END OF THE ROAD

By Henry Kissinger

Thursday Morning, Aug. 8, resignation was transmuted from the tragic to the routine. Haig told me that Nixon would see Ford at 11 a.m. to tell him formally of his plan to resign. Some Cabinet members called, asking whether they should publicly announce their readiness to continue in office. I counseled against it; they should not deprive the new President of options.

At 12:30 p.m. Vice President Ford called. He had just left the President, he said. He wanted to waste no time in urging me to stay on and to "stand with me in these difficult times." I said he could count on me: "You know the whole world depends on you, Mr. Vice President."

At 3 p.m. I called on the President-designate at the Executive Office Building. I had known Gerald Ford for many years. I had briefed him regularly, first as Republican leader of the House, and for the past nine months as Vice President. I liked him immensely. I knew he was a good and decent man. I had no idea how he would perform as President, and almost certainly neither did he. But he seemed at ease, neither overawed nor falsely boastful. He urged me again to stay on and noted that we had always got along well. I pointed out that it was not his job to get along with me; it was my job to get along with him.

Afterward, I realized that for the first time in years after a presidential meeting I was free of tension. It was impossible to talk to Nixon without wondering what other game he might be engaged in. It was exciting but draining, even slightly menacing. With Ford, there were no hidden designs, no morbid suspicions, no complexes. I reflected again on the wisdom of providence. Gerald Ford was clearly not Nixon's first choice as successor; John Connally was. I could think of no public figure better able to lead us in national renewal than this man so quintessentially American, of unquestioned integrity, at peace with himself, thoughtful and knowledgeable, calm and unafraid.

That night Nixon announced his resignation in a simple speech that was well delivered, without pathos. It stopped short of confessing guilt but it admitted mistakes--not an easy matter for one so proud. I stood behind the cameras for the last few moments. When he was finished and the lights had been turned off, Nixon placed his hand on top of Woodrow Wilson's desk before turning his back for the last time on the Oval Office. I caught up with him in the passageway next to the Rose Garden. I said: "Mr. President, after most of your major speeches in this office we have walked together back to your house. I would be honored to walk with you again tonight." So we walked along the corridor to the residence for the final time. At the door, Julie Nixon Eisenhower wordlessly embraced her father.

James St. Clair, Nixon's lawyer, was in my office when I returned. We had exchanged a few words during the preceding months. Now he obviously needed someone to talk to. He was bothered about whether he could have done better. "It was not a legal case," I told him. "It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started, it could not end otherwise."

The next morning, Nixon's Cabinet and White House staff assembled for the last time in the East Room. At 9:30 the military aide announced President and Mrs. Nixon, followed by the strains of Hail to the Chief. The poignancy was nearly unbearable. And then Nixon delivered a speech that was as rambling as the previous night's had been disciplined, as emotional as the previous night's had been controlled. It was too much. It was as if having kept himself in check all these years he had to put on display all the demons and dreams that had driven him to this point. He even wore glasses in public for the first time, symbolically forswearing the vanity and image making of his career. It was horrifying and heartbreaking; and it was unavoidable. Nixon could not leave as the automaton that had been his public personality. I was at the same time moved to tears and outraged at being put through the wringer again; even in his last public act Nixon projected his ambivalence onto those around him.

That mood passed too as Nixon's anguish engulfed us all. In defeat and disgrace he had at last prevailed; he had stripped us of our reserve; our hearts at last went out to this man who transcended his extremity by refusing to act as if he were defeated.

A few minutes later I stood on the South Portico of the White House. Below on the South Lawn, incongruously, a red carpet stretched toward the waiting helicopter. As he was about to board, Nixon turned to his colleagues for the last time with a wave of his arms that was intended to be jaunty but conveyed more than anything that he had reached the end of his physical and emotional resources.

Soon the helicopter disappeared on the way to Andrews Air Force Base. Ford, President-designate for another 90 minutes, turned and strode firmly toward the White House, his arm around his wife's shoulders. Ford appeared subdued yet confident.

I felt an immense relief. We had traversed a constitutional crisis without catastrophe. Yet no one had taken over the presidency in more challenging circumstances; great crises were surely ahead. And the prayer that had eluded me two nights earlier came to me as I watched Gerald Ford enter the White House: for the sake of all of us, that fate would be kind to this good man, that his heart would be stout, and that America under his leadership would find again its faith.

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