Nixon's New-Found Humor

IT was not exactly a knee slapper and almost seemed to be unintentional. But given the context--the solemnity of the East Room of the White House and Richard Nixon's first press conference as President--the throwaway line was bound to elicit laughter. One of the first things he had done to cut down on crime in the capital, deadpanned the President, was to turn on the White House lights that Lyndon Johnson had turned off five years ago.

To many, the fact that Nixon has even a mild sense of humor comes as a surprise. And, in fact, the President did come by the gift of laughter, in public anyway, rather late in life. Perhaps because he felt he had to counterbalance his youth with seriousness for so many years--he was, at 39, the second youngest U.S. Vice President in history--Nixon was until last year the paradigm of sobriety. Then, at about the same time that people started talking about the new Nixon, he began sprinkling his speeches with one-liners.

Few, to be sure, were exactly memorable. "I'm trying to graduate from college myself this fall," Nixon would tell college audiences. "The Electoral College." A few were execrable. "It's one thing to give 'em hell," he said after Hubert Humphrey had made a well-publicized visit to Harry Truman. "It's another to give them Hubert." A new paperback, The Wit & Humor of Richard Nixon is necessarily brief (128 pages), has more than the usual amount of white space and includes Nixon's entire acceptance speech at Miami Beach, which contained not a scintilla of wit.

Some Nixon jokes, however, are genuinely funny. Talking to Virginia Republicans, he gently needled both a local G.O.P. official and himself. While he was preparing the itinerary for his South American trip in 1958, Nixon told how the official, Lee Potter, had noticed one omission. "Why don't you take in Caracas?" Potter had suggested. "It's a fun town." Said Nixon: "It sure was. I got stoned there."

Two weeks ago, alluding to Interior Secretary Walter Hickel's unfortunate comment that he did not favor "conservation for conservation's sake" and subsequent trouble receiving Senate confirmation, Nixon delivered a near-perfect one-liner. He was not, purred the President, "in favor of confirmation for confirmation's sake."

Much of Nixon's new humor consists of pleasant jocularity that lightens what might otherwise be a dull or pompous occasion. Shortly after he took the oath, for instance, he noted that his favorite tune was Hail to the Chief. He had never, he added, had better seats for a parade than at the Inaugural march. "Of course, I sent for my seats eight years ago." When he was about to return to the Executive Mansion for his first night in residence, he concluded: "They've given me the key to the White House, and I have to go home and see if it fits."

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