For my blog post today on Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990, I'll discuss something that Stephen Ambrose says on page 488:
"On
the subject of [Richard] Nixon, [Henry] Kissinger said, 'He was very
good in foreign policy [but] he was a very odd man....He is a very
unpleasant man. He was so nervous...He was an artificial man in the
sense that when he met someone he thought it out carefully so that
nothing was spontaneous, and that meant he didn't enjoy people. People
sensed that. What I never understood is why he became a politician. He
hated to meet new people. Most politicians like crowds. He
didn't.'...[William] Safire reported that at the recent Vladivostok
summit, Kissinger had sought to tout [President Gerald] Ford at Nixon's
expense, saying that Nixon 'would never look [Soviet leader] Brezhnev in
the eye.'"
Is Kissinger accurate about all of this? Ambrose in
volume 2 of his Nixon trilogy says a couple of times that Kissinger
probably was projecting onto Nixon some of his own insecurities.
Moreover, on the question of whether or not Nixon liked crowds, I recall
reading in Bruce Mazlish's In Search of Nixon about an
incident in which, when Nixon was in a group with a few people, he was
rather quiet, but he lit up like a light-bulb when a crowd came to see
him! Mazlish attributed that to Nixon's narcissism. But who among us
wouldn't appreciate the adulation of a crowd?
I can't say that
Kissinger was totally wrong in his description of Nixon, however. From
what I have read for My Year (or More) of Nixon, Nixon was shy around
new people. He was introverted. He liked to plan. He didn't
particularly care for surprises, in which he would be upstaged or caught
off guard.
Ambrose himself talks about the introverted, aloof
side of Nixon's personality, particularly when he depicts Nixon as alone
during the Watergate scandal. Technically, Nixon was not alone, for
Nixon had his friends such as Bebe Rebozo and his family, as Ambrose
narrates. But Nixon was keeping certain things to himself, according to
Ambrose. Moreover, Ambrose talks a couple of times about Nixon's bad
jokes, which may indicate a social awkwardness on Nixon's part.
Did
Richard Nixon have Asperger's Syndrome? Many people with Asperger's,
or who know something about Asperger's, can look at some of Nixon's
characteristics and see some overlap with Asperger's. Nixon loved
order. He was socially-awkward. He tended to ramble on and on about
subjects that interested him. Kissinger said that Nixon did not look
Brezhnev in the eye, and there are many with Asperger's who have
difficulty with eye-contact. (I should note, though, that Joan Hoff in Nixon Reconsidered narrated that, when she met Nixon, Nixon looked her straight in the eye.)
But
I have my doubts that Nixon had Asperger's. When I watch YouTube
videos of him, or listen to the Nixon tapes that are on YouTube, or read
about Nixon's interactions in books, he strikes me as socially
competent----not dazzling, mind you, but competent. He is able to joke
and to come up with quick come-backs. He can even banter a bit.