Today is August 9th — and it was 50 years ago today that Richard Milhous Nixon made U.S. hisory by becoming the first, and so far only, president to resign from office.
He was done in by his involvement in covering up a botched burglary at Democratic p[arty headquarters in Washington’s Watergate office and hotel complex in 1972.
After a long political career filled with Incredible comebacks, this was the one Nixon could not come back from.
The evening of August 8th Nixon addressed the nation with his stunning announcement. And at noon on that Friday, August 9th, Gerald Ford was indeed sown in as president. He told the nation that evening that “our long national nightmare is over.”
Thirteen years later, acclaimed biographer Stephen Ambrose published the first of what would become a three-volume biography of Richard Nixon. What made his trilogy extraordinary was his admission that he had always disliked Nixon, but grew to like and admire him.
The third and final volume of Ambrose’s biography was published in 1991, and by then Nixon had come a long way toward rebuilding his public image.
So here now, from 1991, Stephen Ambrose.
\Richard Nixon died in 1994 at age 81.
Stephen Ambrose died from cancer in 2002. He was 66.