Sunrise with Seamonsters (30 page)

Shore Cliffs Golf Club does not seem a natural choice for either a golfer or even an ordinary paranoiac. It is on a slide area. Because it is in the process of being sold it is in a state of scruffy neglect. The club house is uncared for. The restaurant has been closed for months, the bar is empty, the fairways are brown and pitted. The entire place is bisected by Interstate Five—nine holes on this side, nine holes on the other and a narrow tunnel under the freeway connects them. There is a housing estate along the margins of the course and the boxy yellow bungalows are so close their windows sometimes get broken. "I shanked one through a glass sliding-door a few weeks back," said Jack Wright, a leathery old member in a birdbill cap. Ground squirrels frolic on the course; and the club is only semi-private: Anyone who can afford the $3.50 daily membership plus $8 for a self-drive golf-cart (there are no caddies) can play at Shore Cliffs.

Mr Nixon plays three or four times a week. Why? For one thing they made him an Honorary Member, so he plays free and gets three self-drive
carts—secret servicemen in the front and rear carts, Nixon and his partner in the middle one. "He likes it here a whole lot," said Homer Welborne, a senior member. "They'd pick on him at the municipal course. Hell, early on, they picked on him here—heckled him—'Did you cheat on the course?' That kind of thing."

"He's got to play golf. He's writing a book," says Tom Perrin the Club's pro, who gets the hate-mail (
How can a liar and a cheat play free at your club? No wonder the country's sick,
etc.) "He told one of the members 'Writing's driving me crazy.' He's got to whack a golf-ball around, for his sanity. But, man, he gets around the course like lightning. Twenty-seven holes in two and a half hours, that's twice as fast as anyone else. He still gets good scores. The course is a par seventy-one and Nixon shoots in the eighties—eighty-four, eighty-five."

But a year ago, Homer Welborne's partner, Dick Hulbert, found a score card blowing down one of the fairways. He showed me this interesting item. One player's name was pencilled in as "Jack," the other as "The President"—odd, since he had been out of office for months. "Jack" (Col John Brennan, Nixon's aide) had shot a respectable eighty-three, "The President" a duffer's one hundred and three. Hulbert said, "Maybe he's improved since then," and he grinned in disbelief. "Aw, he's a good guy!"

Homer said, "Oh, sure. He's very plebeian. Always says hello, poses for pictures, gives autographs. We've all had our picture taken with him. Stick around, he might be over today. Anyone can get his picture taken with him."

I stuck around. It was bright and cool, the sea twinkling, Freeway traffic roared past the ninth hole.

"You waiting for the President?" asked Roland Bennett ("the only black assistant pro this side of Watts").

"The former President," I said.

"Yeah, well, he might be up today. But we haven't had a call. We always get a call beforehand. 'The President is coming in half an hour,' they say. Then six FBI guys and Nixon and Brennan hop out of their cars and the next thing you know they're teeing off. They don't waste no time. He says hi to me. Once or twice he asked me if I wanted to play with him."

"That's quite an honor, isn't it?"

"Quite an honor for
him
to play with a pro! But I'm too busy."

Unlike the surfers, none of the golfers had an unkind word for Mr Nixon. "We're so used to seeing him we don't pay too much attention to him," said John Perrin. "But there is one strange thing about him. He only plays with Brennan. If Brennan's out of town Nixon doesn't play golf. Now that's a bit unusual."

"You mean abnormal?" I asked.

"Let's say kind of peculiar," said Perrin. "He'll only play with one certain guy. Most golfers will play with anyone. I'm not saying he's not a wonderful person, but he's funny in some ways. Like the time he almost got a hole-in-one. Up to then he hadn't joined the Hole-in-One Club. It's like insurance. You pay a dollar and if you get a hole-in-one you win a jackpot, about seventy bucks, which you spend buying everyone a drink. He didn't join, then one day he almost got a hole-in-one, then he paid his dollar. It's peculiar."

The "Hole-in-One Club" board on the back of the bar listed a newly-printed name among the others,
Richard Nixon.

"You're out of luck. I don't think he's coming today. Brennan must be out of town." Perrin squinted across town. "Probably working on his book."

