The Place is Forever Duller Without Him   

It was on a practice green not far from the surf at Key Biscayne. Richard Nixon was waiting for me, putter in hand. The Florida sun covered his white skin and black stubble with a glowy brown. Behind a half grin, he was upset.

It was 1968, a month before the presidential election, and Democrat Hubert Humphrey was beginning to cut into the comfortable lead that Nixon had enjoyed since the GOP convention.

"I'm not asking for a correction – nothing like that," he began. He was objecting to my story about his stay in Key Biscayne at the "restricted" hotel where he was now golfing. Jews were not welcome, the assistant manager assured me.

It was only a three-paragraph story for United Press International. But that length had been just right for editors filling page one holes, and many had used it that way. Demanding a retraction or correction, Nixon knew, could turn an elbow in the ribs into a political nosebleed.

Instead, Nixon conducted an interview: Hometown, college, married, kids? I was forever in his memory after that. Twelve years later, when he was once more on the rebound from public extinction, we would meet in Cairo. Nixon bemoaned the performance of my alma mater's football team. Of course, the same biographical information had wound up in three separate files kept by the Pentagon, FBI and CIA during his presidency.

Dossiers and enemy lists became a widely publicized hallmark of Nixon's relations with the media. He had more foes than friends among those who covered his every move, including his burial. Getting the goods on them was just like getting the goods on Sen. Edward Kennedy, one of the goals of the men who burgled the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate.

Certainly, there were some Nixon enemies in the Washington press corps. Many had covered Vice President Nixon during the eight years of the Eisenhower administration and witnessed Nixon's loss to John F. Kennedy in 1960. To them, Nixon was a dimestore demogogue who had parlayed the fear of a communist conspiracy and the Cold War into a successful political career.

Blood feuds came close to violence. Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, once chased columnist Mary McGrory through the rolling aisles of a 1960 campaign train. What it was all about is long forgotten. But the speed of both women was a source of amazement for years.

In the late 1960s, younger media skeptics were prepared to grade Nixon as president with each new day. To some surprise, he conducted one of the most open administrations of any recent Republican chief executive. One phone call to Herb Klein, a newsman turned communications chief, would break any bureaucratic roadblock, no matter how painful to the administration's image.

At the same time, Nixon had a profound effect on the personal lives of reporters traditionally forced to leave their families to keep up with presidential travel.

Although it had started on a smaller scale with earlier administrations, it was Nixon who expanded the policy of press planes big enough to carry reporters' families. Hotels near Key Biscayne and San Clemente, California – Nixon seemed to have been at one or the other twice a month – were picked on the basis of enough room for cribs and cots for the kids.

News organizations still had to pay hefty airline and hotel bills for the individual reporter. But there was only a single charge from the Nixon travel staff, no matter how many children. It was $50 for a long weekend in Florida, $75 for the same time in California.

God knows, there was always enough news, managed by Press Secretary Ron Ziegler, to justify the trip. Ziegler had once worked at Disneyland – a guide on the Jungle Boat tour – so there were free tickets if you took the kids to the Magic Kingdom. Or there was always tennis with a Ziegler assitant, Diane Sawyer.

Behind this coddling, Nixon was glowering over our reports on the continuing and expanding war in Vietnam, despite his solemn campaign pledge to end the conflict. Outside of news conferences, he rarely met with the working press.

But the marriage of UPI's Helen Thomas to Doug Cornell of the Associated Press resulted in a rare glimpse of the hidden Nixon. At a White House party for the two reporters, Nixon was witty, warm, inspiring, funny – charming! Some veteran Nixon watchers left with jaws agape. Most would never see that Nixon again.

Instead, the personal side Nixon most often exposed dwelled on his hardscrabble boyhood. "We had a pony but the pony died," Nixon would say. "Still, we had fun." Yes, there was the sick brother and his father who, depending on the day, went broke as a farmer, a filling station operator or a lemon rancher. And, with the mention of his mother, his voice would grow husky: "My mother was a saint."

?ess calculated was the Nixon revealed by an Oval Office recording system: Along with the humming, whistling and cursing, there he was, plotting the Watergate coverup. The scandal was Nixon's biggest gift to the press. For almost three years there was aRwaterfall of astounding revelations that drained every drop of media adrenaline.

For giddy reporters, there were raises and promotions. White House correspondents Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather were later elevated to network anchors.

ün his final hours in office, Nixon summoned a tiny hardcore group of Senate supporters for a meeting at the White House. It took place less than an hour before he announced his resignation. Once again he reverted to his boyhood, this time describing 7 track meet in which he had been lapped by the field.

"But I didn't quit," he said, tears streaming down his jowls. "I stayed in the race and finished by myself. I was never a quitter."

I recounted the story later to my children at the dinner table. They had seen quite a bit of Nixon during White House trips. "It's about time that crook left the White House," said my sixth-grade daughter, Nora.

But my fourth-grade son, Patrick, saw it differently.

"We went on a lot of nice trips," he said. "We had some good times with President Nixon."

They were both right. When Richard Nixon left Washington, it was forever a duller place.