Richard Nixon’s “last” press conference

Richard Nixon’s “last” press conference, (1962) press conference at which Republican politician Richard Nixon, the former U.S. vice president (1953–61), having lost a close race for the presidency to John F. Kennedy (1960) and a run for the governorship of California to incumbent Edmund G. (“Pat”) Brown (1962), seemed to announce his withdrawal from political life. Observers were quick to declare Nixon’s political career over, but some six years later he rebounded to win the 1968 presidential election to become the 37th president of the United States.

On November 7, 1962, Nixon began his postelection news conference at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, by observing that members of the press were “so delighted” that he had lost. He went on to criticize the role played by the press in the election and complained that he had been the victim of unfair news coverage. In concluding his appearance, Nixon famously declared, “As I leave you, I want you to know, just think how much you’re going to be missing. You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” Nixon’s enmity toward the media that day foreshadowed the contempt he would have for it as president, when he would tell national security adviser Henry Kissinger in a taped White House conversation, “The press is the enemy.”

Nixon had barely slept in his California hotel suite the night before his “last” news conference. The New York Times reported that he “looked very tired” and that “his voice quavered at several points in what turned out to be a 15-minute monologue.” The newspaper also characterized Nixon’s loss in the gubernatorial race as likely ending any chance he had at winning the presidency: “A failure to win his native state had been widely assessed before the election as impairing, probably irreparably, the 49-year-old Republican’s viability in national politics.”

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Nixon had carried California in the 1960 presidential race, and, as Dwight D. Eisenhower’s running mate, he had helped the GOP ticket win the state in the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections, when California was much more hospitable to Republicans than it would be later on. Nevertheless, in his seemingly valedictory news conference, Nixon griped that for 16 years reporters had a lot of fun attacking him. “And I think I’ve given as good as I’ve taken,” he said, adding that his battle with the press “was carried right up to the last day.”

While stressing that reporters should be free to write what they want, he said newspapers could learn from TV and radio coverage:

I think that it’s time that our great newspapers have at least the same objectivity, the same fullness of coverage, that television has. And I can only say thank God for television and radio for keeping the newspapers a little more honest.

Nixon also made a plea for news outlets to put “one lonely reporter on the campaign who will report what the candidate says now and then.”

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The media that Nixon lit into were quick to return the favor and write him off as yesterday’s news. In an editorial, Time magazine wrote that Nixon, having risen from humble beginnings to become a congressman, senator, vice president, and the Republican presidential nominee, “symbolized the American dream” in some ways, “and yet, barring a miracle, his political career ended last week.” ABC jumped the gun with a TV program that it titled The Political Obituary of Richard M. Nixon, which featured an interview with Nixon’s nemesis Alger Hiss. The network received 80,000 letters complaining about the show.

Top political figures also mocked Nixon, including Kennedy. On a White House recording released in 1998 by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Kennedy can be heard telling Governor Brown in conversation, “You reduced him to the nut house.” “This is a peculiar fellow,” Brown agreed. “I really think he’s psychotic. He’s an able man, but he’s nuts.” The day of Nixon’s news conference, Brown was overheard telling his wife, “That’s something that Nixon’s going to regret all his life. The press is never going to let him forget it.”

Yet, Nixon wrote in his memoirs that he received thousands of letters appreciating that “someone finally had the guts to tell the press off.”

He also wrote:

I have never regretted what I said in “the last press conference.” I believe that it gave the media a warning that I would not sit back and take whatever biased coverage was dished out to me. I think the episode was partially responsible for the much fairer treatment I received from the press during the next few years. From that point of view alone, it was worth it.

Of course, Nixon was not gone from politics for long. After Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater lost the 1964 presidential election in a landslide to Lyndon B. Johnson, Nixon helped support GOP congressional candidates, building up chits along the way. In 1968 he defeated Hubert Humphrey to finally win the White House.