Richard Nixon: Fanfare for an Uncommon Man

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Bush relished the scent of power when Nixon asked the younger man to campaign for him in 1968. But it gave him pause when Nixon took off on the "Ivy Leaguers," Bush being a Yalie. "It was a hang-up with him," Bush said, "but he was on to something. He was talking about those elitists of the foreign policy establishment thinking they had a corner on all knowledge and wisdom on foreign policy. He was right."

Something else was on Bush's mind as he sat last week in that front row of Presidents and their wives. In the hours of despair after Bush lost the election in 1992, one of the first letters he received was from Richard Nixon. Few could know so well those depths. "It was just a very sweet letter," remembered Bush. "Very sensitive -- very sensitive and very meaningful for me. And in his role as a former President, Nixon has been very good; never a conflict of interest."

Jimmy Carter, who without the Nixon apocalypse and pardon by Ford probably never would have been President, came quietly to the rain-soaked green below Nixon's coffin. His presence was his testimony, going beyond old denunciations and bitter assessments. Carter carries the memory of going on that presidential mission to Sadat's funeral and at first feeling uncomfortable about being on the same plane as Nixon. But they surveyed each other warily in the confines of the fuselage, then self-consciously greeted and sat down and talked genially about foreign policy. In a moment they had become sort-of friends, mellowing members of the Past Presidents club, now diminished by one.

When Bill Clinton's time came to speak at the funeral, he turned and glanced back at the tiny Nixon birth home, glossed and manicured far beyond its original luster. Then Clinton quoted the opening line of Nixon's memoirs: "I was born in a house my father built."

Clinton continued, "From those humble roots, as from so many humble beginnings in this country, grew the force of a driving dream." In his words there was an echo from his own background. Clinton and Nixon found friendship in the last year because of their shared interest in the future of Russia. But - there is also something about that high, lonely and rutted road of the presidency that evokes a mystic camaraderie among the small band of survivors. Clinton at the end quoted a hymn: "Grant that I may realize that the trifling of life creates differences, but that in the higher things we are all one." Was it the wind, or was there a catch in the voice of the 47-year-old President?