Suburbanites
At President Nixon's home, there's a longing for the good old days of conservatism and an ambivalence about this year's contenders.

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 4, 2008

YORBA LINDA, Calif. -- Vicki Miller crossed her arms.

"John McCain ticks me off," she said. "I'm very angry at him. If I vote for him, I'll do it with a bad taste in my mouth. That lowlife is going to make all these illegals legal.

"And I like [Vice President] Cheney," she said. "Everybody hates Cheney, but I like him."

Gene Miller turned to his wife. "Even though he's got bad aim, eh?"

The Millers, both 61 and retired from computer careers at McDonnell Douglas and then Boeing, shared a bench in the chill overcast outside the house where Richard M. Nixon was born. Behind them, fellow visitors to the Nixon Library and Museum climbed the steps of the Marine helicopter the former president used to leave the White House after announcing his resignation. On the top step, they dutifully threw their arms over their heads, fingers splayed in "V" signs

"I was one of the last people that thought he was innocent," Vicki Miller said. "The morning of the announcement was the day I turned. Not that I turned. But I don't care. He opened the door to China."

The Millers have lived in Orange County for 30 years.

"I'm less passionate," Gene Miller said. "I couldn't be more passionate" than her, he said, giving his wife an appreciative glance.

"We're pretty disappointed with Arnold," he said, referring to Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's Republican governor, who has worked closely with the Democratic legislature. "And the Republicans with George Bush, they just spend, spend, spend. They seem to have lost their way."

Orange County never has. The birthplace of the first native Californian elected to the White House (Nixon), the suburban paradise between Los Angeles and San Diego remains a conservative bastion in a state that has trended more and more Democratic. Before there were red states and blue states, there was Orange.

"When you passed from Long Beach to Seal Beach, you'd gone behind the Orange Curtain," Gene Miller said.

Yet these are challenging times. The party's latest questionable move was closing its side of Tuesday's primary to the 20 percent of voters who consider themselves independent. Schwarzenegger warned the state GOP that it is growing insular, obsessed with ideological purity.

"I think they ought to wrap him up and send him back to Australia -- Austria," said Bob Ford, correcting himself.

"Well, honey, he has to get along with Maria," said Ford's wife, Kathy, 77, referring to Maria Shriver, a niece of John F. Kennedy. "He has to go home at night."

They were in the main foyer, looking for the model train show in the special exhibits room. Bob Ford, 75, registers Democrat but said he has voted straight Republican all his life. His painting company did most of the malls in the county before he retired.

"All the people I know are pretty conservative," he said. Weary of California's 55 electoral votes going to Democrats, he said, "We need two states -- Northern California and Southern California."

Kathy Ford liked Rudolph W. Giuliani, but with the former New York mayor out of the race, she is leaning toward Mitt Romney, even though "he isn't really striking a chord with people."

"My daughter's voting for Hillary Clinton," she announced.

"Wait till I get through with her," Bob Ford said.

At the Nixon library, they talk about Clinton the way liberals talked about Nixon.

"I'm a true Orange County Republican, and I'm an admirer of Ronald Reagan, and truthfully I will vote for whoever we nominate to beat Hillary," Caroline Schilling said. "I think she's the most frightening human being. Her quest for power is just astonishing."

Schilling, 65, counts a daughter of Barry Goldwater among her closest friends. She came to the Nixon museum Friday afternoon after selling her flower shop in the morning. "And don't even get me started on the state of California and being a small businesswoman," she said, rolling her eyes.

Rex Johnson, a classmate visiting from Florida, smiled sympathetically. They had wandered past the Lincoln Sitting Room. Still ahead was the president's old armored limousine, the gun Elvis Presley presented in the Oval Office and, to the right and straight ahead, empty space once occupied by a Watergate exhibit that implied the scandal that ended Nixon's presidency had been a sly Democratic coup.

Installed by Nixon's friends, it was dismantled when responsibility for the museum passed to the National Archives, which is preparing a fact-based replacement. ("This isn't North Korea," the new director said.)

"I'll have to do McCain," Schilling said. "I just loved Rudy, and then I started listening to Mitt and all he was saying and how with his past he seemed so capable of running a country.

"But I'll have to do what I have to do. McCain will be the eventual nominee. I have a firm belief that if you don't vote, it's a vote for the other side."

"You got that right, baby," Johnson said.