The book was mentioned by many people I met in San Clemente. In Southern California, a book is considered a mysterious thing, even by the college students who gather on Nixon's beach to turn on. One of these, Martin Nelsen ("I think Nixon's a real neat guy. If you could see his house you'd know it was a prime place."), majors in Ornamental Horticulture at Pasadena. He hopes to get an MA and possibly a PhD in Ornamental Horticulture and become America's answer to Capability Brown. He spoke with awe of Nixon's book, so did Mr Phillips, the security guard, and Brian Sardoz, the scuba diver, and Mrs Dorothy Symms of San Clemente Secretarial Services, publisher of
Fishcarts to Fiestas, the Story of San Clemente.

"I met the man who's writing Mr Nixon's book," said Mrs Symms.

I said, "Isn't Mr Nixon writing the book?"

"No. There's a man doing it for him. He writes all the movie stars' books. He's a very famous writer. You say you're from England? Oh, this man wrote Winston Churchill's memoirs, too."

Mrs Symms thinks Nixon is "just great," but seemed defensive, almost embarrassed, when I mentioned his name. It is a common reaction in San Clemente. The name is spoken. They sigh and sort of smack their lips.
Oh gosh
and then: Look, all politicians are crooked. But it is clear they have been down in the dumps since Watergate. After all, the Kennedys started a real estate boom in Hyannisport. It might have happened there.

There are no Nixon pictures in town and apart from the ten cent postcards ("The Richard M Nixon Home") nothing to indicate that he lives there. "Did you see the museum?" people ask. But it is hardly that. It is a collection of Nixoniana in the lobby of the San Clemente Inn, called the "A Little Bit of History Museum." No mention of Watergate or the resignation, though one framed Nixon letter refers to "these difficult times." On display are Nixon's golf-balls and spare golf-bag, some expensive bicentennial junk, mementos (menus, fans) from the China
visit, election buttons ("Lithuanians for President Nixon"), a copy of Mao's poems open to "The PLA Captures Nanking, April 1949" and thirty-two "thank you" letters, addressed to the former manager of the San Clemente Inn, Mr Paul Presley. The museum was Presley's idea. He seems to have been an inexhaustible gift-giver: thank you for the patriotic scroll, thank you for the nice letter, thank you for the banquet, thank you for the hospitality, thanks for finding Henry Kissinger a house at Cyprus Shore, thank you for your congratulatory telegram, thanks for the birthday cake—and all ending with the wild oversized signature, Richard Nixon. The wobbly handwriting ("P.S. Thanks also for the beautiful flowers!") speaks volumes, but the museum is uninspiring, even a bit of a joke. Mr Presley, who retired last year, is known as a "Nixon freak." There are not many in San Clemente. They are decent folk. If asked, most people will say they have nothing against him, but you get the impression that they'd prefer not to be asked.

The artichoke John Ehrlichman was defoliating with big brown fingers seemed an apt metaphor for the Nixon years—somewhere beneath the goop and scales of this thistle was a misshapen heart. Quite by coincidence, Mr Ehrlichman and I were having lunch together on the day Mr Nixon's memoirs were released to reviewers. He had recently been released from prison. Although we had never met before, we had corresponded—he had helped me penetrate the mysteries of San Clemente, I had offered him (unsolicited) literary advice. Radiating good health—he played tennis every day and ran the prison's power station every night—an attentive listener twice my size, he could have passed for my parole officer. Yet it was Mr Ehrlichman who had been the model prisoner for two years: he wrote two novels, a dissertation on alternative sentencing, and compiled a dossier on the Mexican illegal immigrants and drug-smugglers who were his fellow convicts. He took up painting, he learned Spanish. He did not become a "Born Again" Christian like Mr Colson, or a fink like John Dean, or a cantankerous old fat-head like Mr Mitchell. And unlike his former employer, he has not written a White House memoir.

I wondered whether he could give me a litmus test for the veracity of the
Memoirs.
How does one know when Mr Nixon is not telling the truth?

"I doubt if he knows himself when he's not telling the truth," said Mr Ehrlichman. "But read that description of his family. They're all perfect, right? But what man can say his family's perfect? Those people are human—they sweat, they get upset, they get sore feet. He makes them into waxwork dummies. It's a serious injustice—and if he doesn't come clean about them, how could he come clean about anything else?"

I told him that I had read some of the book and that it struck me as nothing short of amazing that so far Mr Nixon's career had been entirely triumphant—even his defeats were victories. Mr Ehrlichman smiled broadly, "Ah, that's Vintage Nixon."

