SEVERAL HOURS before Richard Nixon announced he would resign the presidency, a reporter asked former California Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. if the pending resignation would, finally, end Nixon's public career.

Brown is the only living man to have defeated Nixon in an election. He beat him in the 1962 California gubernatorial race, after which Nixon sulked into his famous Last Press Conference and promised reporters they would no longer have him to kick around.

"Well, far be it from me to do so," Brown answered. "I thought I ended his career in 1962. I thought it was the best thing I ever did."

Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, John Sirica, Sam Ervin, Archibald Cox, Leon Jaworski, Peter Rodino--two months ago, they too probably thought that ending Nixon's public career was the best thing they ever did. But now there are rumblings of another Nixon resurrection, as improbable as his climb from the humiliating loss to Brown in 1962 to the presidency in 1968. Most of the noise seems to be coming from San Clemente, but it bears monitoring, given Nixon's uncanny ability to worm his way back into the public's good graces after suffering through devastating scandals.

Apparently, Nixon sees his life in San Clemente not as exile, but as a bit of rest and relaxation before he accepts some big diplomatic or political appointment.

"It is perhaps appropriate for me to say very simply this," Nixon told 5000 supporters when he landed at El Toro Marine Air Base only hours after Gerald Ford became president. "Having completed one task does not mean that we will just sit and enjoy this marvelous California climate and do nothing.... With all the time I have which could be useful, I am going to continue to work for peace among all the world. I intend to continue to work for opportunity and understanding among the people here in America." A pathetic pipe dream, perhaps, but the crowd of 5000 cheered.

SINCE THEN, Nixon has been buffeted by the pardon backlash and a "dangerous" case of phlebitis. But he seems not to have changed his plans. Newsweek magazine's "Periscope" section, one of the few reliable "inside dope" columns, reported last week:

The former president told some old Washington associates, just before he entered the hospital last month, that he thought his reputation would be rehabilitated within two or three years. When his career was put into historical perspective, he said, his achievements in foreign affairs would overshadow his Watergate "misjudgments." Nixon also said that he expects to be "an important public figure" in the future. One former Nixon associate does not rule out the possibility that the former president might decide to run again for some public office but thinks it more likely that what Nixon has in mind is an active role as an elder statesman. (Emphasis added)

Nixon is probably right about the rehabilitation of his reputation, although the process may take longer than two or three years. But not much longer. Assuming Nixon is alive five or six years from now, a combination of public sympathy, intervening news events and general Watergate amnesia might leave him a scathed but grudgingly respected political leader. Or, if Nixon is correct, a sudden surge of gratitude for his foreign policy "successes" will overwhelm lingering doubts about his Watergate "misjudgments."

THE SPECULATION about a Nixon senatorial campaign came originally from David Eisenhower. Nixon had hardly been hustled off to San Clemente when young Eisenhower surfaced to tell reporters that his father-in-law might some day make an attractive candidate.

It is a laughable idea to anyone not from California. But those who know the state well understand that with 10 million voters, a candidate's biggest asset is name recognition. A tarnished image is often better than no image at all. It is easy to see Richard Nixon--gray at the temples, limping slightly--knocking off some unknown Republican in a primary and then--once more a winner, something of a "statesman" (in bearing and experience), above all an oddity (like Ronald Reagan and George Murphy)--beating his Democratic opponent.

Or else Nixon might become "a roving ambassador or top-level adviser" (as daughter Julie suggested last week). Such a post would let him perpetuate the fiction that while he may have been a domestic disaster as president, his foreign policy deserves our praise and gratitude. The White House has acknowledged that Ford has regularly consulted Nixon on foreign policy matters since the transition. It is conceiveable that Nixon will get an adviser's title to add to his current adviser role.

To dwell on Nixon's future soon becomes boring, but it is a necessary chore. To assume, as many have, that Nixon is a diseased and disgraced man, incapable of a comeback, will allow him the time and tolerance to make such a comeback. If he succeeds--if in five years he is the Republicans' next Alf Landon, the nation's next Averill Harriman, the world's next U Thant--Watergate and all of its revelations and investigations will have accomplished little.

And there is no doubt that Nixon will try to get away with it. "You are here to say good-bye to us," he said in his tear-stained farewell speech to the White House staff. "And we don't have a good word for it in English. The best is au revoir. We'll see you again."