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The 16-minute speech (see box) was delivered with remarkable restraint, given the circumstances, and without a trace of demagoguery or self-pity. There were no attacks on his old enemies, no visible bitterness. There was also no concession of anything more serious than "mistakes" in his handling of Watergate, and no hint of remorse except one line regretting "any injuries that may have been done in the course of the events that led to this decision." His statement that he leaving because his "political base in the Congress" had eroded sounded as if he had been defeated in some policy issue under a parliamentary system, and the speech could have been a valedictory at the end of a long and generally successful term of office.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was the first to come into the room after the speech, shaking hands with his boss and accompanying him along the West Wing Colonnade to the living quarters. Nixon then rejoined his family, who had been watching the address on television. Across the street in Lafayette park, a group of youths had been loudly chanting "Jail to the Chief." Julie Nixon Eisenhower, her husband David and Pat Nixon appeared at the window, one after the other, apparently to see what was going on. When they realized that they were being watched from below by reporters, the shades were abruptly drawn. The family had ignored all messages and phone calls, even from close friends, during most of the week, and once again they were isolated in their special grief.
If Nixon's resignation speech was dignified, it was also almost complacent and inadequate as his final official address to the people who had called him their President for 5½ years. His extemporaneous farewell to the members of his own Administration Friday morning, however, was merely awkward and embarrassing, a stream-of-consciousness outpouring of self-pity and self-torment (for excerpts from this extraordinary talk, see box page 68). Gone was the dry-eyed restraint night in its place was a tearful emotionalism.
Good Plumbers
For 19 rambling minutes Nixon talked of his mother, "a saint," and his "old man," who had never amounted to much in the eyes of the world, but who was a great person nonetheless. No job is too humble, Nixon said, and the world needs good farmers, good businessmen, good plumbers, good carpenters. There was an uneasy stir in the room when he mentioned plumbers—the word for the intelligence team assigned to plug information leaks and handle illegal operations like the Watergate break-in—but Nixon seemed not to notice.