Forty years ago today, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency and Gerald Ford was sworn in to succeed him. Tom DeFrank, a reporter who covered both Nixon and Ford extensively, writes in The Atlantic about what it was like to report on Watergate in the five days that culminated in Nixon’s resignation.
Like millions of people, I watched via TV as Nixon lifted off from the White House aboard Marine One. My vantage point was the living room floor of an apartment in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill section that belonged to my aunt and uncle and cousin. I don’t remember whether they had a black-and-white or color TV, but I do recall that an air conditioner occupied one window in the room.
My 11-year-old mind grasped that something had happened that mattered in the scope of American history. I suppose that was why I watched, as opposed to reading a book or playing outside, which is how I spent most summer days.
During the run-up to Nixon’s resignation my father had watched the evening news, which was filled with reports of a president in trouble and a nation in crisis. “He could give an illegal order,” I recall someone on television saying. That is, the president could go rogue. I did not comprehend fully that, in many ways, he had already.
My aunt, a native of the Bronx who moved to Pittsburgh when she married, gave me a snack, maybe ice cream or cherries. Something nice that seemed like summertime.
Still, being in the city felt confining. It afforded fewer places to play than our house in a small-town subdivision, about 30 miles away. The city has parks, of course, but going to the park required intention and the company of an adult. My 9-year-old sister and I lacked the know-how to navigate the city on our own.
So there I sat, watching a constitutional crisis resolve.
Ahead to 1997, when I first heard “Line ‘Em Up,” a song by James Taylor about Nixon’s farewell to the White House staff. I listened to it repeatedly while driving from Chicago to Milwaukee to Madison to Minneapolis to Fargo.
The song now reminds me of the upper Midwest, of being 11, and of an apartment in the city on an August day.