Being Nixon: A Man Divided

by Evan Thomas

Matched against such self-conscious pillars of rectitude, Nixon was bound to look like a small and mean tyrant. Saturday, October 20, 1973, unfolded with Shakespearean—that is to say, convincingly contrived—drama. At a press conference early that afternoon, Cox rejected the “Stennis Compromise” and said that he would go to the Supreme Court to force the president to turn over the tapes. In Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon, presidential chronicler Theodore White (Harvard ’38) rendered the scene in the ballroom at the National Press Club: “Gangling, gentle and firm, combining the qualities of old Mr. Chips and Joan of Arc, the Special Prosecutor opened at his best—and then proceeded to get better.” Sheepishly, perhaps a bit disingenuously, Cox apologized for disturbing reporters on a beautiful fall day. “I am certainly not out to get the President of the United States,” said Cox, as the cameras zoomed in. “I am even worried, to put it in colloquial terms, that I am getting too big for my britches.” But he felt honor-bound, he explained, “to stick by what I thought was right.” Cox went on to state that under the law only the attorney general—not the president—could fire him.