The QUITTER, Our Memories of a Broken Ruler

Journal: Rolling Stone
Date: September 12, 1974

Calmly and deliberately, Mr Nixon said: "I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as President I must put the interests of America first." (The Times, August 9th, 1974)

Richard Nixon's resignation didn't exactly catch us by surprise, but, the way we see it, he might have been a bit more opportune. A quick phone call, perhaps, in the middle of May. As it happened, the resignation speech hit us just as the last issue - with its cover headline, "Nixon's New Defenders and Their Strange Pasts" - hit the stands.

So he shafted us one last time. We're not the type to hold a grudge. Now we can start to look back on the Nixon years and the strange man who robed himself in the presidency. We've had our share of things to say about him of course. Our first call for his impeachment was on June 7th, 1973.

Our first call for impeachment? What else did we have to say about the man? To find out, seven editors read over our last 168 issues to see what we had written about Nixon. We looked for bright, breezy material as well as the kind of vicious, distorted, hysterical reporting that banned us from the White House for all but the last months when the pit began to open up at Nixon's feet ...

... We have been publishing ROLLING STONE only slightly longer than Richard Nixon's tenure as president of the United States. From time to time we commented on the former president and his actions. What follows is a partial chronicle of that coverage. We would say only that if some of our judgements were wrong - and some were wrong - they were made in what we believed at the time to be in the best interests of the nation.

From the Rolling Stone Interview with David Crosby in 1970

But it's very hard to ignore that Kent State thing. They were down there, man, ready to do it. You can see them, they're all kneeling there, they're all in a kneeling position and they got their slings tight and they're ready to shoot. And there's this kid, this long-haired kid standing there With a flag wavin' it ... I mean, I cannot be a man and be a human and ignore that. I don't think. I don't think I can. And I'm not political. I don't dig politics. I don't think politics is a workable system anymore. I think they gotta invent something better. And man, it's really right down to there. It's really not happening for me to live in a country where they gun people down in the streets just for that, for saying they don't dig it that way. You can't do that. President Nixon, you can't do that!

 

Ben Fong-Torres, July 23, 1970