An exhibition opening on Friday at the Nixon Presidential Library in California features documents and memos detailing his relations with the White House after Mr Clinton took office in 1993.
In a video message recorded for the library, Mr Clinton recalls seeking the advice of his predecessor at a time when many Americans were tempted to say: “We’ve had enough of the world”.
“President Nixon knew we had to continue to reach out to old friends and to old enemies alike,” says Mr Clinton in the clip. “He knew America could not quit the world”.
Some 18 years after his resignation following the Watergate scandal, Mr Nixon wrote to Mr Clinton to congratulate him on his hard-fought presidential election victory over President George HW Bush.
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In Mr Nixon, he found advice from an elder statesman who won plaudits while in the White House for thawing relations with China and went on to make several visits to Russia.
In a three-hour meeting with a senior Clinton aide weeks before his death, Mr Nixon said that the young president had “not been tough enough when it comes to Russia’s dealings with its neighbours,” one document shows.
Offering to carry messages to Boris Yeltsin, then the Russian president, Mr Nixon also proposed that US aid to Russia be linked to nuclear non-proliferation and reforms to the Russian military.
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At his funeral, Mr Clinton said: “May the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to a close.”
“After he died, I found myself wishing I could pick up the phone and ask President Nixon what he thought about this issue or that problem, particularly if it involved Russia,” he says in the clip. “I appreciated his insight and advice and I’m glad he chose, at the end of his life, to share it with me”.
