By Robert Field
For those of us who came to voting age in 1960 when Republican Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Democrat Senator John F. Kennedy vied for the Presidency, Nixon looms large in our lives.
However they felt about Nixon over the course of time, all would gain insight from Evan Thomas’ recently published “Being Nixon, A Man Divided” .
Like Al Gore, Nixon was deprived of the presidency, in his case in 1960 through extraordinary voting fraud by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Nixon chose not to challenge the election, perhaps due to the overwhelming Democrat control of the House of Representatives where, according to the Constitution, such matters would have been decide .
(This was forty years before the U. S. Supreme Court took it upon itself to virtually anoint Governor George W. Bush over Vice President Al Gore.)
Nixon’s approval rating soon after he was re-elected in 1972 was 68%. Shortly before he resigned a year later due to the Watergate scandal, his support had dropped to 18%. It is hard to imagine an elected official having reached such heights and then so quickly plunging to such depths.
The Nixon haters had a feeding frenzy. Northern elites had long loathed Nixon and now they seemed vindicated. And they were largely justified, especially based on the information available at the time.
But as can be seen from “Being Nixon”, Nixon was not as pure evil as perceived by his many detractors from the 1950’s onward nor altogether as guilty as envisioned at the time of his resignation, especially when compared to what had been done as a matter of course by his two immediate predecessors in office.
Thomas enables us to better understand what was really taking place behind the Nixon tapes. How his style was to set forth hypothesis as though it was his decision to encourage his close advisers (and himself) to disagree. How he would “blow off steam” by giving instructions that Bob Haldeman, his Chief of Staff, well knew were not to be carried out and often Nixon would not mention again.
Nixon’s mind worked by circling important matters, probing problems from different angles. Ultimately concluding on the path he felt was appropriate, he then made clear what was to be done.
We learn what a painful introvert he was, hardly able to meet let alone talk with people, except when on the campaign trail when he turned himself into a functional extrovert. He was one of the deepest thinkers who ever occupied the White House, choosing what he considers the most important matters and then mulling over them late into the early morning hours, jotting down notes on yellow legal pads.
The clash raged within himself between his highly principled Quaker background and the hard nosed politician who had been abused by the liberal media and cheated and slighted by people like the Kennedy’s.
(The high regard President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert are held by the public has surprised this student of history. When young, we too were were charmed by JFK’s presence and mourned his assassination as though he were a family member. But by our scale of Presidential failures and accomplishments, JFK ranks very low and Nixon very high. We thought this then, and we think it now, as did world leaders at the time of Nixon’s resignation.)
Nixon achievements with China, Russia and the North Vietnamese earned admiration throughout the free world then and continues to this day. His societal proposals such as the “negative income tax” and a national health plan similar to Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act are testimony to his genuine concern for all Americans.
Perceived as a conservative Republican in his time, Nixon’s initiatives had far more in common with presidents Bill Clinton (whom he unofficially advised) and Obama than with President George W. Bush, let alone the Tea Party.
As Jay Winik, author of “April 1865” and “The Great Upheaval” states: “Richard Nixon is one of the most complex and fascinating characters in American history. In this poignant, revealing, and compelling readable book, Evan Thomas makes him human.”
We heartily recommend the book to students of history, old and young alike. We cannot speak to the dozens of the other biographies, but we think that Thomas enables us to better understand Richard Nixon and does him justice.
