching reception by the people of that city, who crowded the streets, throwing roses and shouting, "Long Live Nixon. In all, Nixon visited 54 countries and met 45 heads of state during his eight years as vice president, setting a standard difficult for his successors to match and his opponents to discount.

The vice president, of course, did not travel alone. Pat Nixon always accompanied her husband overseas and established her own role in spreading American "goodwill. Still, when her husband received the vice presidential nomination, she took up campaigning with him once again.

She seemed resigned to being married to a politician and concentrated on raising their two daughters, Tricia and Julie, with minimal privacy at their home on Tilden Street in Washington's Spring Valley section. However, as Nixon biographer Jonathan Aitken noted, "Pat longed for that peace which the world of politics cannot give. While the vice president met with political leaders, Mrs.

Nixon visited hospitals and schools, mixing with people wherever she went. She gave the first press conference exclusively for women reporters in Japan and dined in a previously all-male club in Kuala Lumpur. Everywhere she went, she was extremely popular and only added to the positive image of her husband. If anyone deserved the title "goodwill ambassador," it was Pat Nixon.

Apart from the jobs Eisenhower gave him, Nixon was also the presiding officer of the Senate, as provided in the Constitution. Like many of his predecessors, Nixon did not find this task to be particularly interesting. He was too energetic and ambitious to sit and listen to Senate speeches without being able either to vote or to intervene and was therefore seldom present in the Senate Chamber. After the elections, Republicans held a one-vote majority in the Senate, with 48 members; the Democrats had 47; and Wayne Morse OR had just left the Republican Party and intended to vote as an Independent.

Burke, shifting the one-vote majority to the Democrats. Wayne Morse made it clear, however, that he would vote with his former Republican colleagues on organizational matters, giving the Republicans exactly half the votes of the member Senate, with Vice President Nixon available to break a tied vote in the Republicans' favor. The Democrats therefore realized it would be futile to offer the resolutions necessary to give them control of the Senate's committee chairmanships and majority floor leadership offices.

For the remainder of that Congress, Nixon occasionally appeared if he thought it would be necessary to break a tie, but otherwise he customarily left after the opening prayer and majority leader's announcements, turning over the chair to a junior member. As the Democratic majority grew during the s, Nixon spent even less time in the Senate.

Because Nixon had never been known as a legislative tactician or parliamentarian, and his one constitutionally mandated job did not provide any real opportunities to use his political skills, he avoided his duties in the Senate whenever possible.

The vice president did try to take a more active role in the Senate's deliberations on one occasion, but his effort failed.

In the Eisenhower administration decided to push for a civil rights bill and anticipated that opponents of the bill would use a filibuster to kill it if necessary. Senate Rule XXII provided that cloture could not be invoked on a rules change, making it impossible to stop such a filibuster.

At the opening of the first session of the 85th Congress in , Senator Clinton Anderson D-NM , in a strategy intended to make cloture easier to obtain, moved that the Senate consider new rules. Nixon—over the objections of the Republican leadership, which supported the existing cloture provisions—stated that "in the opinion of the Chair," the membership after each election composed a new Senate rather than a continuing body.

As a result, he ruled, the Senate could change the rules at the beginning of each Congress by vote of a simple majority. The Senate, however, tabled Anderson's motion the next day by a vote of 55 to Later that year, after repeated attempts to change the cloture rule in order to pass the Civil Rights Act of , Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson engineered a compromise that applied cloture to debate on motions for changes in rules, but declared that "the rules of the Senate shall continue from one Congress to the next Congress unless they be changed as provided in these rules.

The other task that is inherent in the vice president's job is, as Charles Dawes put it, "to check the morning's newspaper as to the President's health. On September 24, , Nixon received a call informing him that the president had suffered a coronary attack. Nixon was placed in a very delicate situation. While the president was ill, Nixon needed to show that the nation's business was being handled effectively so as not to seem weak, but if he attempted to take too much control it would arouse fears of a power grab by an overly ambitious understudy.

He recognized that "even the slightest misstep could be interpreted as an attempt to assume power. The vice president would preside at cabinet and National Security Council meetings, just as he had done numerous times when the president had been away. White House Chief of Staff Sherman Adams flew to Denver, where Eisenhower was hospitalized, to assist the president, and when Ike was feeling better Nixon was one of the first to visit him.

