Richard Nixon was born on this day, January 9, 1913. This double portrait was made and published in January 1969 as Nixon took office as the 37th president of the United States.
Nixon of course is notorious for resigning before he could be impeached. It took a long time for the media and for public opinion to come around to Nixon’s culpability as is explored in depth in Slate‘s podcast “Slow Burn“(2017). Journalist and podcast host Leon Neyfakh wrote:
Why are we revisiting Watergate now? The connections between the Nixon era and today are obvious enough. But to me, the similarity that’s most striking is not between Donald Trump and Richard Nixon (although they’re both paranoid, vengeful, and preoccupied with “loyalty”), or their alleged crimes (although they both involved cheating to win an election), or the legal issues in the two cases (although they both center on obstruction of justice).
Rather, it’s that people who lived through Watergate had no idea what was going to happen from one day to the next, or how it was all going to end. I recognize that feeling. The Trump administration has made many of us feel like the country is in an unfamiliar, precarious situation.