Death Hasn’t Stopped Nixon From Affecting Presidential Race

“Dying is no excuse: Nixon in ‘96.”

So announces the lapel button worn at a dinner last week by Roger Stone, a Republican strategist who was a confidant of Richard M. Nixon in the former president’s later years.

No, Nixon is not about to stage another comeback, this one from the grave. Even Stone has moved on; he is running Sen. Arlen Specter’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

But more than a year after his death, Nixon, who was a dominant force in Republican presidential politics for four decades, is unexpectedly looming over the party’s 1996 race. A number of campaigns are engaged in a subtle yet unmistakable competition over who can claim Nixon’s blessing to be the next Republican standard bearer.

“It’s a little bit strange because Nixon still has some real negatives attached to his image,” said Gary Jacobson, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego. Perhaps, he said, the contenders want to claim that “the wise, wily old pro of the party tapped them” for the nomination.

The fiercest rivalry is between two longtime friends and proteges of Nixon who delivered eulogies at his funeral: Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas and Gov. Pete Wilson of California.

Earlier last week, Nixon’s intentions were the buzz in Republican circles when The Los Angeles Times published excerpts from letters that he wrote to Dole over the last few years before his death. They encouraged Dole to run and offered advice like staking out the party’s right wing before the primaries - advice that he seems to be taking.

“After 1994,” Nixon wrote, “you will have no one who can defeat you if you run, or can win without you if you decide not to run.”

As the Republican national chairman from 1971 to 1973, at the start of the Watergate scandal that would eventually force Nixon from the presidency, Dole was a staunch defender of the president. But until these letters appeared, it was assumed by many people that Nixon had favored Wilson for the nomination.

William Safire, a columnist for The New York Times, wrote a year ago that before his death on April 22, 1994, Nixon told him that Dole “has a good shot” in 1996. But he seemed to be more emphatic about Wilson’s chances - that is, if the governor was re-elected. Safire quoted the former president as saying, “If Pete Wilson survives in California in ‘94, he will be nominated in ‘96 and will be a strong candidate.”

Nixon also said that Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey would be “a real sleeper” as a vicepresidential contender. (Makes one wonder whether it was merely coincidence that Wilson, who handily won re-election last year and is expected to formally announce his candidacy later this month, and Ms. Whitman were on the program last month at a fund-raising dinner for the Nixon library.)

Stone said he believes that “the Dole letters surfaced in The L.A. Times in an effort to twit Pete Wilson - and I must say it was well done.”

Indeed, Dole’s advisers allowed that they were perfectly happy to see the letters published. “Despite his failings, people view Nixon as a strong president,” said William B. Lacy, Dole’s deputy campaign chairman.

Asked about Nixon’s prognostications about Dole’s prospects, Lacy added, “I think Republicans especially would view him as being a good judge on things like that.”

But nearly every Republican candidate for president can claim some connection to the 37th president:

Fans and some critics of Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana like to remind reporters that when he was mayor of Indianapolis Lugar was known as “Nixon’s favorite mayor.”

Nixon came within an eyelash of naming Specter to the Supreme Court.

Patrick J. Buchanan, the conservative commentator, was Nixon’s communications director.

Though he likes to gloss over his inside-the-Beltway credentials, former Gov. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee did work in Washington in the 1960s, in the Nixon White House.

Another contender, Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, cannot claim ties to Nixon. But it is with good reason: he was a Democrat when Nixon was president.