I covered a lot of ground in my latest reading of Richard Nixon's Leaders.
I finished Nixon's chapter about French leader Charles de Gaulle, and I
read a significant portion of his chapter about General Douglas
MacArthur and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, who worked
together to rebuild Japan after World War II. I won't be mentioning
every single passage in my latest reading that I found noteworthy, since
there were so many. As I've said before on this blog, I do love
reading Nixon, particularly on account of his conversational
writing-style. But I will offer some samples.
1. On page 43, Nixon says about Charles de Gaulle:
"The
de Gaulle I met in 1960 was very different from the arrogant, abusive
character portrayed by reporters and foreign service personnel. I found
him to be a very kind man with a somewhat shy quality that is hard to
describe. He was not warm, but neither was he harsh. I would say he
was almost gentle. But, as with most leaders, gentleness of manner was
one thing; policy was another thing.
"Most leaders I have known
had a gentle side to their natures, but it would be a mistake to call
them gentle people. Those who are in fact gentle are seldom good at
wielding power. A leader has to be brutally tough at times in order to
do his job. If he frets too much about the toughness of his task, if he
lets himself be deterred to much by sentimentality, he will not do what
he has to do right, or even do it at all."
In Nixon's depiction,
de Gaulle was a formal and reserved man, on the one hand, and Nixon says
that Winston Churchill complained that de Gaulle was too stubborn and
intransigent! But, on the other hand, according to Nixon, de Gaulle was
also genuinely kind and considerate. De Gaulle at dinners would invite
other people into a conversation rather than monopolizing people's
attention, and he complimented Pat on the flower arrangement. De Gaulle
could step out of his formality and reserve when he was entertaining
his daughter, who had a mental disability. And, in the political arena,
de Gaulle could use flattery whenever it would suit him politically!
I
didn't know a whole lot about de Gaulle before reading Nixon's
discussion about him, but I have in the past appreciated some of the
things that Nixon said about de Gaulle. I remember watching David
Frost's interviews of Nixon on C-SPAN, and the topic was Nixon's
reserve. Nixon noted that Charles de Gaulle was a good leader, and yet
de Gaulle was not exactly a back-slapping politician. This resonated
with me, as someone who has been judged as cold, stiff, and reserved,
for it told me that one could be reserved and still accomplish things.
But Nixon's stories in Leaders about de Gaulle's kindness
especially appealed to me, for they told me that one could be quiet and
reserved and yet kind. I know people who are rather quiet, but they are
pleasant people to be around because they listen and they express
concern and understanding. That's the sort of quiet person I should aim
to be.
Incidentally, the motif of formal and reserved, yet kind,
people comes up elsewhere in Nixon's works. Nixon in volume 1 of his
memoirs, for example, depicts conservative Republican (and Presidential
candidate) Robert Taft as such a person: one who was formal and
reserved, yet was also loving to his wife, who was in a wheelchair;
Nixon says that Taft took his wife to many of his political events. Why
does this theme come up more than once in Nixon's work? Perhaps it's
because it reflects how Nixon saw himself, or what Nixon himself wanted
to be.
2. On page 88, Nixon says the following about General Douglas MacArthur:
"MacArthur
always felt compelled to be different from those around him, and this
led to certain glaring but harmless eccentricities. In the military,
uniform dress is intended in part to reinforce the command hierarchy.
But MacArthur wanted to stand out, not fit in. To another officer who
asked about his unusual garb, he said, 'It's the orders you disobey that
make you famous.'"
In my opinion, this coincides with something
that Nixon said earlier in the book when discussing Churchill: that
leaders of the past were far more colorful, whereas many leaders of
today, in the age of television, are more boring and homogeneous. Nixon
notes that he knew a lot of interesting personalities when he was in
Congress in the 1940's.
I wondered to myself if there were any
colorful personalities in government today. There are----I think of the
Tea Party politicians, who are not exactly mainstream. But they strike
me as rather paranoid and extreme, so I don't think that they are
eccentric in a good way. But I do admire certain politicians who take
bold, outside-of-the-mainstream stands: I think of the Socialist Senator
Bernie Sanders, or Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky. There are times
when I would like to hear something other than the usual banal political script.
Nixon
portrays MacArthur as, well, different. He says that MacArthur
probably enjoyed the company of people in Asia more than that of
Americans. This stood out to me because it was consistent with how
Nixon depicts MacArthur's governance of Japan after World War II: that
MacArthur governed with sensitivity towards the Japanese, and also with
social justice, as MacArthur brought about land reform that ensured a
broader distribution of the land. But it also stood out to me because I
myself have enjoyed the company of many Asians: foreign-exchange
students from Asian countries, or English-as-a-Second language students I
have tutored. I found them to be nicer than a lot of Americans!
That's just my impression, and I realize that I should not stereotype.
I
should note that Nixon's portrayal of leaders in this book is not
always positive. While Nixon says a lot of positive things about
MacArthur, he also expresses disapproval. For example, when Dwight
Eisenhower as President had a heart attack, MacArthur said that he was
in Vice-President Nixon's corner and wanted Eisenhower to get out of the
way (which, in my opinion, may have meant resigning, not dying). Nixon
said that he found MacArthur's comments to be "highly inappropriate
under the circumstances" (page 92). But MacArthur's comments probably
reflected the long-standing tension that he (MacArthur) had with
Eisenhower, which Nixon talks about.
3. On page 114, Nixon tells the following anecdote about MacArthur and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshida:
"Another
time Yoshida brought MacArthur an ingenious toy horse that he had
brought for [MacArthur's son] Arthur during one of his anonymous walks
through the streets of Tokyo. When Yoshida visited MacArthur's office
again a few days later, he saw the toy still sitting on the general's
desk, next to a stand containing his famous corncob pipes. Yoshida
asked MacArthur why he had not yet given it to his son. The Supreme
Commander answered somewhat sheepishly that he had been having too much
fun playing with it himself. Later he reluctantly passed the toy on to
Arthur."
I loved this humorous anecdote, especially since my
impression of MacArthur in reading Nixon's book is that MacArthur was
rather formal and took himself very seriously. Even MacArthur liked to
play, once in a while! I enjoy Nixon's book because of these sorts of
anecdotes that reveal the human side of leaders. And yet, Nixon also
gets into policy. Nixon praised Yoshida's stance against rigid
anti-monopoly laws, for example, which was consistent with Nixon's own
criticism of anti-trust laws in volume 2 of his memoirs: Nixon thought
that large companies could produce more. Something else that I found
interesting was Nixon's statement that MacArthur advised President
Lyndon Johnson not to send more troops to Vietnam. I was surprised by
this, for MacArthur was a hawk when it came to the Korean War and his
beliefs about the need to combat Communism in Asia. There may be more
nuance to that, however, since one could be a hawk, while also being
against sending more American troops. One could support reliance on air
power rather than ground-forces, or one could believe in using more
Asian troops to fight Communism in Asia rather than American troops (I
think of Vietnamization, and also MacArthur's support for using some of
Chiang Kaishek's men during the Korean War).