No One to Kick Around Anymore
Why I had to stop imitating Richard Nixon
As a child, what I lacked in peer social skills I more than made up for with my ability to entertain the adults around me. Who needs whiffle ball or hopscotch when you can try out your latest celebrity impersonation in front of your parents’ doting dinner guests? My subjects included Cher, Lucille Ball, and Arte Johnson from “Laugh-In.” By the time I was ten, I was mimicking the idiosyncratic gestures and speech patterns of Richard Milhous Nixon.
Why, at such a tender age, was I somewhat obsessed with the 37th president of the United States? Blame the two strong-willed patriarchs in my family: my paternal grandfather, a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, and his son, a liberal academic.
Gramps had served in Europe as a chaplain during World War II. He became a faithful US News & World Report subscriber, voted for Goldwater in ’64, and worshipped Nixon. The consummate extrovert, he loved big, loud Fourth of July parades and always had an American flag on full display. My father, an only son, took his parents’ dreams for him to become a doctor as far as he could — halfway around the world to Korea, where he served as part of a MASH unit during the Korean War. After being transferred to Tokyo, he met and fell in love with my mother and her country. It was there he also uncovered a passion for history. After my parents moved to the US in 1958, Dad went on to become a professor of history. During the late ’60s and early ’70s, he often turned his college lectures into thinly veiled rants against our involvement in the Vietnam War.
Family gatherings could be intense, especially when Gramps and Dad locked horns over politics and patriotism — which happened a lot. My grandfather’s way was to respect authority; my father’s was to question it. You could say they were my family’s versions of Archie Bunker and the Meathead.
In 1974, a few months shy of my eleventh birthday, I spent the summer with my mother’s sister and her husband in Long Beach, California. It was my first solo airplane trip and my first summer away from my parents and siblings. Once the novelty of palm trees and stucco houses wore off, I became homesick for the East Coast. To pass the time and to entertain my aunt and her neighbors, I did my Nixon impersonation. I raised my arms to flash a defiant victory sign and made the most of every slurred syllable. My fellow Americans, let me make one thing perfectly clear … I am not a crook!
One early evening in August, I was sitting on the hassock in the living room, getting ready to watch another “Bonanza” rerun. Aunt Kiyoko was in the kitchen making dinner, and Uncle Dave was out in the garage tinkering with his car. I was sitting too close to the TV as usual, and just as my show was about to come on, the station cut to a special news bulletin. There on the screen was President Nixon. With his piercing dark-brown eyes and droopy jowls, he was announcing his decision to resign. I knew this was a serious, shocking event, and from that moment on, I had no desire to impersonate him.
It’s been 45 years since that historic broadcast. Now when I remember the disgraced president, I think of my dad, whose disdain for “Tricky Dick” taught me about adult rage and cheerless sanctimony. I also think of my grandfather, whose dogged support for his political idol made him both honorable and pathetic in my young eyes. I still remember Gramps describing to my brother and me the heartfelt letter he had written during the Watergate hearings. He then proudly showed us the printed thank-you note from the White House.
Richard Nixon, HR Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and my favorite white-haired celebrity at the time — Senator Sam Ervin — have long been gone from the political stage. Gramps died in 1977 and we lost Dad in 2007. Neither is around to witness today’s presidential drama and political chaos, and for that I’m grateful. Still, I can’t help but wonder: If father and son were alive right now, what would they make of it all? I’d like to think that at long last, they’d be fighting on the same side.
The title is a reference to Nixon’s concession speech after losing the 1962 California gubernatorial election. The speech was given at what was supposed to be his last press conference.
