PublicAffairs, 1152pp. Forty Dollars.
After reading this tome on Richard Nixon,written by Conrad Black, one can only regret that Richard Nixon’s legacy seems forever to be colored by the Watergate affair. For not only did he make his mark as an accomplished politician and statesman, but also Nixon was an exemplary student and son.
Nixon graduated third in his high school class,second in his college class,and third in his law school class. And being the son of a grocer, as he was infamously described in appeals to working-class voters – an unusual demographic for Republicans before Nixon – he worked tirelessly during his youth,as well as during adulthood, to honor his upbringing.
Moreover, despite claims to the contrary, Richard Nixon was a committed Quaker as a youth, and would largely remain so for the rest of his life. Writes Black of the 22-year old Nixon, ‘He did not smoke or drink, was probably a virgin, was a devout churchgoer, and was an uptight, resourceful, determined young man… (p. 33)’. There was plenty to admire in Nixon the man.
He enlisted in the United States Navy during World War II, even though he easily could have avoided service,as he came from an historically Quaker family,was a Quaker himself,and attended a Quaker university (Whittier College). He rendered respectable service to his country as an officer, even if it were not as epic as that rendered by, say, John F. Kennedy or George H.W. Bush. As Black makes sure to note, Nixon was respected by his men.
Then came Richard Nixon the politician, a more devious and scheming version of Nixon the man. Black captures well his sudden ascent from a lower-middle class upbringing in ‘the great unwashed body of America’ (a line from Jack Kerouac, quoted on p. 1058), to the second-highest office in the land, the Vice Presidency, into which Nixon was inaugurated in 1953 at the fresh age of 40. And though the reader is never want for details in Black’s 1152-page biography, occasionally he fails to offer an holistic narrative, such that one is nearly covered in paper cuts as a result of constant page-flipping and index-consulting.
One such instance involves the politicking surrounding the Republican nomination for President in 1952.
Back in the days when the two major American parties were not so intensely divided along ideological lines – though the wedge created by the New Deal and profligate federal spending would soon cause such divisions, still felt to this day – the Republican Party was home to many conservatives, moderates, and liberals.
These divisions within the party finally butted heads full-on in the 1952 primary battle, as the conservative Senator Robert Taft of Ohio battled the moderate ex-General Dwight Eisenhower and the liberal California Governor Earl Warren. Richard Nixon, as a rising star in the party due to his role in the Alger Hiss perjury trial,and now as a California Senator,was poised to maneuver his way into consideration for the VP nomination if he delivered the Warren delegation to Eisenhower – which he successfully did,and with prejudice to the leftish Warren.
Nixon, Black contends, sided with Eisenhower because he had had an extreme dislike for Warren and thought that Taft would cause the Republicans to lose the Presidency again, which they had not had since Herbert Hoover left office in 1933. The scheming and surreptitious activities proved legendary, but Black does not offer a compelling narrative of these events, a wholly unfortunate thing.
The biography generally gives an adequate treatment of Richard Nixon’s Vice Presidency, the 1960 election, and the years preceding his election to the Presidency in 1968,though more attention to Nixon’s family life would have been helpful in understanding Nixon the man. Several instances of warm affection and sincere love are recounted – such as the time when Nixon picked up and whirled Pat around in an airplane, thinking that no one was looking – but not nearly enough.
Far too often Black harps on and excoriates the brooding and paranoid side of Richard Nixon’s nature, though such a tactic is in a sense understandable if he is attempting to blunt the shock that many modern liberals might express at the idea that someone could offer an apology for our 37th President.
But Black, as a biographer adding to the public discourse, should feel free to take whatever position seems most truthful, and the position that Nixon was actually a decent guy is the most truthful one. Fortunately, this is the position that Black, his moments of undue criticism notwithstanding, generally takes. The ethical puritans, as Black rightly derogates them in frequent bursts of outrage that must hint at his own legal troubles, can go to [expletive deleted].
A little more than halfway through the book, the pace really begins to intensify,as the reader travels with Richard Nixon, Kissinger,and a realist foreign policy to all the ends of the earth. The discussion of the Watergate affair and all of its nasty consequences was of course necessary for Black to provide, but the real story of the Nixon Administration was its foreign policy successes. The honorable end to the conflict in Vietnam was among them, though the resumption of relations with communist China was the shining star.
The relationship between Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger as they embarked on these momentous foreign policy adventures—achievements—is equally riveting. Black captures this relationship in all
