Richard Nixon's final address: the day the president departed the White House

Exhausted from lack of sleep, shattered after 18 months of pressure, her father stood perspiring beneath the television lights. After everything that he had fought for, after all his hard work to drag himself from the parched earth of California to the elegant staterooms of the White House, he was leaving in disgrace. The shame must have been overwhelming. Nixon stood there before the world, red-eyed, half-smiling. And so often at times of stress, he retreated to the self-pity of the self-made man. “I had come so far from the little house in Yorba Linda to this great house in Washington,” he reflected. “I remember my old man. I think that they would have called him sort of a little man, common man. He didn’t consider himself that way. You know what he was? He was a streetcar motorman first, and then he was a farmer, and then he had a lemon ranch. It was the poorest lemon ranch in California, I can assure you. He sold it before they found oil on it.”

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For a moment, there was total silence. Then, blinking away tears, Nixon pulled himself back. Putting on his glasses for the first time in public, he read in a trembling voice the moving words written by Theodore Roosevelt after the death of his first wife. At the last line – “And when my heart’s dearest died, the light went from my life forever” – his voice almost broke with the strain, and there were muffled sobs from the chairs before him. Yet Nixon went on. “The greatness comes not when things go always good for you,” he said. “The greatness comes when you are really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes, because only if you have been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.”

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On the last words, Nixon’s eyes closed. Then, abruptly, he dragged himself onwards. He had some last advice for his audience. “Always give your best,” he said. “Never get discouraged, never be petty; always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”

With the applause ringing in his ears, Nixon led his family downstairs, where Vice President Gerald Ford and his wife Betty were waiting for them. “Good luck, Mr President,” Nixon said coldly. They stepped out onto the South Portico and walked slowly along the red carpet, towards the army helicopter. At the foot of the steps, Nixon paused, and Ford said nervously: “Drop us a line if you get the chance. Let us know how you are doing.”

Nixon mounted the steps, and then turned to face the White House. Glaring furiously, he waved his right arm across in a clumsy farewell and then, in the final bizarre moment of his presidency, thrust both arms into the air in his trademark V-for-victory salute. He held the gesture for a moment, his face cracked by an enormous grin. And then the helicopter lifted off the lawn, and he was gone.

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This article was first published in the July 2011 issue of BBC History Magazine