Still, Nixon was careful to observe proper protocol. He presided over cabinet meetings from the vice president's chair and conducted business from his office in the Capitol. He even made sure to visit cabinet members rather than having them come to see him. As he put it, he had "to provide leadership without appearing to lead. But while the vice president's actions, and inaction, brought widespread praise, they also raised fears that the Eisenhower administration could suddenly become the Nixon administration, especially when the president underwent an operation for ileitis in June of Eisenhower's health would become a primary issue in the election, as Democrats reminded voters that a vote for Eisenhower was also a vote for Nixon.

Ike's health would continue to be a subject of concern during his second term, and after Eisenhower suffered a stroke in he decided that it was time to set out procedures for how Nixon should proceed if the president were to become incapacitated. He drafted a letter stating that, if he were unable to perform his duties, Nixon would serve as "acting president" until he recovered.

Eisenhower would determine when he was sufficiently able to take control once more. The agreement was strictly between Eisenhower and Nixon and therefore amounted only to a shaky precedent although Kennedy and Johnson copied it later.

Not until passage of the Twenty-fifth Amendment in was the issue of presidential incapacity officially dealt with. In the end, Richard Nixon filled with considerable skill the roles that President Eisenhower gave him. So why did Eisenhower come close to dropping him from the ticket in ?

Eisenhower's opinion of his vice president was most ambiguous. The president appreciated Nixon's efforts in carrying out his assigned tasks.

He told associates, "It would be difficult to find a better Vice President" and publicly repeated such praises on a regular basis. He also "believed Nixon to be the best prepared man in government to take over [his] duties in any emergency.

Because of his wide-ranging interests and Eisenhower's willingness, Nixon was perhaps the most informed member of the administration.

For Eisenhower, this faith in Nixon as vice president did not translate into confidence about Nixon's potential for the presidency. He saw Nixon as a dedicated junior officer who performed his duties with skill but had not developed into a true leader. His naval career ended with the war and in he was looking for his next job just as a group of prominent Southern California Republicans were looking for a suitable congressional candidate.

As a campaigner, Nixon mastered early what historian Garry Wills called "The Denigrative Method" and what later analysts called "negative campaigning. His first campaign set the pattern. His opponent was Jerry Voorhis, a New Dealer elected five times by voters of California's 12th congressional district.

Voorhis was an anticommunist and refused to accept the endorsement of any political action committee unless the PAC renounced any and all communist influence.

Nixon's campaign manager, however, claimed to have proof that Voorhis had the PAC's endorsement. During a debate with Nixon, Voorhis asked to see the proof. Nixon dramatically stepped forward with a bulletin of the local branch of the National Citizens Political Action Committee that included Voorhis among its recommendations.

Nixon had successfully linked Voorhis in the minds of voters to "the PAC," a tactic that helped him defeat Voorhis in November. State Department, was revealed to have passed information to the Soviets. Proof of this espionage has only grown more overwhelming in recent years with the declassification of the "Venona" intercepts, decrypted Soviet cables on communist activities in America. Nixon won reelection in with the endorsement of both parties. In , his reputation buoyed by the Hiss case, Nixon ran for the Senate against Helen Gahagan Douglas in a campaign that echoed his race with Voorhis.

This time, the Nixon campaign manual included a "pink sheet" comparing his opponent's voting record to that of Communist Party-liner Vito Marcantonio—what Nixon referred to as the "Douglas-Marcantonio axis. In , Dwight David Eisenhower, war hero and political phenomenon, gave Nixon the vice presidential nomination on the Republican ticket after the junior senator did some pre-convention maneuvering to lure California delegates into the Ike column.

Then scandal struck, but not very hard. Nixon linked his troubles to the Reds. Nixon's fund may have been unseemly—it was actually used to keep him on the campaign trail, not living "in style"—but it was not illegal. The candidate defended it in a nationally televised address whose emotional high point—a promise made to his little daughter Tricia never to return one campaign gift, a cocker spaniel puppy named Checkers—made it forever known as the "Checkers Speech.

A political star was reborn. Ike and Dick won the election in a landslide. As vice president, Nixon burnished his reputation for foreign policy expertise with international travel to dozens of countries. His South American tour garnered international headlines when a mob in Caracas, Venezuela, stoned his motorcade. The confrontations with the demonstrators abroad only made him more popular at home. His trip to the Soviet Union was even more dramatic and politically helpful. While taking in an exhibit showcasing a General Electric model kitchen at the U.

Their exchange became known as the "kitchen debate":Nixon: There are some instances where you may be ahead of us, for example in the development of the thrust of your rockets for the investigation of outer space; there may be some instances in which we are ahead of you—in color television, for instance. Khrushchev: No, we are up with you on this, too. We have bested you in one technique and also in the other.

Nixon: Wait till you see the picture. Let's have far more communication and exchange in this very area that we speak of.