Sentimental Journey

I sit in the Great Hall feasting on Peking duck.

How good it is compared to San Clemente crow.

--Art Buchwald, on Richard Nixon

He looked tanned and healthy, but his smile was tight and his bearing stiff. With his wife Pat and two of Peking's diplomats, he posed briefly at the doorway of the gleaming Chinese Boeing 707 jetliner. With that, the Richard Nixons flew from Los Angeles last week for a nine-day trip to the People's Republic of China, invited by Chairman Mao Tse-tung to mark the fourth anniversary of the former President's door-opening visit there. No fewer than 20 newsmen followed along. On hand to greet Nixon at the Peking airport was Acting Premier Hua Kuo-feng and other top Chinese officials.

Publicly, President Ford tried to downplay Nixon's odyssey, saying that it had "no political ramifications at all." Privately, Ford and his aides were furious that his disgraced predecessor would accept the longstanding invitation just as Ford was fighting to fend off the challenge of Ronald Reagan in the New Hampshire primary. Because Nixon seemed to be emerging from his San Clemente exile, Ford was being peppered with questions in New Hampshire about why he had pardoned the ex-President. Said one senior White House staffer: "It's goddam humiliating. Nixon can be forgiven for trying to make a comeback, but not for the timing." Cracked another top aide: "Maybe he'll ask for political asylum."

Columnist Joseph Kraft condemned the trip as the "sleazy act" of a "contemptible man ... now betraying the man who pardoned him." Nixon's journey, Kraft predicted, "can only foster a deadlock between Ford and Reagan, which will serve to promote the candidacy of the man he really wanted to succeed him as President, John Connally."

No one accused the Chinese of meddling in U.S. domestic politics. "Mao doesn't know what New Hampshire means, much less where it is," said a U.S. Government Sinologist. Most China watchers agree that Mao wants to reaffirm, as part of his political will and testament, the Shanghai communique of 1972 that promised "normalization" of relations between the U.S. and China. By inviting Nixon, Mao is using him to underscore Chinese impatience with the slow progress toward full diplomatic recognition of Peking and with the Ford Administration's emphasis on U.S.-Soviet detente.

In any case, Nixon stands to get a rare and intimate look at China's leaders at a time of mysterious ferment. Though the White House is not happy to see him go, it may derive some benefit from the trip. Nixon plans to make a report to the Ford Administration when he returns.

A stockholders' suit against Phillips Petroleum Co., growing out of the firm's illegal $100,000 contribution to the 1972 Nixon re-election campaign, was settled last week, and with the settlement came a disclosure that Richard Nixon was the direct recipient of half of the money. According to papers filed in the case, he had "personally" accepted $50,000 in campaign funds "at his New York City apartment" from William W. Keeler, then Phillips' chief executive.

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