Aberration or the norm?

Last night I watched an old, old film about the strife within a Quaker family when it is forced by circumstances in the Civil War to weigh it's belief in pacifism against its need to protect itself and its friends -- Friendly Persuasion with Gary Cooper and Tony Perkins. So, probably for the first time since we got rid of Tricky Dick, I asked myself how it is that a faith that believes in pacifism could have spawned a war hawk like Dick Nixon? Was Nixon the aberration or is he the norm? While I know several Quakers, they are about evenly divided among Republicans and Democrats, so that doesn't really tell me much.