JACKSON - This year seems to be an unusual one for marking milestones. Another one arrived earlier this month when the nation marked the 30-year anniversary of Richard M. Nixon's resignation as president, the only president ever to resign from office.
Nixon bowed to reality before his certain impeachment and conviction by the Senate for his cover-up in the Watergate scandal.
Strange as it may seem, once again in these milestone observances, either this state, or some political figures from Mississippi, played a role, inglorious to be sure, in the downfall of Nixon.
Oddly, two weeks ago, Fred Larue, a Mississippian who was one of the key figures in the White House cover-up of the break-in at the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Party, died in Biloxi at age 75.
A onetime prominent Mississippi oilman, Larue in 1969 had been appointed an aide in the Nixon White House. Actually, his presence on the Nixon staff was a mystery. He held no title and was not listed in the White House directory.
A massive Senate investigation into the Watergate scandal followed amazing disclosures by Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward that the White House was connected with the burglars who were caught after breaking into the DNC Watergate offices.
Out of the weeks-long Senate hearings, it was revealed that Larue was the bagman who paid $350,000 in hush money to the Watergate conspirators.
Larue was indicted in 1974, later pleaded guilty and served 136 days in a federal prison before he was paroled. For years thereafter he lived at Gulf Hills on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, declining to talk about Watergate.
When Larue, an early leader and financial backer in building the Mississippi GOP in the 1960s, was given the White House post, it was regarded as a reward for state Republicans' backing of Nixon's 1968 "Southern Strategy" that helped him win the election.
Nixon announced his resignation as president on Aug. 9, 1974, declaring that next day then-Vice President Gerald Ford would become president.
Ford, then a Michigan congressman, had been appointed to the veep job only weeks before by Nixon, adding more high drama to Nixon's historic downfall.
Ford replaced Spiro Agnew, who had been forced to resign when a payoff scandal and tax fraud scandal from his previous job as Maryland's governor came to light.
Only six days before Nixon would resign and Ford would become president, Ford had come to Jackson on a warm Aug. 3 to speak outside the War Memorial Building. I made it my business to go hear him, even though I was on vacation from my Mississippi correspondent's job with The New Orleans Times-Picayune at the time.
What amazed me was that only about 300 Mississippians showed up to hear Ford, even though anyone who had closely followed the unfolding Watergate case building against Nixon should have realized that here was an opportunity to see and hear the man who would likely soon become president.
When I conveyed my own feelings to some unbelievers that day, I quickly grasped that a great many Mississippians were either not keeping up with the unfolding Watergate scandal, or chose to believe Nixon would simply ride it out.
Just two months earlier, even while increasing Watergate evidence against Nixon mounted in Senate hearings, he was welcomed by a cheering crowd of several thousand when he addressed the Mississippi Economic Council in the Mississippi Coliseum as though nothing was wrong.
That was an apparent clue that Mississippians were blind to the seriousness of allegations that the White House was involved in the Watergate break-in.
Remember, in the 1972 presidential election, Nixon got 505,000 votes in Mississippi to only 127,000 for Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern from Minnesota even though the Watergate break-in had begun to smell.
Next, enter Trent Lott, then a young congressman from Mississippi's 5th District. He was a member of the House Judiciary Committee, which in July 1974 took up the articles of impeachment against Nixon.
When the 32-member House Judiciary Committee adopted all three articles overwhelmingly, Lott was one of only a mere handful of holdouts on the committee.
The dramatically televised roll call vote showed our boy Lott was the only committee member who voted against all three articles.
Lott was quoted in the Congressional Quarterly as saying that the charges against Nixon were "ridiculous" and there was "not a shred of evidence" that the president knew about the Watergate break-in or the cover-up.
Of course, a couple of days later when Nixon was forced by the courts to give up the "smoking gun" tapes of his conversations with White House associates about the elaborate Watergate cover-up, Lott was the one made to look ridiculous.
You can see that Trent Lott had "foot in mouth" disease even back then, an ailment that 28 years later would cost him the Senate majority leader job.
