By Chris King

The first surprise at the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California: that he was not a bad looking younger man. In photographs, Nixon at twenty something looks rather like a Humphrey Bogart with the jowlishness of a big league catcher. More than most men, his aspect was only marred by the march of time, which accented only his ugliest features, mainly his nose and chin. His dark eyes, full of mystery at twenty, petered out and beetled in over the years, leaving him looking crude and corrupt.

But not stupid. He looked goofy at times (the arms at 45 degree angles, each ending at a peace sign), but not unintelligent, and he seems to have been a canny collector, using his power as a president to amass quite a collection of historical artifacts. Here is a Soviet wiretap removed from th U.S. Embassy in Moscow during the 70s. Here, the match and cigarette boxes Stalin gave to Truman at Yalta. Irving Berlin's original manuscript of sheet music for "God Bless America." A limo that ferried around four U.S. presidents. A pair of tongs used to collect rocks from the moon. And what a ghoulish trove from Vietnamese war prisons: a dog bone toothpick, a nubby blue pencil used to write letters to home, a spoon that once ladled soup into the gullet of a POW, a prisoner's self portraits as torture victim, and a jar of clay clawed from a fresh bomb crater that would have been used to craft a pipe had the war lasted long enough for soldier Trimble to have done so. Indeed, it's possible, given the quality of Nixon's eye as a collector and his shameful legacy, that his estate would draw better as a museum of American politics that completely covered up its connection to Richard Milhaus Nixon.

But such a museum would have to leave out a rash of good stuff that owes much of its meaning to who gave it to whom. There is the Colt .45 (World War II African-Middle Eastern Theater commemorative edition) that Elvis Presley gave to Nixon when they met in December 1970. There are the lavish robes and exquisite geegaws given to him by less metaphoric kings and crown princes the world over. And scattered throughout the museum are fragments of what I think of as the "From Dictators to Dick" collection: a sterling silver, floral-motif mate set from Pinochet; a pre-Colombian clay sculpture of a crossed-arms Africanesque figure (doubled up in pain after a jackboot kick?) from Somoza; and a bird-shaped pearl brooch from Imelda Marcos to First Lady Pat.

The Nixonless Nixon museum would also have to hide away some genuinely revealing material about the Nixon presidency and the electorate that created it (twice). There is a life-sized replica of the Lincoln sitting room, the smallest room in the White House and one not open to public tours because it's part of the president's private living quarters. Nixon used it to write his speeches, and facing the replicated room is the evolution of one speech, from Nixon's longhand on a legal pad, through annotated typescript, to final text with words that he wanted to emphasize underscored in pencil. In a striking glimpse behind the scenes, the presidential secretary Rose Woods does the math for him:

MR. PRESIDENT
VIETNAM SPEECH
Number of words 4,087
Words per minute
(taken from Welfare speech) 121.9
Approx. time for delivery 33 1/2 min.

And the American public probably deserves to read the cache of letters from elementary school Republicans writing to console him upon his election loss to Kennedy:

Dear Mr. Nixon, I am sorry that you were not elected president. I prayed every night for you so you would be our next president.
I am eight years old now but when I am twelve years of age you will be our president. I love you,
Paul Hallquist

Or:

Dear Richard M. Nixon,
I feel very sorry that you lost.
I,m a small Republican.
I beat my brains out working for you.
Bob Fahlstrom, 8

The next saddest item in the collection is a campaign button, "Pretty Girls for Nixon," which could have provided some dead president songwriter with a nice title. As for melody, someone could have quoted "Happy Days are Here Again," which Nixon played on every piano he saw after he was elected to the senate in 1950.

The third saddest item in the collection is his list of New Year's Resolutions from 1965, which included:

--- Knowledge of all weaknesses
--- Golf

I was pondering all of these things when one of the docents called to my attention this massive Bible, and told me this was the Bible used to swear Nixon into office in 1969. I looked at the book. I looked at the docent.

"What do you swear when you are sworn in as president?" I asked.

"I'm not sure of the exact words," the man said, "but I'm sure you swear to protect the country and uphold the office of the presidency."