And I suppose it is, which is why this enormous doorstop of a book, 1,200 pages of self-justification, is such a soulless uncontrite document. Vintage Nixon is Election Poster Nixon, the beaky face, the empty
rhetoric, the fighting gesture, the neatly selected memories. "College football at Wintrier gave me a chance to get to know the coach, Wallace 'Chief Newman. I think that I admired him more and learned more from him than from any man I have ever known aside from my father." This is a piece of "Chief" Newman's wisdom: "Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser."

No one ever accused Mr Nixon of being a good loser, but he seldom loses in this book. You will say: But he lost the Presidential campaign of 1960 to John Kennedy! Mr Nixon says: Not really. The votes were not counted correctly, "many Republican leaders were ... urging me to contest the results and demand recounts," the Chicago results were plainly cooked, and "There is no doubt that there was substantial vote fraud..." In a farrago of poisonous innuendo, Mr Nixon implies that he actually beat Kennedy.

"This fellow has a silver tongue," said one of Mr Nixon's early political opponents. Mr Nixon makes no such claims, though he alludes more than once to "my rocking socking style" and he is constantly pushing other people's praise into his narrative. The Indian leader, Rajagopalachari, said to him, "Younger men must be found to conduct the fight. Younger men like you." ("Infinitely wise," Mr Nixon remarks of Rajaji.) "This is one of the young men I have been telling you about and I want you to get acquainted with him," said Eisenhower to Churchill, when introducing the fidgeting Vice-President in 1954. "You are the man to lead the country!" screams his maid, Fina, summoned ("after dinner") to hear his decision to run: "This was determined before you were born!" A few years later a girl in a crowd cries, "I love and respect you so much!" ("Even though we were leaving, I danced with her for a few minutes.") And a glowing testimonial from Harold Wilson—the scribble is reproduced on a full page: "You can't guarantee being born a lord. It is possible—you've shown it—to be born a gentleman." Put that in your pipe and puff on it!

The proportions of the
Memoirs
are interesting. The first thirty pages concern the first thirty-three years of Mr Nixon's life; the next few hundred are a blow-by-blow about Congressman Nixon and Vice-President Nixon, and the last seven hundred pages are a detailed but disingenuous account of the last four years of his presidency. Out-of-office Nixon is a legal partner with a heavy mortgage, warming up TV-dinners, and in spite of his protests he gives no clear explanation as to how, a mere decade after his bleak TV-dinner period in 1961, he emerged a millionaire. Mr Nixon was keel-hauled and marooned. It follows that his book ought to have the loony fascination of a castaway's chronicle, but not even his Friday-like butler Manolo or his vulgar righteousness can lift him to the level of Crusoe. Mr Nixon—to quote Palmerston on
Commissioner Yeh Ming Ch'en—is truly "an uninteresting monster" and his memoirs a self-serving monstrosity.

One of the themes that runs through it is his strong identification with Kennedy, but having grown up poor, Mr Nixon implies that he was the more honest, the more temperate in speech (Mr Nixon presents Kennedy as incredibly foul-mouthed). He is Irish like Kennedy and makes much of his Irish pedigree; as junior senators they swop letters and share railway compartments; their wives buttress them (and later Jackie writes passionate thank-yous to Mr Nixon), their ages almost match, their fathers are similar (bad tempered, "combative"), and so are their mothers (peace-loving, "saintly"); the two men confer on important issues.

But John Kennedy was assassinated, you will say. Of course, but the bullet was intended for Mr Nixon, who was in Dallas on Pepsi-Cola business (this was the TV-dinner period) the day before Kennedy was shot. "Months later Hoover told me that Oswald's wife had disclosed that Oswald had been planning to kill me when I visited Dallas and that only with great difficulty had she managed to keep him in the house to prevent him from doing so." If Mr Nixon has a literary counterpart who :an match him in
chutzpah
it is Charles Kinbote, the lugubriously vain character in Nabokov's
Pale Fire
("I was the shadow of the waxwing slain...").

He was not just poor, but poverty stricken—the most important splinter in any hunk of American Presidential timber. As late as 1934 he was eating candy bars for breakfast to save money (I would have thought in egg cheaper, but let that pass: this was before the chickens had come home to roost). Times were hard, Mr Nixon was unattractive, his feet were enormous (size I iE) and he had little to sustain him but the prayers af his mother who "went into a closet to say her prayers at night" because St Matthew exhorts us to pray "behind closed doors." Using the Republican slogan "Had Enough?" (the answer was "Yes!"), Mr Nixon entered politics to clean up "that mess in Washington." The mess in Washington is referred to again and again for the next thousand pages, but never once does Mr Nixon claim an iota of responsibility for it.