Ghost of President past

By JEREMY REES

Nemesis, the Greeks called it: the fate that haunts your steps. For Richard Nixon, it had several faces and one name. There was Watergate, of course, but before that there was John F. Kennedy. And before him the Communists, within America and without.

And behind them all the liberal conspiracy that was weakening America.

If there was one thing Nixon despised - and he hated it like no one else in the White House - it was the vast liberal plague he saw arrayed against him in the 1960 election, in the boyish Kennedy on TV, at Watergate.

You can feel its shadow beneath the cosy platitudes ("the largest public rose garden in Orange County") and smiling attendants at the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in southern Los Angeles.

This is history not as a collection of artefacts, an argument, or even as a list of honourable achievements. This is point-scoring on a grand scale.

Take Area 37: Richard Nixon and the History of America in Space. It's not enough that Nixon delivered the eulogy when American astronauts took a giant step for mankind in 1969; his library sets out to expunge Kennedy from the record as pushing the United States into the space race.

Years earlier, the wall plaques bluster, Vice-President Nixon convinced the White House to launch Nasa. Way before Kennedy.

Walk into the room dedicated to the arrival of two freshmen to Congress in 1946, one a self-made Republican on the rise, the other a wealthy Democrat from a political family, and the point-scoring continues.

Nixon, it notes, made by far the better maiden speech. He even bested Kennedy when they played cards for the sleeper bed on the train to a labour debate.

Take the 1960 presidential election, the closest until a few hundred chads separated Bush from Gore in 2000.

The library scolds those who think Kennedy won fairly. Only the suspicious arrival of ballot boxes stuffed with Kennedy votes, kindly provided by the Democrat mayor of Chicago, ensured the win, it sniffs.

And that debate, when a youthful Kennedy saw off Nixon in the first televised contest and elevated TV to a major player in elections? Style over substance, huff the library plaques. Orchestrated by biased (liberal?) networks who hung on Kennedy's every smile but broadcast Nixon's occasional suspicious glance.

It was natural Nixon would hate Kennedy - they were mirror opposites.

Nixon was born poor in the small orange-growing town of Yorba Linda, now covered by Los Angeles sprawl, and rose by hard work, ambition and, of course, hate, to be a lawyer, soldier and President.

Kennedy was born into an East Coast, rich liberal family with connections throughout US politics.

Kennedy was good-looking while, even in his best moments, Nixon looked shifty. Jackie Kennedy wore flashy Cassini, but Pat Nixon, her husband harrumphed, preferred a "good respectable Republican coat".

And there seem to be plenty who agree with him. Thirty years after Nixon resigned from the White House in 1974, his library and birthplace still draws crowds.

"Come to see the birthplace of a great American, sir," says a corporal on leave from a nearby Army base. "Always got to see for yourself."

What he and others see is an anonymous low brick building, like a school office from the 1970s, surrounded by a rose garden planted by Pat Nixon, 15 minutes from Disneyland. Inside, visitors get an inevitably skewed view.

There are the achievements: the Structure of Peace Gallery about Nixon and his groundbreaking trip to China; the Domestic Affairs Gallery (10 reasons why Nixon was a good President); the World Leaders Gallery with its odd life-sized statues of leaders Nixon met (Kruschev is tiny).

There are the moments of selective amnesia: Vietnam is there, of course, but not a mention of Nixon's illegal bombing of neighbouring Cambodia. Or Nixon's role in the 1950s communist witch-hunts.

Then there's Watergate: all corridors lead to the half-light of the Watergate room, where the anger and point-scoring become palpable.

Watergate was no political shenanigan, argues the library. This was a President locked in a struggle with a hostile Democrat Congress while he tried to sort out a war in which men were dying. This was not grubby politics but an attack by a liberal press on the presidency.

Visitors can listen to tapes of the President in the White House, though naturally not the famous 15 minutes of crucial tape erased by his secretary.

Some are unintentionally hilarious. In one, a sonorous voice explains that the President's expletive-ridden speech to aides is not about covering up Watergate - far from it. It's actually a presidential decree that the White House must co-operate fully with all the legitimate inquiries so the truth will out. Quite.

Elvie and Pat, visiting from a small town in Texas after dropping their grandchildren at Disneyland, are convinced.

"I always knew there was something about Watergate, something not right," says Pat. They shake their heads at the injustice of it all. Darned liberals, they seem to be saying.

Nixon spent the years after his ignominious departure brooding and hurting. As time passed and the Republicans regained the White House under Ronald Reagan, he set out to rehabilitate his name, finally achieving a little of the stature of the elder statesman.

His library, opened in 1990, was meant to put the seal on his rehabilitation. It was meant to be a place of stately reflection, presidential gravitas and, yes, a frank look at his failings.

Thankfully it failed. The old Nixon still stalks these halls. Unlovely, unlovable, argumentative, furious at the liberals and mad as hell.

What: Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace, California, US

Where: 18001 Yorba Linda Boulevard, Yorba Linda How to get there 15 minutes by car from Disneyland

When:

Opening hours: Mon-Sat 10am-5pm; Sun 11am-5pm

On the web www.nixonfoundation.org