Relations With Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan
On August 8, 1974, Waggonner prepared a special list of House and Senate lawmakers who were among a shrinking band of Nixon supporters. The lawmakers met that night with a "visibly distraught" Nixon, who told the group that he would resign on Friday, August 9, at noon. "'I am sorry I have let you down,'" Waggonner recalled Nixon having said.
Waggonner flew to Yorba Linda, California, in April 1994 to attend Nixon's funeral. Indeed, he had maintained communication with Nixon long after both had left Washington. Nixon's first outing after his resignation was a trip to Shreveport for an event the Waggonners hosted at their home, remembered Rene Gibson, a former Waggonner staffer, as reported in the Shreveport Times on the occasion of Waggonner's death.
Though friendly with Nixon, he quarreled with Nixon's successor Gerald Ford when Ford, as a former president, came into the 4th District in 1978 to support a Republican candidate, James H. "Jimmy" Wilson of Vivian (northern Caddo Parish), a former state representative who narrowly lost the general election race to Waggonner's choice, Buddy Leach.
In the 1964 gubernatorial second primary and general election, Waggonner endorsed Democrat John McKeithen who, like Waggonner in 1961, was opposed by the Republican Charlton Lyons. Waggonner objected to the strengthening of the Republican Party in Louisiana. He once said that Louisiana, unlike other southern states, already had a two-party system through its "Long" and "anti-Long" factional competition. Nevertheless, in his later years, Waggonner did occasionally endorse Republicans, including the 1996 presidential nominee Robert J. "Bob" Dole of Kansas, who had been Ford's vice-presidential running mate in 1976.
In 1981, President Ronald W. Reagan, who had campaigned for Charlton Lyons for governor of Louisiana in 1964, appointed Waggonner to the 15-member National Commission on Social Security Reform, headed by Alan Greenspan.
Read more about this topic: Joe Waggonner
Famous quotes containing the words relations with, relations, presidents, ford and/or reagan:
“She has problems with separation; he has trouble with unity—problems that make themselves felt in our relationships with our children just as they do in our relations with each other. She pulls for connection; he pushes for separateness. She tends to feel shut out; he tends to feel overwhelmed and intruded upon. It’s one of the reasons why she turns so eagerly to children—especially when they’re very young.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market.
He has no time to be anything but a machine.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Our presidents have been getting to be synthetic monsters, the work of a hundred ghost- writers and press agents so that it is getting harder and harder to discover the line between the man and the institution.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“There is a lady sweet and kind,
Was never face so pleased my mind;
I did but see her passing by,
And yet I love her till I die.”
—Thomas Ford (1580–1648)
“Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)